{"id":2870,"date":"2015-02-02T09:49:42","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T09:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr\/?p=2870"},"modified":"2015-02-02T09:49:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T09:49:42","slug":"excavations-in-film-fragments-lost-in-the-ether-and-being-at-home-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/2015\/02\/02\/excavations-in-film-fragments-lost-in-the-ether-and-being-at-home-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Excavations in Film, Fragments Lost in the Ether and Being At \u2018Home\u2019 in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Phenomenology and Imagination Research Group held a\u00a0seminar on 19 January 2015, led by Patti Gaal-Holmes, with the title &#8216;Excavations in Film, Fragments Lost in the Ether and Being At \u2018Home\u2019 in the World&#8217;. This article provides notes drawn from the seminar and commentaries from the participants,\u00a0Noriko Suzuki-Bosco, Yvonne Jones, Yonat Nitzan-Green, Jane Bennett, Cheng-Chu Weng, Bevis Fenner, Xiaoyang Xi.<\/p>\n<p><\/em><strong>Seminar Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Martin Heidegger\u2019s \u2018Building Dwelling Thinking\u2019 essay:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/designtheory.fiu.edu\/readings\/heidegger_bdt.pdf\">http:\/\/designtheory.fiu.edu\/readings\/heidegger_bdt.pdf<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>2 page extract from Michael Jackson\u2019s <em>At Home in the World<\/em> (2000)<\/li>\n<li>Short essay \u2018Building Houses\u2019 by Vil\u00e9m Flusser<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Additional Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Patti Gaal-Holmes, \u2018(Re)calling \u2018Home\u2019: An Artist\u2019s Negotiation and (Re)negotiation between Memory, Geography, History and Language\u2019 in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, Intellect, 2012, Vol 3 Issue 2, pp. 210-212.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Patti Gaal-Holmes:\u00a0<\/strong>The idea with this seminar was not to offer a didactic explanation for the set texts but rather to lay out some materials for conversations to evolve\u2026.which they indeed did with valuable contributions from all: many thanks! Three essays provided fuel for discussions and a context for concluding with an illustrated talk about my work-in-progress film project, <em>Liliesleaf Farm: Mayibuye<\/em>; provoking further discussions.<\/p>\n<p>After a brief introduction we looked more closely at Heidegger\u2019s \u2018Building Dwelling Thinking\u2019 essay with a number of valuable digressions, thoughts and counter-thoughts [my brief notes for \u2018Building Dwelling Thinking\u2019 attached]. My preoccupations with the notion of \u2018home\u2019 have centered on attempting to ascertain what \u2018home\u2019 means from a cross-cultural\/geographical and multi-lingual perspective (I am half-German, half-Hungarian, born in South Africa, a Belgian national and reside in the UK). Are familiarities\/affiliations with being \u2018at home in the world\u2019 related to land and landscape, as Michael Jackson\u2019s research with the Walpiri Aboriginal tribe in his book <em>At Home in the World<\/em> reveals? Or is \u2018home\u2019 very much fixed in a Western construct of \u2018bricks and mortar\u2019 as the site\/building as Heidegger discusses in \u2018Building Dwelling Thinking\u2019. For both (J and H) the notion of kin\/kinship and belonging seemed to be central. At one point some interesting discussions on Heidegger\u2019s religious position (Catholic) were brought to the table \u2013 and the evident biblical influences in this text \u2013 and further onto the church as a \u2018house of God\u2019 therefore requiring such large proportions, with steeple to sky (the divinities mentioned in H\u2019s essay). On my way home after the seminar I had the \u2018good fortune\u2019 of just missing my train and having to wait an hour \u2026 so took a walk to Winchester Cathedral with these thoughts in mind: about scale and man and God and a building for thinking and being in \u2026 not the \u2018cosy\u2019 protectiveness of a human space for dwelling in \u2026 a different kind of thinking \u2026 collective communion\/communication? But cold and vast too\u2026I was much more observant of the huge doors and windows and the sky of the ceiling.