Places Of My Mother

A video filmed with a mobile phone – running time: 1min12

This artefact exists as a digital short video, as an audiovisual artefact.

The impulse for this video was the task:

‘Describe your mother to the person sitting to your right.’ 

The task was to create the video from one lab session to the next and then bring it back to the group. If there was a desire to do so, the video was then shown to the group and reflected on together using the four reflection questions ( VERWEIS). All artist researchers had the opportunity to use all questions or at least two reflection questions. In the reflection rounds, they reacted to each other’s reflections, further developed the concept of autosociobiographical exploration, discussed considerations of social class, explored and discussed differences and similarities. In some cases, new artefacts emerged from the discussion, further autosociobiographical explorations of the influence of mothers on their own biographies.

The artist researcher tried to work without a spoken voice over in the video, as the artist researcher for whom this video was intended is not a native German speaker. The video was filmed in the mother’s garden with ceramic figurines made by the mother herself. A fade to black at the beginning and end of the video frames the slow pan across the blooming garden. A voice can be heard off-screen humming a good night song. 

The artist researcher’s mother sang this goodnight song to him every evening for years. 

The questions we asked ourselves:

What audiovisual form do I choose to describe my mother?

To what extent does a description change when it is addressed to different people? 

Which autobiographical narrative is brought out by which people? 

Does my auto(socio)biographical narrative change between different people?

How does it feel for me to show the audiovisual artefact of the person for whom the video was made?

How does it feel to show the video to the whole group?

Would I show the video to my mother/the person who represents mother to me?