(Untitled), Memory and Forgetting

(Untitled) Memory and Forgetting was commissioned by PEALS (Policy Ethics and Life Sciences) and made in collaboration by Shona Illingworth and neuroscientist Martin A. Conway. It was developed through working intensively with three people who had experienced the trauma of dislocation, through war, migration and brutal military conscription. It is a sound installation using recordings made by Shona Illingworth over six month period.

Installed in galleries across the UK, the walls of a white empty room emanate with voices of people who have been dispossessed and displaced through war or resettlement. Fragments of disembodied voices speak of vivid details from memory, ‘a blue carpet’, ‘a soldier eating something out of a bag’.

The installation uses new sound technology initially developed by the US Military to turn large panels of wood into speakers, emitting sound from across the entire surface, so that voices appear to emanate from the walls and to move around the room - so that the walls seem to literally speak. The work received an grant from Arts and Business to commission FeONIC,developers of this technology to build a prototype specially for this project and presented a haunting composition of voices, emotionally charged memory and fragmented narratives.