<\/p>\n<p>The issue of \u2018walls\u2019 came up too: with inside and outside walls offering protection from enemies without and enclosure within; although in Flusser\u2019s \u2018Building Houses\u2019 essay he says that our modern homes are full of perforations \u2013 like Swiss cheese \u2013 with the outside world continually penetrating through the wires and conduits of technology. So discussions moved on to the necessary \u2018space\u2019 of silence required to just \u2018be\u2019, particularly for the distillation of ideas\/noise into (art\/written) works. Flusser writes of the need for habit\/the habitual to make sense of the noise of experience. Discussion followed on to the invaluable connection which technology brings but equally (I think) sometimes a disconnected \u2018unreal\u2019 connection; and also these continued conduits making it difficult to escape from the \u2018noise\u2019 of the outside world. Bevis discussed his project where he has invited strangers into his home, opening up some thoughts on privacy, space, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Discussions on the material differences of what home meant from Western perspectives (Heidegger\/Flusser) to Jackson\u2019s understanding of home from an Aboriginal perspective [as an experiential anthropologist acquired through living with the Walpiri tribe in Australia] in communion with land and markers in the landscape (rocks, trees, rivers, etc). Heidegger writes of the bridge (the structure not as dwelling place) which provides connecting markers in the landscape, making me think of Western necessity to forge these marks more \u2018concretely\u2019, whereas these are already exist as imagined by the Walpiri as connecting markers.<\/p>\n<p>We moved on to my work-in-progress film\/photography project, <em>Liliesleaf Farm Mayibuye<\/em>, with the rich contributions from the seminar providing further contextual basis for discussion. And in mind for this project I thought of John R. Stilgoe\u2019s question in his Introduction to Gaston Bachelard\u2019s <em>Poetics of Space<\/em> (1958), framing this project: \u2018how accurately must one hear in order to hear the geometry of echoes in an old, peculiarly experienced house?\u2019 Liliesleaf, the farm of the title, has particular historical significance, as it was the headquarters of the military wing of the African National Congress (South Africa) in the early 1960s (and is now a key museum forming part of heritage history of the \u2018liberation struggle\u2019). A police raid on the farm took place in 1963, with the notorious Rivonia Trial (1964) resulting in the lifetime imprisonment of anti-apartheid activists like Nelson Mandela. Ideas for the project originated with the discovery of 8mm film footage and photographs of my immigrant family at Liliesleaf as this was our home in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>I showed a few slides related to this project and a 3 minute dual-screen film in which I had refilmed the 8mm \u2018home-movie\u2019 footage onto 16mm through a laborious \u2013 but very valuable \u2018slow\u2019 process for thinking \u2013 on an Optical printer. The film was hand-processed, digitised and edited. Experimentation with the materiality and content of film and photography lies at the heart of the <em>Liliesleaf Farm: Mayibuye<\/em> project. The idea is to bring intersecting histories to the fore, opening up a space for reflection on the house, Liliesleaf Farm, as a palimpsest layered by the spectres of history. The film reflects on the lived experiences intersecting in a given space and time and explores, as friend and cultural historian\/critic, Sa\u00ebr Maty B\u00e2, succinctly put it: \u2018it seems to me that the &#8216;Liliesleaf Farm&#8217; project is also a crucial undertaking in the sense that it does not so much explore <em>why <\/em>we are part of histories but, instead, <em>how<\/em> we have come to enter those histories and <em>how<\/em> that mode of entry might enrich the surface and depth of what it means to be human\u2019. I have yet to explore all these possibilities within the project.<\/p>\n<p>The film is intended as a montage of interconnected image and sound, opening up spaces for poetic engagement rather than being a didactic, linear narrative attempting to present a plot. In this way it also poses questions about \u2018home\u2019 as a (contested) site where events unfold, where individuals unfold these events and where these individuals, allegedly free of affiliations to nationhood, inadvertently find themselves caught within the residue of turbulent historical moments.<\/p>\n<p>I much appreciated the feedback received on the film, as questions on the use of soundtrack (the film is currently silent), issues of narcissism in working with autobiographical material and the \u2018problem of nostalgia\u2019 are foremost in mind with this project.