Output details

Balnakiel

How do the spatial effects of wider cultural and geopolitical processes impact on the evolution of individual and collective memory across cultural and social divides?

Illingworth's Balnakiel (2009), a single channel video and three-dimensional sound installation, accompanied by drawings, text and photographic works, addresses this question through an investigation of the complex social, historical and cultural landscape of Cape Wrath - site of a major NATO live bombardment range, and nearby civilian communities in the far north west of Scotland, where the artist grew up. Professor Martin Conway, cognitive neuropsychologist and one of the foremost international experts in the field of autobiographical memory was a key consultant. Extensive fieldwork undertaken by Illingworth established a large corpus of data in the form of video, film, sound recording, photographs, memory drawings and interviews. This informed investigative drawing processes undertaken by Illingworth, informed at a neuropsychological level of understanding, highlighting ways in which the complex and multi-layered nature of human memory in the individual mind impacts on the formation of collective memory across differing social and cultural groups. This formed the template of both the video and the spatial configuration of the audio that made up the installation.

Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and funded by Arts Council England and the Wellcome Trust, solo exhibitions of Balnakiel toured to John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2009) and Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2010). The work has been screened in the UK and US (Armory Show, New York 2011), discussed as a major case study in Jill Bennett’s book Practical Aesthetics and by Caterina Albano in Memory Studies, and presented at conferences and symposia (including Whitechapel Gallery, London and Modern Art, Oxford). See http://www.fvu.co.uk/projects/details/balnakiel/, working processes and contextual research in the accompanying monograph (Illingworth, S., Bode, S. and Ernst, N. eds.) published by FVU, and the portfolio for further evidence.