Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper will explore an interdisciplinary project entitled When Silence Falls: Investigating Literary and Bodily Memory at the Waterford Laundry (Waterford Memories Project and Irish Research Council, October 2016). When Silence Falls was a public event, consisting of talks, live art performances, screenings, installations, and oral histories, which commemorated (and took place in) the former site of St Mary’s Good Shepherd Laundry and St. Dominic’s Industrial School in Waterford city. The paper will consider how the oral history narratives from the survivors of these spaces was used to inform live art performance work created for the When Silence Falls event. Discussion will focus on how both the original telling of the narratives by the survivors, as well as the performances based on these narratives, resulted in dual acts of resistance in the When Silence Falls event. This paper will explore how the survivors’ own words have informed practice-based research and performance, and how these processes formed acts of resistance act activism, reclaiming the contested and traumatic space of the Waterford Magdalene Laundry and amplifying survivor voices in a cumulative public feminism event.