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Comments<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/strong><strong>Chen-Chu Weng:\u00a0<\/strong>It is surprising that the idea of home able to extend to values of issues. The term of skin, \u201cI live in my house as I live inside my skin\u201d from Jackson, remind me a film call \u201cThe Skin I Live In\u201d. This does not refer to Jackson\u2019s words, I think Jackson\u2019s term of skin may able to explain as the experiences of space. How the body experience the space. I remember whilst I was a little girl, I love to play hide- and- seek at my parents\u2019 house. My body seems already familiar and memories the space, and then a few years before we moved to the new house, the star is much bigger than the old house. I feel odd while I climbed the stairs.<\/p>\n<p>The other interesting term for me is original term of \u2018home\u2019 comes from the form of munition, which is quite violent, in Chinese word of home is a house live with pigs. Due to pig is part of property in Chinese ancient culture.<\/p>\n<p>I think the text of Building Dwelling Thinking is able to connect writing Merleau-Ponty\u2019s chapter \u201cSpace\u201d in \u201cPhenomenology of Perception\u201d, for instance Heidegger said \u201cThe axiomatic proposition and founding representation is cogito sum, I think, I am, ich denke, ich bin. Bin, like the English be, stems from the Indo-Germanic bheu, as does the Latin fui (I have been) and the Greek phu\u014d (I come to light, grow, engender), But these words also give rise to the German word bauen, to build\u201d (PP344-345).<\/p>\n<p>In the similar way Merleau-Ponty said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The true cogito is not the intimate communing of though with the thought of that thought: they meet only on passing through the world. The consciousness of the world is not based on self-consciousness: they are strictly contemporary. There is a world for me because I am not unaware of myself; and I am not concealed from myself because I have a world. This pre-reflective cogito(1945:345)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I do feel reading the essay and the references is able to help me understand Merleau-Ponty\u2019s theory. Thanks you, Patti!! And thank you, all the members in HIGR, Bevis and Xia I had a good day.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, in the earlier the seminar, I mention the inside and outside of outline, the book name On Not Being Able to Paint by Marion Milner. Although this may refer to subject of painting more than the other subject, it may worth to extend to the topics we discourse, like refuge and out of the refuge, home and homeless, language and outside of language.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Noriko Suzuki-Bosco:\u00a0<\/strong>I find it interesting thinking about the role of memory in connection to one\u2019s understanding of a place. I used to think that the sense of place was stronger if it only exists in memory. \u2018Nostalgia\u2019 plays a big part in it too. You can long for something more if you can\u2019t or don\u2019t have it any longer.<\/p>\n<p>I have been questioning in my own mind about the definition of \u2018home\u2019 and sense of belonging, more so since coming back to Winchester.\u00a0 Where does geographical \u2018place\u2019 and brick and mortar \u2018house\/home\u2019 sit in relation to how I try to make sense of who and where I am now? Where is the role of memory as I try to define my connection with Winchester?<\/p>\n<p>Social anthropologist Tim Ingold makes an interesting differentiation between \u2018interaction\u2019 and \u2018correspondence\u2019, which somehow resonated with me. According to Ingold, \u2018interaction\u2019 is \u2018detemporalising, cutting across the path of movement and becoming\u2019. Where as correspondence is where \u2018lines wrap around one another\u2019 or simply \u2018joining along\u2019. To correspond to the world, as Ingold notes, \u2018is not to describe it, or to represent it, but to answer to it\u2026it is to mix the movement of one\u2019s own sentinent awareness with the flows and currents of animate life\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>I reflect on your film shown during the presentation and wonder whether it was this element of \u00a0\u2018correspondence\u2019 you had with you father through the making of the film, looking through the view finder as your father did, seeing thought his eyes, together with the tactile experience of the slow, hand-process of putting together the film that enabled you to connect with your past, the memories and histories of the place and the house in a far more poignant way than merely remembering or shifting through memory. This, I feel, resulted in a film that was powerful and beautiful without the dangers of \u2018nostalgia\u2019 coating personal memory with sugar dust.