by Kate Antosik Parsons

Frances Mezzetti, Between and Beyond, Out of Site, Clontarf Promenade, November 2008.

A description of the performance from Open Spaces brochure published by Dublin City Council reads:

Frances Mezzetti – Between and Beyond. 2.30-3.30pm
Nestled in the trees along the beginning of the walkway the artist will create a portrait based on her interactions with the local nursing home.[1]

I was there that cold, rainy day on the 8th November 2008, where I witnessed several performances from Out of Site, the public outdoor exhibition of performance art curated by Michelle Browne. Out of Site included works by Amanda Coogan, Pauline Cummins, Gareth Kennedy, Alastair MacLennan and Dominic Thorpe, and others sited at different locations along the Clontarf Promenade and the walkway end of Bull Island. Intending to spend the day with the performances, I went first to the Bull Island performances before heading down the promenade, thus inadvertently missing some of the performances sited in the opposite direction. I was surprised when I later learned that one those performances, Frances Mezzetti’s Between and Beyond, was concerned with Rose Parsons (1930-2010), my partner’s elderly great-aunt who at that time was resident in the Clontarf Private Nursing Home.

When I recently met with Mezzetti to discuss her art practice she gave me a bundle of materials relating to Between and Beyond. Included were preliminary sketches of Rose in her 30s and as an ageing woman in her twilight years, a family tree that aimed at understanding Rose’s place within a large family, and detailed notes relating the different journeys Rose made around Ireland and abroad. As part of the research process Mezzetti also recorded an oral history with Rose. From the material traces I learned that Rose had a sense of adventure, and as a member of the Legion of Mary in the 1960s, she travelled to Venezuela where she lived for three years. Mezzetti told me that the local people Rose met were puzzled that she did not have a child. When she explained she was unmarried, they told her that was not important in their culture and that even the local priest had children. I tried to imagine Rose’s shock upon hearing this.

Mezzetti unfolded a large white translucent piece of fabric hemmed at both ends for me to view. I was reminded of a voile curtain panel, the kind often used to let light into a sitting room while still maintaining privacy. It bore a larger than life bust portrait drawn with a felt-tipped black marker of young Rose wearing a cross necklace, indicating the special place that spirituality held in her life. Grasping it in both hands, I held it high, gazing into the eyes of someone unknown to me but so incredibly familiar.

Mezzetti explained this fabric was suspended top and bottom by wire strung between two trees. She described the difficulty of constructing this hanging portrait, and the necessity of pressing the fabric up against a hard surface to provide the resistance enabling her to draw on it. I ran my hands over its surface, visualising the challenges this fabric posed for mark marking and imagined how Mezzetti’s hands touched where I touched. Evading my grasp, its silky texture slipped from between my fingers. Perhaps this material alluded to the elusiveness of memories, so real and yet distant. Mezzetti pointed to Rose’s hair where a faint trace of a word was still visible. In the course of the performance, she inscribed parts of Rose’s biography onto the fabric, and in turn, these composed the cohesive image.

At home I performed gestures of my own as I held Mezzetti’s two sketches of Rose in my hands. I swivelled my head between them, old/young, old/young, repeating the action several times looking at each feature: eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin. I did so in the hopes that these encounters with the documentation might enable me to identify shared resemblances between Mezzetti’s portraits of Rose and my children, one of whom nearly shares her birthday and exact name. Though I wasn’t in attendance at the live performance, I attempt to construct an understanding of it based on Mezzetti’s descriptions and the material traces of the performance I encountered, coupled with my recollection of the cold air on the seafront that day. Remarkably, Rose, at 79 years of age, was present that day to observe the performance. What was she thinking as she stood there on that windswept promenade watching an image of her youthful face unfold in front of her? Did it harken back to that exciting time when her travels took her overseas to faraway places? Did people watching the performance recognise the past and present faces of Rose?

