[ecrea] Family Ties: Recollection and Representation conference

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.