sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

… that challenges the very logic of an archival practice that gathers and stores
evidence, not to provide the very foundation of factual knowledge or a historical account…
but rather (they) attempt to address the limits of what is thinkable and sayable… (often by
alluding to) that sense of the absurd, the futile, or the impossible, which ultimately haunts
the logic of the archive 4
Likewise in this project, I recognised in my family’s humble documents, films and artefacts an
opportunity to explore fresh ways to revisit the past in order to gain alternative insights into popular
social and cultural believe systems; complicated and refashioned by faltering memory and the halftruths
and stories circulating in the present moment. Such new models and formations rather than
tell us facts and data can help us to understand the relationship between a family’s myths, stories
and constructing a sense of identity through the records they generate and leave behind for the next
generation. Also, through conscious and unconscious processes of self‐censorship, such documents
and artefacts demonstrate the pre‐existing power relationship; particularly relevant to women’s
unique experiences, personal choices and rationale which remain often outside the main narration of
the past.
My relationship to the family archive was informed by my different subject positions, for example;
daughter, sister, niece, artist, researcher, and this ‘insider‐outsider’ auto ethnographic position
proved to be a great asset as I set about to explore such issues as: the role of the voice, collective
memory and archival processes. It is well recognised that how we document the past shapes the
present – however, the fact that the majority of us belong to some kind of family and that this is an
important and primary site of collective memory compiled of fragmented stories, half‐truths, myths,
jokes and family artefacts enabling us to define ourselves in relation to broader social and cultural
events, sites and locations suggests that the particularities of the micro study of my family archive
can be generalised and applied to others. I also think that such a model can be expanded to
encompass a range of lesser‐known, subjective voices that because of prevailing social and cultural
norms and political agendas and are either omitted or not fore grounded in the record.
In a sculptural work, titled Singing Letters, I reconfigure the original collection of letters sent by
my father to my mother circa 1950 when he was in England and she was still living in Ireland and still
thinking about whether she would join him. With this work I wanted to play with both the
authoritative and poetic associations of the voice through highlighting its public role and the
vulnerable and affective interior qualities it processes in the context of retrieving those voices that I
believed were either lost or marginalised.