Amnesia Forum: Lesions in the Landscape 1

The Amnesia Forums are conceived and organised by Shona Illingworth. They are a series of cross-discipline academic roundtable discussions for artists, scientists, geographers, historians, writers and researchers to explore key directions and debates surrounding current scientific insight into memory and amnesia, and contemporary discourse around the themes of individual and cultural amnesia and evolving constructions of place, location and identity. Each forum centres on a set of research questions. The Amnesia Forums are research-in-progress for Lesions in the Landscape: Claire and the Island of Hirta, a project led by Illingworth and funded by the Wellcome Trust, UK. The Amnesia Forum, Lesions in the Landscape 1 was an open forum organised by Illingworth in conjunction with the Adam Smith Research Foundation: http://www.gla.ac.uk/researchinstitutes/adamsmith/ and the Glasgow Memory Group. Illingworth presented key research in progress: St Kilda (untitled) and 216 Westbound, presentatons were also given by invited speakers including Dr Issie MacPhail (UHI), Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow. The event focused on a series of questions including: Does the monumentalising effect of exhaustive processes of gathering, examining and archiving materials and evidence in relation to conflicted historical events conversely precipitate a form of cultural amnesia?