In Search of Lost Time

Lynn Dennison and Tom Miller

In Search of Lost Time looks at memory loss, with an aim to give patients with LG11-limbic encephalitis the voice to describe and capture the first-person experiences of amnesia using story-telling, moving image, audio and photography. Memory is such a critical cognitive process, helping people to signpost their lives and understand their place within social and family structures that it can be debilitating to lose these memories and become dislocated from those narrative strands. As memory loss can sometimes be misunderstood by clinicians, friends, and family, the project hopes to facilitate a greater understanding of memory loss and its societal impact through this research and artwork.

Dr Tom Miller is a Wellcome-funded clinician scientist whose clinical work centres on autoimmune encephalitis especially where it interacts with problems of memory and thinking. His research aims to understand how damage to brain structure called the hippocampus results in memory problems. He does this using behavioural experiments, functional and structural MR imaging, and, more recently, using virtual reality and magnetoencephalography.

Lynn Dennison works across several disciplines, including video, installation and collage, to explore our relationship with our surroundings and how we see and experience our environment. Her single and multiple screen videos are often based in the documentary of place, exploring themes of memory, history, nostalgia, and the boundaries between the real and imagined. Lynn Dennison studied B.A. Fine Art at the Slade and M.A. Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Her work has been commissioned and supported by grants and awards, and exhibited nationally and internationally.