When I showed some family members Mezzetti’s sketches and explain that Rose was present at the performance, they were fascinated. One recalled Rose returning from Venezuela and speaking only Spanish. Another remarked that Rose was a reserved person and marveled at the artist’s skill in establishing a trust with Rose. Recalling Mezzetti’s previous work as a nurse and midwife, I consider how her deep listening techniques and quiet confidence enable her to make meaningful connections with people. Examining the documentation and contemplating the performance eleven years after it took place, Between and Beyond raises several points of interest. I think of knowing about someone but not knowing them. I consider ideas about the meaning of individual memories in the context of wider familial histories and how performance art facilitates engagement with these histories. Though Rose’s life history does not belong to me or Mezzetti, the history attached to this specific performance finds new life in the present through our mutual engagement with it. When entrusting me with the performance documentation, Mezzetti extended her performance, enabling it to move between and beyond different layers of histories and their absences. In turn, this remembering and retelling of the performance suggested ways in which it is possible to enact new relationships to past performances.

[1]http://www.dublincity.ie/sites/default/files/content/RecreationandCulture/ArtsOffice/Programmes/Documents/OpenSpaces_Programme.pdf

by Emma Brennan

This year saw the thirteenth edition of the prolific FIX festival. Established by Catalyst Arts in 1994, for twenty-five years, FIX has consistently delivered an innovative programme of local and international live, sonic and performance artists to the city of Belfast. It is internationally renowned as one of Europe’s longest running live art festivals. Book-ended between Culture Night and October’s late Night Art, this year saw more than 20 artists participate over the two weeks in multiple venues across the city. Much like it’s parent, Catalyst Arts, FIX boasts an undeniable reputation for showing iconic, thought provoking work and is a vital outlet for contemporary art practices in Northern Ireland.

The legacy of this festival is tightly sewn into the cultural fabric of the city of Belfast, and hence was one of the biggest draws for me to pursue a Directorship at Catalyst Arts. Needless to say, the opportunity to then project manage such a beast was both an exciting and intimidating prospect. The very definition of being a festival posed an endless index of possibilities for what FIX19 could become and an equally long list of anxieties for me as an emerging curator.

In our initial conversation about performing at this year’s FIX19, BBeyond member and no stranger to the festival itself, Brian Patterson, offered me a formula for approaching live art events which helped ease this anxiety. An equation of sorts that I frequently meditated on in the overwhelming moments of the festival, helping to keep my head above water.

The gospel according to Brian:

First there is the individual: The you, I, singular, artist, curator, maker…etc

Then there is the group: The collaboration or collective, an organisation…etc

Finally there is the broader: The abstract, a concept or a movement, the social, political, or ideological…etc

These three elements arose throughout the festival in all the individuals involved, organisations like Catalyst and BBeyond, featured themes of Transnationalism and works that varied in content and concept. The performances at this years FIX19 were equally sensitive to their individual avenues of thought and challenged everything from horticulture to institutional abuse. From French artist’s Ouazzani & Carrier exploration of Belfast through the foraging, producing and hosting of their tea infusions to Dominic Thorpe’s harrowing durational performance, during which he self-suffocated with the application of layers upon layers of petroleum jelly, FIX19 proved Patterson’s theorem throughout.

Brian’s live art hack also reminded me throughout the festival that the overall outcome was not solely my responsibility or achievement. FIX was bigger than me or Catalyst and any other singular element. In actuality, the undeniable success of FIX came from all of these factors working together towards a common goal.

Artists, levelling from emerging to established, travelled from all over the world to not only perform at FIX but also to help one another install work, support each other, act as viewers and bestow their great knowledge as facilitators. The beautiful and rewarding moments of the whole experience came from watching these strangers join together to share spaces, conversations, food, pints, laughter, infusions and much more.

My very own introduction to performance art, Dominic Thorpe, not only did me the great honour of accepting an invitation to perform at FIX19 but also spent the evening before his own performance standing in the lashings of rain to support Bbeyond’s work; carrying things, encouraging others and at one point even holding an umbrella above me so I could document their work. The kind acts of this gentle man are just one example of the considerate and generous work that was happening outside of the contracted work that define FIX19 for me.

‘’Consider stillness as empty time, into which a performance can be poured’’ – Anthony Howell

The beginnings of the festival felt a lot like this, a stillness. An eerie calm before the chaos reigned. A run of blank days over a two week period into which an array of things had to be poured. In the months leading up to and during  FIX19 an abundance of hard work, consideration, patience and what can only be identified as love were committedly donated by each participating artist, fellow project manager Anne Mager, myself, the Catalyst Board, volunteers, viewers and everyone in between.

