Linda Sandino gained an MA in Design History at the Royal College of Art/V&A, and is currently embarked on a PhD at the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London on identity in life history narratives of applied artists. Her current post is as Senior Research Fellow at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, developing an oral history archive, Voices in the Visual Arts (VIVA). Her work also includes a substantial number of recordings for the Life Story Collection at The British Library National Sound Archive with architects, craftspeople, designers, and painters. She is editor of the Special Issue of the Journal of Design History ‘Oral Histories and Design’ (2006). Other publications have focused on the history and theory of contemporary applied arts.  She is on the board of the Design History Society.

Words and Things: Talking About Process in the Life History Recording

Life history audio recordings in the arts attempt to encompass facets of what it means to be an arts practitioner: life, work and some gaps in between.  The interviews record an encounter in which interviewees are given space to think through their identity as artists and how they imagine this has been constructed in their life so far.  Rather than being taken as final, however, these recordings represent a moment in time and show individual’s thinking-in-process since the interviews are not pre-scripted.  Drawing on primary interview material with a ceramic artist and a graphic designer, this paper will show how process is narrated in the applied arts, which are often conventionally seen as process-led.  The paper will explore how identity is embedded in ‘process talk’ whatever the question that leads up to it, and why it is that our culture continues to be interested in and care about what artists say about what they do and the continuing fascination with mythic individualism.