This article examines the role of the creative arts in renegotiating the border between memorable and unmemorable lives. It does so with specific reference to the (un)forgetting of the colonial soldiers in European armies during World War One. Focussing on the role of aesthetic form in generating memorability, it shows how the creative use of a medium can help redefine the borders of imagined communities by commanding the attention of individual subjects and hence providing conditions for a cognitive and affective opening to the memory of strangers. It concludes that future studies of transformations in collective memory should take a multiscalar approach which takes into account both the shifting social frameworks of memory and the small changes that occur in the micro-politics of viewing and reading.

本文探讨了创意艺术在重新谈判难忘和难忘生活之间的界限方面的作用。这样做是特别参考第一次世界大战期间欧洲军队对殖民士兵的（不）遗忘。着眼于审美形式在产生记忆力方面的作用，它展示了媒介的创造性使用如何通过引起个体主体的注意并从而为认知和情感开放给陌生人的记忆提供条件来帮助重新定义想象中的社区的边界。 。结论是，集体记忆转换的未来研究应采用多尺度方法，既要考虑不断变化的记忆社会框架，又要考虑阅读和阅读微观政治中发生的微小变化。