This video paper, made with Siobhan McKeown, is intended to provoke
discussion about the instabilities of autobiographical narratives, the
purpose of publishing autobiographical performance texts as 'scripts', the
relationships between intertextualities and embodiment, and the
authenticities of cultural memories. In it, Roberta Mock performs the words
of Dee Heddon's autobiographical devised performance text, Tree: A Studio
Performance (2003) which was made as part of the One Square Foot project. As
Roberta is not a very convincing actor, she is trying not to 'act'. However,
in 'being' herself within the confines of Dee's words, assumptions are made
about the relationship between her body and the personal and cultural
memories she recounts. The 'fact' that Roberta is not, and cannot be, Dee is
reinforced by the interventions of the film-maker, Siobhan McKeown. Her
knowledges and assumptions are based on more traditional methods of familial
transmission. Through alternative visual and word-based languages, Siobhan
attempts to reassert herself as a custodian of memory that is always already
compromised.