Talk//Sgwrs: Machynys Forgets Itself - Tom Cardew

21 September 2022

Machynys Forgets Itself is a film and AI-generated image-based research project that explores class-oriented cultural representation and the collapse of linear history through collective myth-making and the digital.

The most recent displacement of the people of Machynys occurred in the 1970s when speculative capital sought profit from human and natural resources. Now, the site of a centuries old, self serving community has become a luxury golf course. This story of profit-driven community displacement is a common one that, like the Welsh-knot, acts as a cipher for endemic conflicts of interest between community identities on the one hand, and the forces of globalisation on the other. Together, these stories exist in the dispersed, cloud-like myth that is ‘Welsh-ness’: stories and people that have struggled and survived in spite of exploitation and interlocking crises since the very emergence of a ‘Welsh people’(Williams, G.A). By resisting the ongoing cultural amnesia suffered by Machynys and reflecting upon the layers of its history dating back to the 6th Century, this project opens up to similar challenges faced by communities the world over as a result of profit oriented greed.

This project has been funded by ACW’s Create award for Research and Development.

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