To sum it up in its entirety would be a futile attempt and not one I will make for your sake and for mine. Not alone because of the sheer volume of the festival but also because of the very essence of performance art and the liveness of it. However I can say that standing now, on the other side of it, I feel I have received a great gift in my experience with it all. For this I have to give my sincerest gratitude to the entire FIX family, for your kind generosity and unwavering compassion throughout the festival. Upon reflection I am met with beautiful, emotional memories that will help define my time at Catalyst Arts and I hope you have all been equally rewarded in your experience with us.

FIX19 took place between September 20th and October 3rd 2019.

Participating artists were (in order of appearance): Brennagh Meehan, Lee Hamill, Aoife O’Connor, Evamaria Schaller, BBeyond, Ouazzani & Carrier, Dominic Thorpe, Bettina Wenzel, Amanda Coogan, Rory Mullen.

Member’s Screening Artists: Andrea Piras Pinna, Áine Phillips, C J Woods, Eleni Kolliopoulou, John D’Arcy, Kate McElroy, Katharine May, Marianne Dupain, Nenad Bogdanovic, Nollaig Molloy, Rachel Macmanus, Sally O’Dowd, Sarah Lundy, Tadhg Ó Cuirrín, Uri Kloss, Valerie Driscoll, Vasiliki Stasinaki.

Curators: Emma Brennan, Anne Mager

Catalyst Board at the time: Emma Brennan, Leah Corbett, Edy Fung, Peter Glasgow, Anne Mager, Liam McCartan, Thomas Wells.

Photographer: Jordan Hutchings

For information on the festival: www.catalystarts.org.uk/projects#/fix19

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Fergus Byrne

“Somatic Distortion” took place on Oct 4^th and 5^th at the Leitrim sculpture centre. The event was curated by Sandra Corrigan Breathnach and featured live performance, videos and photography of past performance art.

Sarah Riseborough’s drawing/sculptural performance took place in the front space of the gallery and was visible from the street. A  roll of white paper hung from the wall and extended toward the floor where it was taped down. With considerable slack hanging free Riseborough was able to manipulate the paper as she drew upon it. Using pastels she inscribed the sheet both front and back in tandem with her movement with the paper.

As this proceeded she elevated certain sections by attaching them with fishing line to the window frame. An evolving architecture commenced in which she operated, sometimes concealed and at others revealed by the paper. Certain moments saw her marking the back of the paper  by  leaning into it: her arm and later her face became surfaces for this frottage. This reduction of the space between the page and herself raised a haptic space; a meeting of skin and paper surfaces. The density of marks contrasted with  previous lines inscribed by broad sweeps and extensions of her body. Extended movements  would return in the form of a knife with which she cut the paper to open apertures in the form. One viewer commented on the circling cut of the stanley blade that emerged like a shark’s fin above the surface.

The audience could come and go over the course of perhaps three hours. At one point  I returned  to see a Gestalt leap in the layers and planes of the form. No longer was  there a surface of front and back but a three dimensional sculpture occupied the floor. This shift into three dimensions reminded me of André Lepecki’s writing  on Trisha Brown’s It’s a draw/Live Feed. ¹

At this point I must tangent briefly to outline Lepecki’s writing. It’s a Draw/ Live Feed was  a series of drawings on charcoal by dancer Trisha Brown which were performed on the floor.  Lepecki writes of the distinctive territories of horizontal and vertical space in the context of Benjamin’s horizontal as the site of ‘graphic marking, of writing’ as opposed to the vertical as the plane ‘of painting, of representation’.  Lepecki’s basic argument is that Brown’s relation to the horizontal subverts this dichotomy and particularly the horizontal as a site of ‘signing, or with writing’².  Through the abstract mark making of her dance, (not all of which leaves its trace on the page) Brown confounds Benjamin’s  horizontal plane of logos.  However ultimately  the work is hung on the wall to allow a second  drawing to be made. It is also hung on the wall when displayed in museums³. This culmination does in some ways unravel  Lepecki’s arguement as the artist’s motivation diverges from his theory.  It is in the three dimensional form of Riseborough’s drawing in Leitrim  that I see a sequel to  Lepecki’s discussion in material form.

