The project began with a simple objective: to reconstruct the social and cultural history of the National College of Arts through conversations with its graduates. It did not remain that project.
Within the first ten conversations, it became clear that the recordings revealed something far more significant than institutional history,,they revealed the nature of memory itself. Memories rarely unfolded chronologically. They emerged unexpectedly, contradicted one another, shifted through emotion and association, and continually reshaped the past. The conversation itself became evidence.
At that point, Tacit Knowing changed from a history project into an archive of memory before memory becomes official history. Participants were selected not for their public reputation, but for the authenticity of their recollections. Well-known figures often replace lived experience with carefully rehearsed narratives; this 235 episode-long project sought memories that still retained uncertainty, hesitation and discovery.
The recordings remain intentionally unedited. Pauses, digressions, changing thoughts, reluctance and silence often reveal more than polished recollections. Rather than constructing a single authoritative history, Tacit Knowing preserves multiple, sometimes contradictory, memories as evidence that institutions are experienced differently by those who inhabit them.
Tacit Knowing therefore treats memory not as raw material to be edited into history, but as a cultural artefact worthy of preservation in its own right.
