Lily’s Image: a child’s process of ‘making sense’ of universal themes such as family, home and their perpetual change

Symposium:

• ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2009:  

• Interactive storytelling and memory building

• Lily’s Image: a child’s process of ‘making sense’ of universal themes such as family, home and their perpetual change

• Susanne Stich

Venue(s):

• Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland

• Abstract

  Story-telling is always connected to questions of meaning-making, identity-, and memory-building. Venturing from this premise, the paper focuses on the representation of a child’s perspective on these issues, discussing the short film Lily’s Image (2008), which I wrote, directed and produced. It represents part of a ‘PhD with Practice’, discussing the ‘Visibilities of Childhood in Moving Image Emphasising Children’s Agency and Child-Adult Connectedness’.
  The discussion is set within a context which challenges the theorizing of childhood as only a time of becoming, i.e. important in terms of ‘what is yet to be’ (Jenks 1992: 15), juxtaposed against adulthood as a time of being that is ‘assumed to be complete and static’ (ibid.). Therefore, it concurs with Wyness that ‘we cannot assume childhood; we can only bring it into being’ (2006: 26), as much as with Lury’s straightforward definition of the child’s agency: [Children] want and they act, and they should therefore be understood as agents as well as subjects. (2005: 308).

Category:

• Paper