Everyone has a mother. But what does it mean to live without a mother?
For more project details see project blog www.deadmother.com
Using film, sound, photography, text, and installation, the project will attempt to give a shape and presence to the nature of the absence and the efforts and effects involved in accommodating the loss.
‘15 years ago, it was widely assumed that the vast majority of brain development takes place in the first few years of life. Back then we didn’t have the ability to look inside the living human brain and track development across the lifespan’
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, 2012
Now we do. Current research in neurology and psychology are discovering how crucial the period of brain development is between the ages of 11 – 24 years. A young adults brain is particularly ‘plastic’ and susceptible to environmental factors, providing significant potential for learning and adaptation, but also vulnerability with respect to mental health.
Engaging with Neuro-scientist Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Neuro-psychologist Professor Martin Conway, Psychoanalyst Dr Michael Parsons, ethics advice from Professor Roger Higgs, and discussions with writer and researcher Dr Caterina Albano, Artist Anne Brodie and her sister G.P Dr Catriona Brodie, have looked at the nature of the long-term effects of a mother’s death in adolescence. A series of film and photographic based outcomes have been created based upon interviews with women at different stages in their lives who have a shared experience of their own mothers death when they were aged 14 and 17 respectively.
