I think my just being a human give my artistic research special value. I think everybody has things to say, a unique perspective. Some people are better at communicating these things. Everybody feels the world in a very real way, not everybody is able to communicate that so it translates, but everybody has that. I think it's completely impossible for me to extricate the fact that I'm a woman from my work or anything or my thoughts. That's what I am. I couldn't tell you what difference it would make if I wasn't a woman. I know that my experiences were different to my male relatives and contemporaries and that was bound to influence me, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly what. Certainly in Ireland, if you're a working-class woman and you sound like you're a working-class woman people don't listen to you as much, particularly me who was a teenage mother at 17, people didn't think that I had anything interesting to say, so a lot of the time I just wouldn't say anything, I would just watch and observe and absorb. I always had thoughts, I was always thinking but people thought I didn't have anything to contribute and it was only when I was older and had more confidence that I started to share. I was always having the conversation in my head, I just wasn't included in it. You can see that in our old home videos. After my father died, my mother dug out some of the old home movies that we had. I was – aside from my mother who used the video camera a lot, I was probably next in line. We had it when I was about 9 or 10, I was totally fascinated by it. I recorded a decent amount of stuff on that – interviews with family members. Silly things. Again, it was always observing – I would walk around with the camera and surprise people and they would close the door in my face. There is just something about the camera as a mechanical eye that felt like a friend somehow. But, when my mother found the home videos, I don't think any of the ones I made were kept, I think they were all probably taped over. I would have used tape and it would have been taped over. And there was one tape in particular that was probably
15 full minutes of my brother who was 14 at the time playing his guitar, which he'd only just learned how to play, he wasn't very good, and my mother is saying “Wow, Niall! You're brilliant!” and being encouraging. On one or two occasions during that 15 minute span, you can tell I'm behind the camera because I try to speak and say something and my mother tells me to shut up. And in another video, myself and my sister try to tell my mother something while she's filming and we're told to shut up. And Tara actually tries to intervene on my behalf and says “But mammy, look at what Aislinn did”