The fallibility of memory has long been the subject of academic writing and theorists’ musings. The notion of knowing something in an absolute sense, many suggest, is like trying to quantify the notion of love.
Erin MacIndoe Sproule started her project in earnest documenting the life of her 90-year-old grandmother, Marnie Sproule. What she learned through telling the story of the matriarch of the family is that memory is elusive and presents itself in fragments reflected in moments of apparent clarity.
Marnie Sproule was born in Waterhole, a rural farming community outside of Edmonton that no longer exists. As Erin MacIndoe Sproule began collating her grandmother’s reminiscences for her audio documentary, she noticed inconsistencies – moments in time that didn’t add up, as though her grandmother existed in more than one plane. As the documentarian attempted to paint a cohesive portrait of the subject, the image became fractured like the lines of a cubist painting. Pieces of the same person, impossible to stitch together.
Erin MacIndoe Sproule joined Tony King on the Wednesday, June 7, 2023, edition of Thoroughfare to talk about creating her audio documentary Remembering Marnie, and why perhaps it doesn’t matter if memories are real or a sweet bit of science fiction.
