I recently had the opportunity to attend a talk by artist/academic Heather Marie O'Brien. Heather is based on the American University of Beirut, and is visiting the Cycladic water-all-around formation of rocks, that I call home, as part of the Erasmus academic exchange programme.
She took us through a tour of her work, and also showed us one of her short films/documentaries on ex-cultists. Her background on photography/still images gave her films a unique almost David Lynch like visual shade, (she did later comment on Lynch being a great influence on her work). What really shook me was her comment on "motherhood being violent towards a woman’s body". Footage of a pile of piglets nursing, overlapped a cultist girl's narration on how her place in the cult was essentially that of a breeder and up-bringer.
The girls voice was drowned in the greedy suckling sounds coming from the piglets. That was no image of tender motherhood, but the consumption of the mother sow. Not far from the truth in general human terms as well, if you take a cold look at the big picture. You can find Heather's site here.
Now for the bad points. As one can imagine, living on what most other people consider a holiday destination, comes with a bit of a trade off as far as communication with the outside world goes. Living here is human... You get sea and sun 5 months a year and being stuck behind the wheel of a car, waiting for a traffic light, is nothing but a distant memory. Come to think of it I don't think I've seen a traffic light here...But to have an academic from beyond the divide that the sea has naturally placed on this land is quite an event... It is a shame when such opportunities present themselves and they are not properly communicated.
Another thing that bothered me is the typical insistence of Greek Universities with the technicality behind everything. There you had a person putting loads of interesting concepts and ideas through and all you care about is what equipment, what software, how did you blend this frame or how did you get this light...Especially when such questions come from students, it is quite disheartening. You are twenty years old...Who cares about what camera you can and can't afford...It is the concept that matters and not the tools. Find something interesting and draw it on a napkin, someone will bother to understand and that is all that matters.
All images photographed during Heather Marie O’Brien’s talk.