A Mystery Emerges: Taking Flight Again

By Ruth Skilbeck

Astute readers of this blog will notice that there has been a recent change in name again, and in the ‘tag line’ or, as I prefer to see it, the tone row to borrow a musical phrase.

Briefly we went back to The Skilbeck Scrolls, and now have moved on again into The Daily Fugue. These names contain clues, to a hidden story though I was not fully aware of their double significance when I coined them. 

This is part of a process with a deeper meaning that is becoming increasingly apparent as I continue to write this record and performative account of a research journey that operates in parallel worlds and many levels. When it comes to history and family identity the past is always within us literally as well as figuratively, even if we are not consciously aware of that. So the research I have been doing, and continue to do in my work, as a university lecturer and researcher in communications, media and cultural studies, is the vehicle that drives along the surface of my life, publishing articles in journals and giving conference papers, but what has happened more recently since my research journey as an academic began, as some readers may have noticed is that another level or narrative, a secret story, has begun to enter into the dialogue, in this blog it did begin right at the start although I was not aware of it then. In the second short blog post I wrote, that was about my mother and flight and the crash-landing that ended with a happy ending. That was a metaphor whose meaning is only beginning to become fully apparent to yours truly, the author, now, with the new knowledge I am finding out about the hidden story.

For whilst I have been writing this blog, as an experiment in writing online as it began, I have made numerous discoveries, about my mother’s secret family history and her/my ‘true’ identity; and these are performativity hinted at and referred to in the evolving texts I am writing in various modes of blog and creative arts cultural research. This was not at the start an intentional narrative ploy on my part, it has happened accidentally, by chance, and by serendipitous connections made in my research online, and in my writing.

I will say no more in this blog post (as the story of what I have found out about my mother’s birth family is too big to tell here all at once). Suffice to say in this blog entry that the shift back to the name the Skilbeck Scrolls (after my fatherline) a few days ago has given way again to the Daily Fugue and that is a prompt to yours truly I have just realized, from the other side of consciousness, to the hidden story in this narrative. The name The Daily Fugue, itself, has hidden meanings that are only now beginning to become apparent and will be revealed soon.

Meanwhile it is enough to say that this is not an identity crisis but a breakthrough in process and the fluidity is necessary, to not define or pin my self down quite yet. Taking flight into writing.  More on this soon.

© Copyright 2012 Ruth Skilbeck

Mothers and History- MIRCI conference Toronto 10-12 May 2012

 I will be presenting my research into  Australian women's art and writing, motherhood and communication studies  at the groundbreaking international conference Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood hosted by MIRCI (Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement), York University, Toronto, May 10-12th 2012. 

My research rethinks Australian cultural and family histories during the 20th century, and the generations in which countless thousands of mothers were excluded from official records and 'banished' from family memory.

My presentation outline is in the abstract:

Remembering Australia’s Forgotten Mothers

 This paper discusses research into hidden histories in Australia and processes of finding and reclaiming mothers and grandmothers lost from the public record in the 20th century decades of ‘the stolen generations’, when children were taken for adoption under a White Australia colonial policy of assimilation. Fanon showed how in colonial societies colonizers are as damaged as the colonized. This paper discusses personal and cultural effects of social deceptions, ‘white lies’ and identity–loss on descendants of mothers and grandmothers erased from family history, and the shift from observer to participant experienced by the author. When researching a grant on Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary women artists in international context I found a secret lost grandmother in my family history. Part of my research is in interviewing and dialogue with artists working with themes of the mother, and grandmother, in their art including Mary Kelly, and Aboriginal artist Fiona Foley’s work on hidden histories. The paper will show how these experiences led to ongoing art writing projects to rewrite forgotten mothers back into family and cultural history. This research was assisted by an Australia Council Visual Arts New Work grant.

Dr Ruth Skilbeck is a writer and lecturer at the Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales. Her current research is in women’s art and writing, motherhood feminism, media and cultural studies. Her work is published in the media, scholarly journals and book chapters.

Ruth Skilbeck's conference  trip is generously sponsored by the Journalism and Media Research Centre, at the University of New South wales.




© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 2012

Mothers and History- MIRCI conference Toronto 10-12 May 2012

 I will be presenting my research into  Australian women's art and writing, motherhood and communication studies  at the groundbreaking international conference Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood hosted by MIRCI (Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement), York University, Toronto, May 10-12th 2012. 

My research rethinks Australian cultural and family histories during the 20th century, and the generations in which countless thousands of mothers were excluded from official records and 'banished' from family memory.

My presentation outline is in the abstract:

Remembering Australia’s Forgotten Mothers

 This paper discusses research into hidden histories in Australia and processes of finding and reclaiming mothers and grandmothers lost from the public record in the 20th century decades of ‘the stolen generations’, when children were taken for adoption under a White Australia colonial policy of assimilation. Fanon showed how in colonial societies colonizers are as damaged as the colonized. This paper discusses personal and cultural effects of social deceptions, ‘white lies’ and identity–loss on descendants of mothers and grandmothers erased from family history, and the shift from observer to participant experienced by the author. When researching a grant on Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary women artists in international context I found a secret lost grandmother in my family history. Part of my research is in interviewing and dialogue with artists working with themes of the mother, and grandmother, in their art including Mary Kelly, and Aboriginal artist Fiona Foley’s work on hidden histories. The paper will show how these experiences led to ongoing art writing projects to rewrite forgotten mothers back into family and cultural history. This research was assisted by an Australia Council Visual Arts New Work grant.

Dr Ruth Skilbeck is a writer and lecturer at the Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales. Her current research is in women’s art and writing, motherhood feminism, media and cultural studies. Her work is published in the media, scholarly journals and book chapters.

Ruth Skilbeck's conference  trip is generously sponsored by the Journalism and Media Research Centre, at the University of New South wales.




© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 2012