LUCY PURRINGTON
MOTHER - WORKING TITLE
STARTING POINT: grief. mother. where is my mother tongue. a scream. the wind blowing in a tree after my mother's death.
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I hear a scream in my mind.
What will happen if I release it and scream outside.
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Do I keep it inside, scared to move on. Or scraed that nothing will change.
MOTHER
https://stiftung-imai.de/videos/katalog/medium/1840
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Ulrike Rosenbach - Einwicklung mit Julia
Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970's, Works from the Verbund Collection
The Photographer's Gallery London
7th October 2016 - 15th January 2017
The exploration of an individual trauma was felt collectively by women and mother's in a decade where the feminist movement questioned the individual sense of self and the affliction of being caught between two opposing dogmatic ideals under the role of mother.
The landscape was changing in terms of the stereotyping of female roles within society, but the domestic role of mother and the accompanying guilt wielding voice of the previous generation prevailed over the birth of feminist rhetoric at that time. In this video piece there is a conflicting personal desire for wanting different for the child away from the constrictive culture the mother figure grew up in against the pressures of sticking to the social norm.
Although the video depicts the act of societal submission of the domestic mother told performatively through meticulously chest bind herself to the daughter figure, the piece informs the viewer of the deliberate performance of submission. And so the piece becomes a piercing statement of the violence of her motherly shackles.
The performance of repeatedly wrapping bandages around the chest area also signifies the hiddeness of female flesh and its eroticism. The culturally sexualised breasts are another symbol of femininity and the knowing that one is being watched as a female performer, she watches herself being surveyed and acts accordingly. Understanding that it is her performance and not a subconscious performativity brings to our attention the difficulties of being an individual as a female if she always knows that she is being surveyed.
The binding itself would not be physically painful, yet it's visual metaphor for the entrapment of binding oneself to the societal expectations of western society.
When looking at formative art work, you can't help but create comparisons from then to now. The fracture not of the burden of motherhood but instead the burden of the expectation of the mother is still a topic for discussion in our modern culture. But it is this reflective comparison that causes injury to me; to think that so much has changed since then, but the world that we live in now has its own insidious constraints. We're bound to a hypersexualised culture where women are criticised, objectified and tied to a new set of ridiculous restraints that govern our mind and body. The statistics are there from a range of mental health and cosmetic surgery procedures that an emergence of new controlling parameters - the beauty myth.
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Sound of the breathing. inhale, exhale. passing on time.
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Framing my understanding of grief in a wider sense in my community: Senghenydd disaster.
Grief in a wider context of growing up in the Aber valley.
Growing up, learning about the horrors of the disasters as a young child and the stories of the headed man, the dog that waited, the survivor who slept late.
Generational trauma and feeling of loss. Community spirit. post-memory, epigenetics. > how is this trauma passed on to the current generation?
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Grief of the land, the remnants of the mines: scarred. Regrowth, grass and houses replace the mine.
Mourning clothes.
What would the families have worn?
What was the customs at the time?
> mourning clothes at Aber Valley Museum. - ACTION> need to visit
> Mourning clothes at St Fagans. BELOW>
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Notes on iPhone
Drop to floor, punch the floor with fist, head downward with hair covering face, then scream and lift head upwards.
Camera follows the drop or I fit out of shot.
Yeah it’s a close beforehand, feels intrusive in your face, I’m looking out into the distance, slowly rocking back and forth, side to side.
Empty landscape. She’s gone.
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She’s looking right at me, desaturated, dirt on her face. She is not me but she is me.
I am the suit she wears to navigate the human reality and I am an ego projection of her. It’s like who I am is an interface for the program to run. She needs me to live.
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I don’t know how the wind doesn’t blow straight throw me
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My thoughts get so tangled in themselves that they weave a net that I suppose from one side looking out protests but also isolates.
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Screaming with arms outstretched either side- biblical. Fire bolts coming out of palm of hand and a Smokey flame rising from open mouth.... just texting my silly visions.
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Breathing singing sound like Anna von hausswolff
Bow on guitar
Metalis clubk / keyboard sound like non - downward spiral
After scream
I am stone
I am shield
I am fortress
Silent tide
Deaf to …
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Women are much more likely to apologise before speaking. An ancidodal and avidenced phenomenon. I remember noticing it at university; the women who would present their work during the weekly guest speaker session would say sorry for one thing or another then proceed to begin their talk. I can’t recall the reasons but I vividly recall the lingering rage that society hadn’t taught them to take up space. No more than they should, because regardless of gender there’s a limit to encroachment to an uncomfortable or arrogant level, but these lines are defined differently between the men and the women. And, while I’m on the topic, are any parameters even permitted to those that have transcended the binary expression of gender?
I feel like I need to pull at the women’s confidence to stretch to the size they deserve, pin it in place and fence it off to ensure nobody ever makes them feel that they should minamise themselves.
But I’m just projecting because here I am, dyslexic and about to apologise for Being several years out of uni, out of practice of writing and unable to venture into academic speak. ///
I’ve barely read since graduating so this isn’t likely to include academic speech, (which again comes with a nervousness but also a middle finger to the inaccessibility and classism that it inevitably includes.)
So I’ve set myself up as not sounding like I know much, but I have gut feelings about some things and I guess I’ll just follow that.
So, middle aged white men photographing black communities.
The topic most recently was should middle class photographers document working class culture?
No there should not be restrictions in photography because isn’t that just gate keeping? But considering the steady erosion of the arts, it’s funding and the increasing inaccessibility of higher education and industry jobs makes this a complex content under which to ask the question.
I have a feeling that it’s the very people who feel that they shouldn’t photograph these communities that would most likely depict them in a considered way. Anyone who leaps in without worrying if they will do them justice must have an undeniable arrogance about themselves, right? Or perhaps my own anxieties are distorting my view.
Culture is one thing, people
(In a male dominated arena where the majority of students are actually women, go figure?)
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I am inhabited by a carry - episode name on the Asian Netflix show
Change it to scream
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