Embodied Workshop – Women’s Art Library
In dialogue with
Esmeralda Valencia Lindström’s A Wet Archive
Special Collections and Archives, Goldsmiths, University of London
Still from Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Irish Catholic Maternal
This workshop took place as part of a research exchange organised by Special Collections and Archives, responding to A Wet Archive, an exhibition by Esmeralda Valencia Lindström. Together, we explored what resists preservation, what is overlooked, and what breathes in the archive.
Workshop Description
Participants were invited into an embodied exploration of Filmic Bodies of Breath—an in-process filmic practice engaging with Irish Catholic maternal memory. Moving with stills and fragments from Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Irish Catholic Maternal, the workshop opened a sensorial space for listening, breath, and collective attention.
Beginning with a gentle prompt:
I invite you to move around your space, trace the floor with your feet...
How does the air move around you? Inhale. Exhale.
Find a place to settle. When you're ready, I invite you to listen with your body.
The session unfolded as an embodied conversation between Marie Theresa Crick’s research and Lindström’s installation, exploring resonance between water, breath, memory, and archival material.
Still from film practice - Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Irish Catholic Maternal
Remember to breathe.
This informal, durational exchange highlighted the porous boundaries between filmic and archival bodies, inviting participants to consider the 'wetness' of both breath and archive. The workshop drew on themes of fluidity, erasure, and visibility, echoing Lindström’s tracing of water damage across the building and Marie Theresa’s practice of engaging state, familial, and affective histories through breath-led film.
Context
The filmic stills shared here are traces from a larger practice.
Come breathe with us. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is preserved. Everything is in relation.