Speculative Re-Memory
The Speculative Re-Memory is an audio-visual focused experimental archive project that delves into the transformative practice of utilising personal memories of a local area and relational and non-relational personhood as an organic conduit for reimagined care-centred futures.
The project is part of a cultural and community engagement programme run by Grow Studios at Alice Billing House, inspired by its history, contemporary context and future potential. It involved creative labs, workshops, walks, reading groups and somatic movement sessions and more and was based in and around Alice Billing House; and outside in the community and streets of Newham.
Devised and led by artist, writer and facilitator, Sandra Falase, local artists were commissioned to co-design and collaborate to explore the themes of the project to create audio and visual offerings for sharing. The project was launched at a celebration event Grow on Tuesday 28 January and all audio is available to download from this website.
Contact us at alicebillinghouse@growstudios.co.uk for more information about the archive material.
Other artists of the project include:
The project was part of an engagement programme at Alice Billing House led by Jordanna Greaves and Marguerite Metz and documented by photographer in residence Monika Szolle.
The project was supported by the Creative Land Trust and Heritage Lottery Fund
About the Speculative Re-Memory, by Sandra Falase
The project is rooted in feminist and non-elitist epistemological frameworks that form the ideologies the project stems from, intending to unearth the rhizomatic connective tissues between past and present to contemplate what a restorative future could look like.
Re-Memory draws inspiration from community-focused forms of storytelling practices, such as somatic sharing circles and conversations whilst breaking bread with one another. this exploratory archive is an offering of incubated experimentations and creative cogitations over the course of a four-month period in 2024 created in response to Alice Billing House. Artists and creative collaborators were invited to offer contributions that add to the rich tapestry of oral histories collected for the project.
The title of the project, which includes the adoption of the word ‘re-memory’ is inspired by the work of writer Toni Morrison, the term shows up in her book ‘Beloved’. As a storytelling device, it is used as a tool to confront and interrogate the reliability of memory and the consequences of repression as a result of not reckoning with the past, concluding that the power of recollection is a muscle that must be exercised to not forget where you come from.
In the words of Alice Walker looking closely at the present we are constructing should look like the future we are dreaming of. How can we begin to affect the present and build more loving worlds if we don’t acknowledge the past?
Where there are gaps in memory and recollection or a lack of intentionality when it comes to the preservation of marginalised histories, Sadiya Hartman’s concept of ‘Critical Fabulation’ which is the combining of historical and archival research with critical theory and fictional narrative to fill in the blanks left in the historical record is used as an allegory for connection throughout the project. Through a process of transmutation and reflecting on the many ways this project has evolved to take shape, it serves as a love letter at its core for the under-loved and underserved stories, by immortalising them and providing an avenue for them to live on, and like seeds dispersed we can propagate its growth through the means of connection, contemplation and conversation.
About Sandra Falase
Sange (Sandra) Falase is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and writer based in London with substantial experience in designing both digital and physical spaces, research, writing and programming, particularly within live arts venues, film, TV and galleries. They have a keen interest in the intersection of spatial design with digital artistic processes demonstrating this by frequently incorporating experimental video, illustration, and graphic design into their work.