The story starts with this hypothesis: 'What kind of conversations might have been happened if Na Hyeseok (1896-1948), a landscape painter who lived through the colonial period in Korea, and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), the first British feminist, had visited this area?'. I characterise Hyeseok as a traveller, who was compelled to migrate in order to capture the landscape. She would have observed, painted, learned and loved while she travelled. The story is based on virtual and live encounter between Na Hyeseok and Mary Wollstonecraft.

I conducted my academic research with Dr Anna Birch. Dr Birch is a Theatre Director, and lives in Stoke Newington. She produced a site-specific multimedia theatre event in 2005 in Newington Green; this was titled 'Wollstonecraft Live'. Hyeseok and Mary emerged from different backgrounds, in consecutive centuries, speaking and writing different languages within divergent cultures. However, I believe they share an artistic gaze upon, and orientation towards, the world; this is in spite of the difficult circumstances of their lives.

I was searching for the nature of 'locality' via this fictional meeting. The conjunction of interior and exterior, private space and public space are also called into question. The forces of 'development' and 'redevelopment' are seen to threaten the cohesiveness and history of communities. Within the framework of my research, a tea party was thrown for women from Stoke Newington of various backgrounds; a facilitated discussion of the experience of women from minorities and/or migrant populations in the neighbourhood was carried out.

This work is a snapshot of a ghost story, and a travelogue, but also an account of living as a woman in the hidden places in my neighbourhood. I started to travel with my bed to experience to represent transhistorical characters and sleepwalkers.


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