The Swimmer and the Forest - Shona Illingworth

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The Swimmer and the Forest - Shona Illingworth This new work uses sound, film and text to explore the dynamic interplay between imagination,emotion and memory. It examines how the fragmentary experience of memory can challenge our capacity to form coherent narratives for the past be fragmentary. What happens to a person when they are unable to contrast a rational account for a persistent and deeply troubling memory? If their own personal narrative falls apart? The film shows a swimmer struggling through dark water, intercut with sweeping images of a dark brooding forest. We hear the voice of a former Soviet conscript recounting details of a terrifying exhaustion, which induces a dangerous state of hallucination, while on night patrol at the edge of a vast snow-covered pine forest. Fragmented memory details surface: the heat of the searchlight on his back, the cold casing of his machine gun, shadows moving through the trees. As he struggles to form a clear image of that terrible night, other memories intrude and the distinction between the real and the imagined becomes increasingly unstable. Film, sound and text are located in different areas of the library, echoing the fragmented nature of the character's memory. Together they create an emotionally charged journey that evokes the pain of a disturbing experience that refuses to resolve itself in memory.