\u00a0It was beautiful and I look forward to seeing the finished product.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jane Bennett:\u00a0<\/strong>Thank you very much for introducing us to Heidegger and shedding some light on a dense piece of writing.\u00a0 To introduce the Jackson piece as a counter-view was inspirational;\u00a0 it really highlighted how embedded in western thinking the other definition of \u201chome\u201d is, with its focus on buildings and fixed boundaries\/walls.\u00a0 I think we merely touched on what \u201chome\u201d actually meant to each of us, but sufficient to indicate that, with the varied life experiences in even our small group, a wide range of differing meaning \u2013 perhaps more to discuss here?<\/p>\n<p>Thank you too for sharing with us your work-in-progress \u2013 it is such an interesting subject.\u00a0 The two films bounced off each other, raising questions about how and if such different lived scenarios leave their trace upon the bricks and mortar of the building, or hang in the air within, so to speak.\u00a0 (We questioned whether the confusion about black\/white skin that arose from the use of negative film was intentional?)\u00a0 However, what I found most moving was that you were looking where your father looked when you edited the family film.\u00a0 This must have been such a moving experience for you, to have this tangible and material link to your father.\u00a0 To be in the place that he was visually \u2013 to look where he looked.\u00a0 And this lead me to wonder whether this sense of material connection could be extended to the building itself, that has now gone on to have a different life and remains and endures, despite our transitory human histories.\u00a0 It is the building that the is site of these experiences.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the latter part of the Heidegger document that we didn\u2019t reach that refers to \u201clocation\u201d and \u201cspace\u201d leads to some answers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yonat Nitzan-Green:\u00a0<\/strong>I would like to create a link between Patti\u2019s presentation and Gaston Bachelard\u2019s thoughts about home and material imagination. What follow are some notes. This text needs to be further developed.<\/p>\n<p>Patti writes: \u2018The meaning of \u2018home\u2019 is considered in relation to space\/place and time as the fragmentary transmutations occurring periodically enable a sense of momentary personal cohesion.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Transmutation \u2013 transformation; scientific word describing a real change in material.<\/p>\n<p>I ask: what the meaning of \u2018fragmentary transmutations\u2019?<\/p>\n<p>Gaston Bachelard makes a distinction between \u2018formal imagination\u2019 and \u2018material imagination\u2019. Both are present in nature and in human consciousness. In nature, formal imagination manifests in a form of beauty in flowers for example. In our mind, formal imagination, according to Bachelard, likes \u2018novelty, picturesqueness, variety and unexpectedness\u2019 (Bachelard,\u00a0<em>The Poetics of Space<\/em>, p. xiii.). On the other hand, the material imagination \u2018aims at producing that which, in being, is both primitive and eternal. \u2026 the material imagination is attracted by the elements of permanency present in things\u2019 (ibid).<\/p>\n<p>The itinerant (traveler)\/migrant\u2019s position is between places as she\/he moves from place to place. S\/he is mobile and in direct contrast with elements of permanency.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder what nourishes the itinerant\u2019s imagination. Is it the formal imagination as one encounters new things in one\u2019s daily experience or is being between places and fragmented actually stimulates a thirst to be in touch with elements of permanence fundamental to the material imagination (hence Patti\u2019s interest in both the nomadic perception and the \u2018brick and mortar\u2019 perception)?<\/p>\n<p>How does being between places stimulate the imagination and memory?<\/p>\n<p>S\/he negotiates her\/his sense of \u2018self\u2019 through memory\/reminiscence between geographical place\/s: the geographical place \u2018where home is located\u2019 now, and other place\/s (significant place\/s) that she\/he remembers from his\/her past.<\/p>\n<p>How does this negotiation as an artist take place? Considering body memory, re-enactment \u2013 as Patti, while filming, found herself looking from the same point as her father did &#8211; and material imagination.<\/p>\n<p>In thinking about memory and the imagination the following may be helpful.