Output details

'When I Leave These Landings (2004 - 2009)'

A body of research resulting in a five-film installation. Solo exhibition at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, 2009, and symposium, ‘It’s Our Prison’; The Hugh Lane/NCAD Gallery, 2013, supported by the ‘The Impossible Conversation’, a series of public talks and symposium exploring issues raised by the work; Void/City Factory Gallery Derry, as part of UK City of Culture 2013 programme; Frontieres Dedans/Dehors, group exhibition, Marseille 2013 European Capital of Culture. Work part exhibited at Rencontres Internationales Paris, Madrid and Berlin 2009-10 and Video Dumbo 2010, New York. The research presents a unique body of knowledge and filmed testimony to the lived prisoner experience, and the impact of extreme ideological conviction on self and the shifts in identity and memory, which prisoners undergo within a high-security prison. The educational and participatory methodology developed for the project is a core aspect of the research, developed in response to the ethical challenges associated with documenting the lives of paramilitary prisoner participants within a total institution. Questions addressed: Can participatory and educational methods of filmmaking offer greater insights and unsettle observation-based approaches to the portrayal of closed institutions and those within (bearing in mind work of Heuston, Wiseman, Depardon, Phillibert, Gröning, Read)? How do inclusive methods of production and portrait construction impede/facilitate dissemination? How do participants or collaborators retain rights of representation and remain stakeholders in such a practice? Can participants’ control of narrative and representation impact the construction and mediation of identity within a closed institution? (Sykes, Goffman, Foucault, Oury). Can lens-based practice create a body of knowledge that is transferable to disciplines such as governance, gerontology, ethnography? Research methodology presented at European Prison Education Association Conference, Dublin, 2007, as potential model for art professionals/researchers working with lens-based media in ‘total-institutions’. Excerpts screened/discussed and papers presented at multiple international conferences and events.