Archive for February 2012

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[ecrea] Family Ties: Recollection and Representation conference

Thu Feb 16 14:11:54 GMT 2012



Dear colleagues

Just to remind you of the forthcoming 'Family Ties' conference at the University of London on Friday 9th March 2012 that I have organised as part of my visiting fellowship. Please see attached link for the programme, abstracts and registration form.

*http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences-workshops/family-ties.html*

Exploring the representation of family memories in autobiographical writing, photography and artist’s film and video, the event features speakers such as academics Prof. Marsha Meskimmon, Prof. Angela Kelly and Dr. Nicky Bird, together with artists and filmmakers such as Trish Morrissey, Sarah Pucill and Marjolaine Ryley.

*The closing date for receipt of registration is next* *Friday 24th February 2012* (£35.00/£20.00 students). You can either post or email a completed scan of the form to (Jane.Lewin /at/ sas.ac.uk) <mailto:(Jane.Lewin /at/ sas.ac.uk)>.

The conference is accompanied by two free evening events generously funded by the John Coffin Memorial Trust: a film screening and Q&A with the artist filmmaker, Sarah Miles on the 8th March and an artist talk by photographer and therapist, Rosy Martin on the 9th March from 6pm. You do not have to register beforehand to attend these events. Please see details below.

I very much hope that you will be able to attend.

Best wishes

Sally

Dr. Sally Waterman

www.sallywaterman.com <http://www.sallywaterman.com/>

*Thursday 8th March 2012*

Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

18.00         Wine Reception

18.45 *Film screening of /2001-A Family Odyssey: Ophelia's Version/*

19.35 *Sarah Miles* in conversation with *Lucy Reynolds* (University of the Arts)* *

Sarah Miles' /2001 - A Family Odyssey: Ophelia's Version/ (2002, 50') is a poetic elliptical film exploring the hidden systemic powers of identification within a family constellation through four generations. Distant but familiar ancestors haunt the landscape like screen memories and family members collaborate to perform representations of themselves. A collage of family album; the filmmaker’s father’s photographic archive, rushes of his unfinished film /The Host/; 16mm portraits, music, voiceover and film clips including /Apocalypse Now, Badlands, Belle De Jour and Breakfast at Tiffany’s/ reflect a complex layering of narratives. Miles plays Shakespeare’s Ophelia as a bunny girl in violet searching for material amidst a powerful dreamlike stream of drowned family stories and screen Ophelia’s, Marianne Faithfull segues into Catherine Deneuve into Marilyn Monroe. Representing Ophelia evolves into an investigation of the limits of memory, the nature of storytelling, the boundaries of art and the imagination itself. Past present and future mix generating new meanings. Through this process of constellation hidden forces are unveiled by Ophelia’s jaunt through familial image-repertoire
(Film Forum, Los Angeles 2002).

Sarah Miles studied English and American studies at the University of East Anglia (1980-1983). Miles' award-winning films combine fragmentary and evocative narratives of family and memory with references from cinema and literature. Her films have been screened internationally as single screen and installation works at cinemas and galleries and broadcast on Channel 4, Canal 4 and BBC2. Screenings at international film festivals include Melbourne (Damsel Jam, 1993), Transmediale Berlin international media art festival (Amaeru Fallout 1972, 1999), Oberhausen (Magnificent Ray, 2000), Los Angeles (2001 A Family Odyssey: Ophelia’s Version, 2002) and Rotterdam (No Place, 2006). Artist presentations include Tate Britain; Arnolfini UK, Pacific Film Archive, Image Forum, Japan and Los Angeles Film Forum. She has lectured in visual theory and film production at Bournemouth College of Art and University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury and Maidstone. She has received funding from the Arts Council England, BFI, Film London, the Film & Video Umbrella and South West Media Development Agency. Her work is held in The Artists Film and Video Study Collection at Central St. Martins, London and she is represented by LUX, London. She lives and works in London.

* *

*Friday 9th March 2012*

Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

18.00         Wine Reception

18.30 *Rosy Martin ‘On Looking Back: Photography, Memory and Forgetting’*

It was the very paucity of what could be found within the family album that prompted Jo Spence and I to begin our quest to open up the family album to critical analysis, investigation and performative photography, through re-enactment phototherapy.

The fading fragments do still hold emotional weight, as well as possibilities for multiple re-readings, changing over time. The performativity of speaking one’s stories in responses to the family album images, and the acts of performance of the multiplicities of self and others within re-enactment phototherapy offer different strategies for engagement with the image, and that which it may show or occlude.

Yet – what of the need to hold onto the moment – when knowingly confronting incipient loss? How might one use photography to reconsider the all too familiar and once taken for granted? As my investigations shift from contestation through to reparation, the questions remain as to how to represent that which is hidden, denied or deferred. In trying to find a language to address pre-bereavement, dementia, death, mourning and reparation, drawing from my own specific lived experiences, I am, as an artist, aiming to invite the audience to find their own resonances and reflections.

Rosy Martin is an artist using self-portraiture, still life photography, digital imaging and video, dealing with issues of gender, sexuality, ageing, family dynamics, bereavement and reparation. In her practice she aims to extend the range of potential meanings that lie within notions of domestic photography and explore the relationships between photography, memory, identities and unconscious processes. Working with the late Jo Spence, from 1983, she evolved and developed a new photographic practice - phototherapy - based upon re-enactment. Her work has been exhibited internationally since 1985, including The Photographers Gallery, London (1987), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (1991), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1998), Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-sea (2001) and Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany (2007). She has held lecturing posts in visual culture and art/photographic histories at Staffordshire University, Loughborough University and Maidstone College of Art. She is a qualified psychological therapist. Her essays have been included in the following publications: 'Stilled' (Iris and Ffotogallery 2005); 'Gender Issues in Art Therapy', (Jessica Kingsley, 2003); 'Feminist Approaches to Art Therapy', (Routledge, 1997), 'What Can a Woman Do with a Camera?' (Scarlet Press, 1995) and 'Family Snaps: the Meanings of Domestic Photography' (Virago, 1991). She lives and works in London.



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