To remember... / 记得: the martin thomas memorial artwork

To Remember / 记得 (2025) 25 mins, super 8, 16mm and 35mm: digitised.

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Experimental documentary celebrating the life and work of Dr. Martin Thomas (1974-2022), researcher in Chinese-English multimodal translation. Shot entirely on celluloid, the film was shaped by Martin’s interests in psychogeography and street photography, and evolved through collaboration and conversations with his friends and colleagues at the University of Leeds.

The soundtrack centres people's experiences of Martin, via field recordings made during group 'derives' or drifts through places and spaces that held shared meanings and memories. Animated sequences were created through darkroom experimentation with Martin's physical archive of East Asian toothpaste packaging and his handwritten Chinese vocabulary books, contact printed onto 16mm film.

Mirroring the non-linear, fragmentary experience of grieving, the film attempts to embody the emotional textures of memory. Sound and image often drift apart, with presence felt through absence. Animals encountered while walking in Martin’s footsteps guide us on our journey, as we explore the porous boundaries between the past and the present; between this life and what comes after.

Martin is evoked in glimpses: in reminiscences of friends; sentimental objects; his notebooks read aloud; the tactile imprints of his handwriting. The film is a poetic (and often humorous) act of remembrance: multisensory, collaborative, and deeply alive.

Commissioned by the the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds.

PERMANENT EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ‘TO REMEMBER / 记得’.

To remember / 记得’: a solo exhibition of photographs by Joanna Byrne tracing Martin’s walks through Leeds, on permanent display in the Martin Thomas Translation Labs, Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds.