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Abstract
Vičnaja Pamjat: Memory Everlasting comprises of a body of works investigating love and loss at an intersection between language, material practice, lived experience, film and voice.
Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of shared vulnerability is examined in relation to the body, but also in terms of linguistic ambiguity, to consider constant change and metamorphosis as fundamental elements of life cycles. The universality of vulnerability is essentially a paradox; life-giving forces simultaneously cause decay. Applying the principle of making and unmaking, sculptural and video works explore the terrain of vulnerability through language and water.
Using clothing and cloth that comes in contact with the skin, imbued with the weight of female lineage and tradition, I draw on highly personal and semi-autobiographic narratives to consider universal power relations and structures examined in feminist discourse. I look at material techniques of dissolving and removing support structures in order to further explore the concept of vulnerability.
Water is used as a symbol, a material, a methodology and a stage to explore the body and language, particularly influenced by Astrida Nemanis’ theory of ‘thinking with water’. By reconsidering power relations through an investigation of nature, in this case, water, we can begin to form more expansive views on nature and gender. I argue that we, as humans, are not separate from water (as conventional Western philosophy purports) but rather are so greatly comprised of water that the boundaries between our internal and external selves start to ‘dissolve’.
Drawing on parallels between water and language, I consider the fluidity of language as often destabilising due to the constant shifting of meaning, yet transformative in that it can facilitate the creation of new facets of ourselves or the regeneration of dormant parts. Thinking of language as ‘watery’ also describes the inadequacies of communication and comprehension, whether they are issues of translation, exclusion, confusion, silence, capability or factors such as emotional distress, illness or trauma. Water and language are ways in which we can understand vulnerability and form new knowledge around relationships and equality.