This Land of Stones and Stories
Emily Orley, with drawings by Tracy Mackenna
Emily’s writing grew out of a week-long artist’s group residency with The Museum of Loss and Renewal in Collemacchia, Italy.
It is a response to listening to the people who belong to that place talk about their experiences of it, over time (e.g. Tracy Mackenna’s own childhood memories, Luciano Bucci, curator of the Winterline Museum in Venafro), but also listening to stories about bigger histories of the place (the ravages of extreme poverty and mass migration, the Second World War, the Battle of San Pietro), as well as to conversations between fellow residents about what was being read and made then and there.
The writing celebrates the blur between fact and fiction, history and memory. Inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of Critical Fabulation, and Doreen Massey’s definition of place (as unfixed, contested and multiple), this was written in honour of Collemacchia. A ‘situated fabulation’ perhaps.
Tracy’s drawings were made in response to Emily’s writing.
Edition of 30
Design: Edwin Janssen
Editing and Proofreading: Tracy Mackenna
Copyright: Emily Orley and Tracy Mackenna 2023
Publisher: The Museum of Loss and Renewal Publishing
The publication is free. Sold Out.
