Punk Memory as Feminist Method: On Noise, Refusal, and the Politics of Remembering
Memory, in the hands of a feminist artist, is never simply recollection. It is reclamation. Rewiring. A counter-history. A refusal to accept the official version of events — especially when the official version has no interest in us except as footnotes, victims, or background noise. But noise, as punk taught me early in life, is never just background. Noise is material. Noise is language. Noise is resistance. When we speak of punk memory , we are not talking about nostalgia for studs, spit and cheap beer. Punk memory is a methodology: a way of remembering that is unpolished, uncurated, contradictory, feral. A memory that does not behave. A memory uninterested in being respectable. Women in the punk scene learned early that our histories would not be recorded unless we recorded them ourselves. Gigs went undocumented. Friendships vanished into rumour. Survival stories disappeared beneath glamourised male narratives of chaos and genius. Women made the clothes, ran the houses, b...