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Abstract
Voices in Movement, a sound installation directed by artist Lizzie Thynne with music by Ed Hughes, draws on memories recorded for Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project. Both the installation and oral history foreground family stories as central to feminist politics, though in diverse and shifting ways. As the producer of the installation and director of the oral history project, I explore how these representations of the family emerge, as well as the differences between oral history and sound installation as forms of life story-telling.
Notes
[1] Examples include Lesley Abdela's story of her businessman father's care for her when her mother died in her early teens, or Jalna Hanmer's sense that she inherited her left-leaning father's burdens. See Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project, Catalogue reference C1420/13 and C1420/04. © University of Sussex and the British Library.
[2] Beatrix Campbell, interviewed by Margaretta Jolly, Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project, Catalogue reference C1420/60. © University of Sussex and the British Library.
[3] Our interview with Rowena Arshad is a case in point. Arshad's mother had bravely brought her daughter up alone, after being abandoned by her husband. Investing her hard-won savings to get her daughter to boarding school in England, she eventually followed her daughter to settle near her, despite racism and loneliness. Yet these maternal sacrifices were accompanied by judgement, control, and racism of her own. Arshad's later professional and political success seems to have been at least enabled by, if not directed towards, a very solid and happy family life of her own, in which she found also more kindred spirits in her husband's Scottish activist parents. At the same time, she talks about remaking rather than rejecting traditions of childhood obedience, nurturing a social conscience that her own mother lacked. Rowena Arshad, interviewed by Rachel Cohen, Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project, 2010–2013. Catalogue reference C1420/21. © University of Sussex and the British Library.
[4] Barbara Taylor, interviewed by Margaretta Jolly, Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project, 2010–2013. British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C1420/38, transcript p. 205; Track 8. © University of Sussex and the British Library.
[5] Broadcast 17–21 February 2014. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vd5j7.
[6] Taylor transcript p. 197; Track 8.
[7] Taylor transcript p. 29; Track 1.
[8] Office of National Statistics, ‘EMP14: Employees and Self-Employed by Industry’. 12 November 2014; http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?newquery=*&newoffset=25&pageSize=25&edition=tcm%3A77-331783. See also http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2014/jul/23/why-bob-the-builder-is-keeping-women-out-of-construction.
[9] Barbara Jones, interviewed by Margaretta Jolly, Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project, 2010–2013. British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C1420/53, transcript p. 69, Track 3. © University of Sussex and the British Library.
[10] Jones transcript p. 111, Track 4.
[11] Jones transcript p. 1, Track 1.
[12] Jones transcript p. 29, Track 1.
[13] All interviews available in the Sisterhood and After collection at the British Library, as above, including short interviews with the core team, including Jolly and Thynne as part of the project's documentation.
[16] See bl.uk/sisterhood.
[17] From a Woman's Place (dir. Crockford, 1971).
[18] All interviews available in the Sisterhood and After collection at the British Library; cited here as in Thynne and Hughes.
[19] The screen soundpiece version of Voices in Movement is viewable at http://vimeo.com/100939494.