Symposium Uncertain Ground: Landscape, Memory and Theatres of Conflict

Shona Illingworth’s moving-image and sound work engages with the complexities of memory, and explores the intersections and instabilities between memory, history, subjectivity and place as they evolve over time. Set in the far north of Sutherland, in a place marked by the tectonic forces of military/cultural history, her film Balnakiel provides the stimulus for a symposium on the Scottish landscape and its historical and contemporary aesthetic and political resonance.

Featuring contributions from: cognitive neuropsychologist Martin A. Conway, one of the foremost international experts in the field of Autobiographical Memory, and a close collaborator in Illingworth’s work; Hebridean psychologist Catriona Morrison, Head of Psychology at Heriot Watt University, who is known for her work on memory and language; Issie MacPhail, a cultural geographer, focused on culture and development in north west Sutherland, and a Research Fellow at the UHI Centre for Rural Health and Honorary Research Fellow at The School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, and Andrew Hoskins, Media Sociologist at the University of Glasgow whose work explores the intersections between media, war and memory. Chaired by Steven Bode, Director of Film and Video Umbrella.

Programmed in association with Film and Video Umbrella, as part of 25 Frames. With thanks to the Wellcome Trust.

Timetable

2pm Steven Bode - Introduction
2.10pm Screening - Balnakiel
2.45pm Martin A. Conway and Shona Illingworth - In conversation
3.15pm Tea & coffee break
3.35pm Catriona Morrison - Tir: language, memory, landscape
3.55pm Issie MacPhail - Orienteering Inside The Idea of North
4.15pm Andrew Hoskins - Proximity, Distance, and Memory
4.35pm Panel discussion
5pm End

Shona Illingworth is an artist working with sound and moving image. Solo exhibitions and installations of her work include John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Wolverhampton Art Gallery; Dilston Grove, London; Interaccess, Toronto and the Wellcome Collection, London. Her work has been shown at Hayward Gallery, Cornerhouse, Manchester; Akbank Sanat, Istanbul; the National Gallery, Tirana; ViaFarini, Milan, and the Museum of Modern Art Bologna, and screened at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Modern Art Oxford and Museum of Fine Art Lausanne as well as on Channel 4 television. In 2002 she was fellow at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University.

Martin A. Conway Head of Psychology, City University is a cognitive neuro-psychologist. His work explores the centrality of memory to our sense of self. He became Chair of the Research Board of the British Psychological Society in 2006, and held a prestigious ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Professorial Fellowship at Leeds University from 2004 – 2007. He has authored and edited several seminal scientific texts on human memory, regularly publishes in international journals and founded and edits the journal Memory. He is also an expert in legal testimony and co-authored the influential Guidelines on Memory and the Law for the British legal profession with Professor Emily Holmes in 2008.

Catriona Morrison was brought up on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles. She grew up with both English and Gaelic. She has an MA from the University of Glasgow and a DPhil from the University of York. She has held lectureships at Cardiff University, the Robert Gordon University and the University of Leeds. She is currently Professor of Psychology at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Catriona's research interests include language and memory and how they change across the lifespan.

Issie MacPhail is cultural geographer living in north west Sutherland. Her research, cultural praxis and curation is delivered and explored through intimate events. Highlights include Summer in the Straths, a 150 mile journey on foot on the old travellers’ routes, with the ‘old’ travelers; Claim of Crofting, a docu-theatre project in Skye involving actors, musicians and poets, 300 school children and 15 seannachaidh or tale tellers and, lately, an exquisitely affecting set of events for Mackay Country’s Moving Times and Telling Tales project. She is Research Fellow at the UHI Centre for Rural Health, working on the Representing Communities project, lectures at UHI Centre for History and is an Honorary Research Fellow at The School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow.

Andrew Hoskins is a Media Sociologist at the University of Glasgow. Hoskins' work explores the intersections between media, war and memory. This includes the impact of changing technologies and media on perceptions of warfare, on individual, cultural and organisational memory, and on how wars are (de)legitimised through commemoration and memorialisation. He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Sage Journal of Memory Studies. His books include: War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War (with Ben O’Loughlin) and forthcoming (2015) are: iMemory: Why the past is all over (MIT Press), and Risk and Hyperconnectivity: Media, Memory, Uncertainty (with John Tulloch, Oxford University Press). Twitter: @memorystudies

Steven Bode is Director of Film and Video Umbrella, a London-based agency who are Britain’s main commissioners of artists’ film and video work. During his time in that role (which spans from 1993 to the present), he has initiated well over a hundred different projects, including major new works from internationally-acclaimed artists such as Isaac Julien, Gillian Wearing, Jane & Louise Wilson, Mark Leckey, Johan Grimonprez, Daria Martin, Tacita Dean and Mark Lewis. Alongside this commissioning activity, he has also curated a number of other large-scale group exhibitions such as ‘Airport’ (1997, for Photographers’ Gallery, London; with Jeremy Millar), ‘The Other Side of Zero’ (2000, for Video Positive, Liverpool), and ‘There is No Road’ (2008, for LABoral, Gijón, Spain) as well as film and video programmes such as ‘New Video from Great Britain’ (1997, for MoMA, New York). He has written extensively about video, film and contemporary art for several publications, and has contributed essays to many artists’ monographs, including substantial texts on Dryden Goodwin (for the book, ‘Cast’, 2009) and Zineb Sedira (for ‘Beneath the Surface’, 2011) as well as catalogue essays for numerous Film and Video Umbrella publications.