<\/p>\n<p>Bachelard writes: \u2018Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams\u2019. (GB, The Poetics of Space, p. 6). Bachelard writes about \u2018a community of memory and image\u2019, a \u2018solidarity of memory and imagination\u2019. (There, pp. 5-6).<\/p>\n<p>Patti opens up two different perceptions of home and dwelling. First, is the anthropologist Michael Jackson research of nomadic Aboriginal Australian. According to this perception, home is the land, including markings such as a large stone, a tree or a well, that signify places with enhanced importance. Home has no connection to a building. Second, is a western perception of home, discussed profoundly by Martin Heidegger in his essay (as above). In this perception, home and dwelling are connected with building and thinking.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to suggest Bachelard\u2019s meditation of home (mostly in his book, The Poetics of Space, but in other writings too) as a \u2018bridge\u2019 between the two perceptions mentioned above, as it includes building, thinking and day-dreaming. It may also be interesting to read about the Australian aborigines and their relationship with dreaming.<\/p>\n<p>It is not the place to elaborate. However, I would like to briefly discuss a few points to do with language.<\/p>\n<p>Heidegger dedicates a large section in his essay to language and meaning, where he expose old connections in language between building, dwelling, neighbor, preserving, nurturing and soil. It led me to look at my own language \u2013 Hebrew \u2013 and find similar and other connections as follow.<\/p>\n<p>The words \u2018schuna\u2019 (neighborhood), \u2018shikun\u2019 (building), and \u2018shachen\u2019 (neighbor) \u05e9\u05db\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4, \u05e9\u05d9\u05db\u05d5\u05df, \u05e9\u05db\u05df share the same root as \u2018to dwell\u2019. These words have a connection with a word from the Jewish world: \u2018schina\u2019 \u05e9\u05db\u05d9\u05e0\u05d4 which is another word for God, or the Divine Presence and also share the same root as \u2018to dwell\u2019. It conveys the idea that God is here, amongst people and things, rather than a distant God in the blue palace of sky.<\/p>\n<p>The Hebrew words \u2018building\u2019, \u2018to build\u2019, \u2018builder\u2019 and \u2018built\u2019 are close to the words \u2018stone\u2019 and \u2018understanding\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u05d5&#8217;\u05d0\u05d1\u05df&#8217;. &#8216;\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4&#8217;, &#8216;\u05dc\u05d1\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea&#8217;, &#8216;\u05d1\u05e0\u05d9\u05d9\u05df&#8217;, &#8216;\u05d1\u05e0\u05d0\u05d9&#8217; &#8216;\u05d4\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The words \u2018son\u2019 and \u2018daughter\u2019 also close to the word \u2018to build\u2019 and \u2018home\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea&#8217; \u2013 &#8216;\u05d1\u05ea&#8217; &#8216;\u05d1\u05e0\u05d4&#8217; \u2013 &#8216;\u05d1\u05df&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>In examining home and dwelling, we find a material connection: building, constructing and stone; and a cultural connection: to understand.<\/p>\n<p>Heidegger opened a door to look at language which stimulated my imagination and thought. But it is Bachelard who suggests that dwelling is connected with building and daydreaming: \u2018the sheltered being gives perceptible limits to his shelter. He experiences the house in its reality and in its virtuality, by means of thought and dreams.\u2019 (GB, The Poetics of Space, p. 5).<\/p>\n<p>Patti proposes to revisit a specific building in a specific place which has a specific history, both personal and political, in order to excavate \u2018in film, fragments lost in the ether and being at \u2018home\u2019 in the world\u2019. On the one hand there is a sense of loss, as the idea of excavating \u2018fragments lost in the ether\u2019 suggests. On the other hand, there is a sense of hope in the possibility of \u2018being at \u2018home\u2019 in the world\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>I am curious about Patti\u2019s thoughts, as a film maker, regarding materiality.<\/p>\n<p>Is film-making a way to daydream?<\/p>\n<p>Is reading, writing and making a film a way of \u2018being at \u2018home\u2019 in the world\u2019?<\/p>\n<p>Patti asks \u2018where the residues of memory might remain?\u2019 and \u2018what might reside within the bricks and mortar of this house\u2026?\u2019 She wonders about the accuracy of hearing the past. In Bachelard\u2019s words, \u2018the geometry of echoes in an old, peculiarly experienced house\u2019. \u2018Bachelard writes of hearing <strong>by imagination<\/strong>\u2026\u2019 (John R. Stilgoe\u2019s introduction in Bachelard, T<em>he Poetics of Space<\/em>, p. ix). [My emphasis].