IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

16 Gamlyn Terrace, on the edge of the coal mining village of Hirwaun in the South Wales valleys is not a grand residence and perhaps an odd nomination for a Site of Socio-Cultural Heritage, but it is the place in which Marjan and Cornelia, my parents, chose to settle after coming to this country from the former Yugoslavia, responding to a call for migrant labour to work in British coal mines in the 1950s. Following their deaths, photographs, moving image and documentary interview material gathered over a number of years, has been projected into this place they came to call home, away from home. The fabric of the house has been made to bear witness to the lives lived there and is a blank canvas on which the projections flicker. 16mm film has been used to capture this interplay and unifies the material with a unique texture. The resulting piece, V Domu (50 mins, 2025), is documentary in form but experimental in nature. The film acts as a springboard from which to explore ideas not only of home, place and belonging but also of various histories – the Global, the Social and the Familial. As opposed to a more conventional account the resulting montage of discourses in the form of experiential and cinematic documentary investigates the lived reality of migration, cultural displacement and overlooked history in a provocative, wide ranging, and personal way.