ARTISTS TALKING

# 153 [21 May 2008]

Just checked out two video responses to my sheep-shearing video on Youtube.

Both guys had uploaded videos of themselves shearing sheep -one was  in Australia and another in Ohio.

 

These videos  had a freshness and immediacy about them and there is a whole sub-culture on the web around sheepshearers ( OK forget the jokes...)

 No, I am not in the habit of filming sheep-shearers - it so happened that I was on the Isle of Skye and passed some farmers shearing their sheep and I happened to have my video camera with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

# 152 [16 May 2008]

 

It is good to know that the story that nobody would talk about,  40 years of missing Welsh history, has finally been recognized  and embedded in the history of medicine - thanks to my internet based multi-media community project.

 

Dr Carole Reeves, Outreach Historian with The Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London has been invited to talk at a very prestigious conference this autum in London on "The Children of Craig-y-nos".

She says: " I have been asked to give another paper on the
Children of Craig-y-nos - at the British Society for the History of
Paediatrics and Child Health annual conference (12-13 September 2008) at the
Courtauld Institute, London. "

The book  which I am co-authoring with Dr Reeeves, will be the first ever collective account of childrens experiences in a TB sanatorium.

 

 

 

# 151 [13 May 2008]

While I have been deeply immersed in  "The Children of Craig-y-nos" project some of  my  47 videos on Youtube.com/annshaw have developed lives of their own , around which people with shared interests cluster.

 

These range from huskies to raptors.

 

 It is as if the video has acted as a flashpoint, or catalyst, allowing people to congregate online and exchange their views.

 

 I am not too surprised that the blonde woman wrestler in our local Highland Games who flashes her knickers from time to time as she throws men to the ground has attracted thousands of "hits".

 

But others  continue to surprise me.  A clip of myself driving  huskies in Alaska , during a stopover to Japan, has been surprisingly popular.

# 150 [13 May 2008]

Web site sorted out.  Lets draw a veil over the technical problems...sufficient to say the fault was not in one machine talking to another but in human error: mine.

Fortunately Andy , former colleague from Art School who now does web design sorted it out for me.

# 149 [7 May 2008]

Lets get the bad news out of the way first... my web page:www.annshaw.net has disappeared and I spent a very frustrating morning trying to contact my domain server who refuses to answer emails. (they withdrew telephone support some time ago).

 

But this evening I learn that the problem maybe with Apple so have sent off a flurry of emails to them. They promise to answer within 24 hours.  We will see.

 

Discovered that my internet channel ( Youtube.com/annshaw) is also up in Chinese and Polish.

Dont know why or how this has come about. 

YouTube - annshaw的頻道 - [ Translate this page ]http://tw.youtube.com/annshaw. 訂閱數(6). kasprzak · bansheekid · bansheekid1 · nusy12 · ArtandDesignOnline · 查看全部訂閱. 公告(77). 寄件者, 公告 ...
tw.youtube.com/annshaw - 84k - Cached - Similar pagesYouTube - Kanał UŻYTKOWNIKA annshawhttp://pl.youtube.com/annshaw. Subskrypcje (6). kasprzak · bansheekid · bansheekid1 · nusy12 · Zobacz wszystkie subskrypcje. Biuletyny (44). Od, Biuletyn ...
pl.youtube.com/annshaw - 86k

 

# 148 [4 May 2008]

One of the "spin- offs" from the "Children of Craig-y-nos" project - and there are many, the most obvious one being linking people together who had shared the sanatorium experience as children and now they are senior citizens and meet up once again - is that it has encouraged other ex-patients from another hospital to do the same investigation into their past.

A whole community is emerging around the Marguerite Hepton hospital with blogs  in England ( Southampton) and Australia. All are intent on piecing together their missing history.

 

 

# 147 [1 May 2008]

 For those still in doubt over what constitutes art click on the following link.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7370842.s...

a group of artists are living in a museum with lice in their head. 

 

Seven German artists are living with lice in their hair in an Israeli museum for three weeks in the name of art.

The Berliners aim to stretch boundaries of what is art, saying they are toying with ideas about hosts and guests in line with a theme set by the museum.

"The idea is that we live in the museum as their guests, and at the same time we are hosting lice on our heads," said artist Vincent Grunwald, 23.

The artists are wearing shower caps to prevent the lice from spreading.

Milana Gitzin-Adiram, chief curator of the Museum of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, said: "Art is no longer just a painting on the wall.

"Art is life, life is art." 

# 146 [29 April 2008]

When I began this project into the collective memories of a community dealing with a taboo disease I little dreamt that it would include having men breaking down and crying on the phone as they re-lived memories of 50 years ago.

 

Listening to a tape recording of one such interview yesterday -I couldn't help wondering how much more suppressed grief there is around this subject not only  in the country but other countries too where they imposed this strict militaristic regime on children often in prison like conditions.

 

One interesting development is that another group has sprung up in the Southampton area which is beginning to explore  its own medical history and they have started a blog too. 

This photo of Winnie Gardiner ( if I manage to upload it on my Apple without having to resort to my partner's PC again!) is of a child who spent five years in this remote TB sanatorium and was treated for a disease she never had.

She came home aged nearly six years on calipers, a cripple from so many years in bed. Many years later it was discovered she had celiac disease, an allergy to gluten. 

 

 

 

# 145 [25 April 2008]

I don't believe it!.....I have just had an email from a girl I met in Iceland some 40 years ago.

 

She was a student , part of an expedition, and I was working in the British Embassy ( better not to ask what I was doing).

She is interested in medical history and she is thinking of doing an MA, She had picked up some leaflets and brochures from The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and read an article on my project. 

 

It is uncanny the way things are slotting together.  Yesterday I edited an interview with an ex-patient now living in California who still has her original diaries from Craig-y-nos and another, still living in Wales, who has the same doll that was with her throughout her three years in hospital.

# 144 [17 April 2008]

Who writes history?

I ask this question after reading Jan Morris book:”The Matter of Wales”.

  I do not recognise this country she portrays  which is described as a “magnificent celebration of Wales and all things Welsh”, a country drenched in druids, mystic folk tales, grand houses and endless battles with the world I am writing about in “The Children of Craig-y-nos”.

 

 

On closer reading it is a book sourced on secondary or tertiary material - she has read extensively on   Welsh literature cultures, history,likewise  she has travelled widely throughout in Wales.

 

But has she spoken to the people?

There are a few paragraph eulogising the Welsh sheepdog. Fair enough.

She has watched some farmers are work. 

 

 

But there is no mention of the poverty stricken disease riddled world of  the  Welsh valleys in South Wales during the industrial revolution and even up to  the 20th century, a world where  women who had TB were forced to have abortions  part of a unspoken programme of unspoken eugenics  (“ we were told not to have children...if we did we were forced to have an abortion.,..they said it was for our own good”) and how this shaped the lives of men and women who were little more than serfs owned by rich English mine owners.

 Not even one sentence. 

 

No, this is the comfortable history of Wales. 

 

This is  the official side of Wales: cultured in a  quaint, charming, folksy kind of way produced from secondary and tertiary source material.

It has nothing to do with raw world of primary source material- ( oral history)  the  voices' of people from 50 60 even 90 years ago that’s  the basis of ”The Children of Craig-y-nos”.

 I am disappointed for Jan Morris is a travel writer I much admire.