<\/p>\n<p>Patti writes: \u2018As a very young child I lived in the house of the title, learning to crawl and walk\u2026 Reflecting back and without any recollections of living there\u2026\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder about the actions of crawling and learning to walk chosen by her. What about eating, playing and learning to talk? I also wonder about \u2018body memory\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>How are film, film making and body (the artist\u2019 body) relate? If the question is asked about a residue of memory within the \u2018bricks and mortar\u2019, would Bachelard\u2019s term, material imagination, be applicable? How is material being translated in the medium of film? How does material imagination sustain Patti\u2019s imagery?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bevis Fenner:\u00a0<\/strong>The seminar opened up some very interesting ideas about the relationship between making and dwelling. On the one hand, the idea that we have to build in order to dwell and on the other, the possibility that dwelling and sense of place has more to do with memory and social relations. For me, the two things are not mutually exclusive as our interactions with both objects and landscape seem to provide us with a kind of ontological authenticity \u2013 an embodied and experiential connectedness with the world via the path of narrative and memory. Human Geographer David Crouch argues that it is only through \u2018embodiment\u2019 that we can begin to enact the \u2018primal social practices of shared space, that [can] be imbued with mythologies and images of ownership\u2019 (Crouch, 1998: 168). In other words, in embodying spaces we generate our own mythologies through visual and experiential memories of place; and this, in turn, produces representational spaces as we revisit spaces and rejuvenate them with our own narratives.<\/p>\n<p>The interesting thing about Patti&#8217;s film piece is that it allows for an emergent connectedness by enabling the conjunction a kind of personal-universal consciousness with historical narrative; it creates a feeling of being there and draws a presence out of narratives of absence. Yet, it does this without embodiment, which suggests we might be connecting through the imagination and a kind of embodied vision \u2013 through Patti&#8217;s father&#8217;s eyes. But where is the &#8216;bricks and mortar&#8217; materiality in this mode of dwelling? There seems to me some attempt to keep the indexical materiality of the image in the use of Super 8 footage \u2013 connecting directly to the moment the footage was recorded \u2013 but does this alone account for the object\u2019s capacity to activate our mind-traveling? John Berger suggests that the camera substitutes the ontological function of memory, which is to preserve &#8216;an event from being covered and therefore hidden by the events that come after it&#8217; (Berger, 2013: 51). He also makes an interesting distinction between what he terms &#8216;public&#8217; and &#8216;private&#8217; photography. He argues that the public photograph has a generic quality, which objectifies people\u2019s lives, describing how a &#8216;public photograph&#8217; shouts &#8216;look&#8217;, at a moment which has been ripped from context and from its temporal connectedness with the lives of those involved. In contrast, he also seems to imply that the &#8216;private photograph&#8217; is a kind of material base for the preservation of the moment (of dwelling, of Being) \u2013 drawing a line of &#8216;continuity which is parallel to the continuity from which the photograph was originally taken (Berger, 2013: 52)&#8217;. In other words, he&#8217;s suggesting that the private photograph has a kind of meta life \u2013 inscribing or mapping a line from what Husserl terms &#8216;primal-impressional&#8217; consciousness to our mode of preservation or &#8216;protection&#8217;. This mode is material in the case of the photograph or of landscape, however Berger seems to imply that the materiality is simply an <em>aide d&#8217;<\/em><em>m\u00e9moire<\/em>. Yet, as Patti pointed out, her work is not merely autobiographical or nostalgic. If her work is personal, then this manifests as a personal connected to the historical \u2013 it is not her memories that are being preserved by the work but the interconnectedness of her <em>memory<\/em> with place, and as a means, not of preserving but of drawing out and protecting the essence of dwelling, which for Heidegger is <em>the basic character <\/em>of Being&#8217; (Heidegger, 1978b: 254). All this seems quite