Tuesday 3rd July, 7pm-8pm GMT
This final show in the Storage series is about the way we store ourselves. This show explores how, where and why we hold on to the stories, histories and memories that populate our private and public lives. We will talk with practitioners concerned with storing and communicating personal histories in the form of public archives and artistic production. We will examine how we construct personal identity when we face the loss of our memories, even our minds. Where do we turn when the storeroom of memories is raided by illness or trauma? Has the concept of identity become the perfect collator of our individuated existence or is it the ultimate dead repository of ineffable enigmas? We will also look at the the relationship between private and public memories and the relationship between individual and collective selves – are we ’stored’ in our individual corporeal selves or do we mostly exist in the space in – as part of a collective ‘body’ of knowledge.
For this show I will be joined by Dr Graham Smith, chair of the Oral History Society, and Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway at the Centre for the History of Bodies and Material Culture; Verusca Calabria, independent oral historian and Dr Alexandra Kokoli, Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at Grays School of Art
The show will also include one pre-recorded interview with Nina Volenbroker, a research and teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture. She will be speaking about Pioneer Quilts and Cowboy Songs.