Ghost Listeners:
Liza Zapol

Is there someone (family, friend, mentor, stranger, ghost) whose experience you want to preserve? How does one record, interpret, and convey the memories of others, that which is deeply subjective and unknowable?

In this participatory workshop organized by oral historian and screenwriter Liza Zapol, we discuss what constitutes the conditions to express past experience in as much fullness as possible. An exploration of listening, the event experiments with questions; methods of evoking sensory, embodied memories; and brainstorming collaboration with narrators to form a memory object (transcript, audio, artwork). 

Since 2011, Liza Zapol has collected testimonies and memories of individuals who have shaped Skowhegan to create a consistent collection of oral histories. Often working with visual artists, she formulated her questions visually and sensorially. When you close your eyes and think of Skowhegan, what senses are alive? In this workshop, these oral histories are a starting point to activate, develop, practice, and record memories beyond the verbal. 

The workshop is free and open to anyone who is interested in oral history, specifically to build new narratives around the work of artists and community archives. 

If you want to listen to some of our oral histories you can find them in The Library.