confusing. A paradox appears as: how can we have dwelling without materiality, memory without indexicality, being without Being? It would seem, however, that all these elements are present in Patti&#8217;s piece but not in a causal or linear kind of way. There seems to be a simultaneity in which being emerges as an inchoate substance; as a residue of synchronic traces, from both the material and from non-linear historical and dramatic human narrative. In other words, the work characterises an altogether more complex and subtle art of memory. Berger expands:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5\">There is never a single approach to something remembered. The remembered is not like a terminus at the end of a line. Numerous approaches or stimuli converge upon it and lead to it. Words, comparisons, signs need to create a context for a printed photograph in a comparable way; that is to say, they must mark and leave open diverse approaches. A radial system has to be constructed around the photograph so that it may be seen in terms which are simultaneously personal, political, economic, dramatic, everyday and historic (Berger, 2013: 55).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Xiao-yang Li:\u00a0<\/strong>I believe it was during a discussion over the &#8216;dwelling in human space&#8217; I mentioned &#8216;experiencing of one&#8217;s own silence&#8217;. This comes from something I&#8217;ve been reading &#8211; Agamben&#8217;s new book, in which he talked about the ancient Eleusinian rite that&#8217;s often associated with the idea of the &#8216;unspeakable&#8217;. According to thus one could gain &#8216;supreme philosophical wisdom&#8217; by fully experiencing the power of God and one is not allowed to put this mythical vision into words &#8211; that is the silence itself. I think it is a &#8216;silence&#8217; in a very metaphorical sense, it doesn&#8217;t mean &#8216;without sound&#8217;. It perhaps indicate that experiences come as higher than words, the instinctual(or the contemplation) comes higher than the didactic\u2026. and so this is the mystery itself\u2026<\/p>\n<p>In terms of the idea of &#8216;home&#8217; &#8211; in a cross-regional multi-lingual aspect\/generation &#8211; I personally believe it is the place where one finds one&#8217;s own mind at peace, where one finds ease and contentment in everything one does.<\/p>\n<p>I once met a Neapolitan who is so proud of Napoli and would remember every lofty old tree in the centre of every town square &#8211; in a way similar to how we&#8217;d remember an old friend affectionately. So the cutting down of one of these oldest trees would hurt him so much that he&#8217;d call it less of a home now\u2026The trees are not mere &#8216;trees&#8217; anymore for him, they must have served a metaphorical\/psychological function for defining a &#8216;home&#8217; for him, so is every other little element associated to the place, every persona every bit of history &#8211; Caravaggio might have rested under the tree and Giordano Bruno might have drunk the water from the square before his shadowy wandering\u2026a collective ideaology will be necessary, in part I believe this is why Athens thrived, because in comparison to our contemporary cities (even the smallest ones) Athens those day was small with a even smaller population &#8211; but these people shared a strong ideaology perhaps similar to what the Neapolitan had felt about his city &#8211; but on a much smaller concentrated scale and with a very active political life, upon all this greatest thinkers and statesmen emerged\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Phenomenology and Imagination Research Group held a\u00a0seminar on 19 January 2015, led by Patti Gaal-Holmes, with the title &#8216;Excavations in Film, Fragments Lost in the Ether and Being At \u2018Home\u2019 in the World&#8217;. This article provides notes drawn from the seminar and commentaries from the participants,\u00a0Noriko Suzuki-Bosco, Yvonne Jones, Yonat Nitzan-Green, Jane Bennett, Cheng-Chu &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/2015\/02\/02\/excavations-in-film-fragments-lost-in-the-ether-and-being-at-home-in-the-world\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Excavations in Film, Fragments Lost in the Ether and Being At \u2018Home\u2019 in the World&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2271,"featured_media":2871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pirg","category-spotlight"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/486\/2015\/02\/Liliesleaf-Farm-Mayibuye-production-shot-Patti-Gaal-Holmes-2013-a.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/wsapgr1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}