The Heart of Thy Neighbour reflects on the present reality for many people that live along the Northern Irish border through the story of the artist’s own family. Part fact and part fiction, the film combines a family tradition of communicating history through storytelling and conversation with a documentary archive called “The Heart of Thy Neighbour” from the 1960’s. Programs such as these were broadcast on national television in the South of Ireland as a way for people to learn about the North. At this time in the 60’s, the Catholic Church had a strong presence in everyday media within a society where the expression of Catholicism and nationality went hand in hand. The level of cross border violence began to increase, and the British army began to destroy roads that linked the North to the South cutting people off from their villages, their land and their family. Through recontextualising both public and private archives and their relationship to one another, The Heart of Thy Neighbour attempts to confront this lesser-known history by prompting us to re-evaluate our perception of the present and our knowledge of the past.

biografia

Michelle Ní Ruanaidh is an Irish multimedia artist. She graduated from the Haute École d’Art et de Design in 2015 and currently works in Geneva, Switzerland. Her work raises questions about the narration of the past, particularly through the medium of film and how we view ourselves in relation to it. The artist’s draws from her own cultural backgrounds; northern and southern Ireland, and re-contextualizes visual, aural and written archival materials to create new interpretations of the past that resonate beyond her country.

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