About this episode

Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Helen Victoria Murray discuss the intersection of tactility, history, and literature through the lens of the work 'Said the Dead'.

In this event, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Helen Victoria Murray use Said the Dead as the basis for their discussion about how tactility and the symbolism of the hand can bring us closer to history, both as historians and creative practitioners. Their conversation touches on themes of archive work and literature as forms of mediumship; bodies, gender and memory in Doireann’s work; and on hands as agents of care, discipline and control in Said the Dead and the work of the Victorian Hand Project. The recording begins with audio from a short film shot with Doireann in Cork by Peter Madden. SAID THE DEAD In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Following them, she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices, those of the women who knew this place best: insistent, vivid and true. They murmur from archives and old records; they whisper from stairwells and walls. Among them – and in one figure in…

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