Riseborough’s activity was process based and more functional than  dance movement: ‘My body made an environment where it felt it could leave a trace of itself. That’s the understanding I have, that there was a preparation or making of a space’.⁴

She is extending the drawing surface into three dimensions through the act of folding and cutting which proceeded from initial mark making. Volume thus superseded surface.   The final  spiraling shape gave a sense of lines of motion  in space. The light weight of the paper retained the ephemeral quality of movement in space.  Riseborough’s kinesphere in which she had operated was made manifest.  By taking the material into three dimensions the drawing escaped the limitations of both the horizontal and the vertical be they practical or philosophical as proposed by Lepecki.  As mentioned above Brown’s dance was not entirely driven by mark making. Movements of the arms and upper body  often left no mark on the ground surface so much of the dance’s trace was elusive.  Riseborough on the other hand  left an object as clear evidence of movement in space without in fact having danced its creation.

 

Notes

1          Lepecki ‘Toppling Dance: the making of space in Trisha Brown and La Ribot’. Exhausting Dance, performance and the politics of movement, 2006. p68. https://www.academia.edu/34715156/_Andre_Lepecki_Exhausting_Dance_Performance_and_BookSee.org_

2          Ibid. p 70.

3          I saw one of these works in Madrid some years ago where it was displayed upon  a wall. The performance of which Lepecki writes was relayed by live feed to a remote audience via a vertical screen when performed at  the Whitney museum.

4          Correspondence with artist.

 

by Kate Antosik-Parsons

A giant black mountain of cardboard and tape jutted from the floor of the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. Its angular edges and height like the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway. Two silver figures with flat pointed heads, their legs covered with painted ‘evil’ eyes brandished spears and stood guard at the mountain’s base. A bulbous, black cyclops rose from atop the mountain, swaying from side to side. A line of figures moved through the gallery out onto the street while a speaker pumped loud music that echoed off the surrounding buildings. Viewers poured onto the street to observe the performance.

In the middle of Chancery Lane, a tall figure with a crescent moon on its head, its body wrapped in black tape, fluorescent yellow and reflective strips, like those from high visibility vests, held two checkered flags aloft. Two rally car creatures took their position at the starting line and the tall figure blew a horn loudly. Racing off down the street, the creatures turned, crossed paths and returned to the start line at speed. They slowed at the top of the street and rejoined the group of rally cars circling excitedly. Their merriment and the buzz they created as they undulated side to side mirrored rhythms of the lively electronic music. Referencing the ancient Fomorians, a monstrous, mythological sea-faring race said to have inhabited remote parts of the island, these rally cars conveyed a sense of light-hearted play. Later when their movements slowed mimicking the change in the tempo of the music, their demeanor became rather morose. Further up the street, pedestrians stopped and stared, and patrons emerged from a nearby restaurant to observe the rumpus. Their collective curiosity an evident mixture of confusion and wonderment.

The striking figure of Morrigan, the phantom queen, dressed in an elaborate costume of black bin bags and silver duct tape seemingly materialised from inside the gallery. Her bird-like headdress indicated a connection to Badb, the crow who foretells victory or defeat in battle. The upper and lower part of her face split in half, with black and white paint, signified dark and light; death and life. Her presence was a force to be reckoned with. She moved her enormous wings, pinning a viewer against the gallery window. Moving ever so slowly, drawing closer until they were cheek to cheek, communication appeared to pass between them, though it was unclear what, if anything, was verbalised. Morrigan moved from one person to the next, her body leaving a series of small traces of black paint from where she has pressed herself against them. Those not prepared for such intense bodily engagement actively sought to remove themselves from her path.

Though Chancery Lane was blocked off to car traffic, a car managed to drive around the corner making its way to the end of the performance space before coming to a halt. Moving to the centre of the road, Morrigan maintained her regal bearing and drew herself to full height to stare them down. The driver was perplexed but didn’t move. The performance became an impromptu game of chicken, which echoed the sometimes bravado antics of street racing. We watched with interest; our anticipation palpable. Morrigan outstretched her wings in all their glory, black plastic feathers rippling in a sudden blast of the wind that swirled down the street. With this action, the driver reversed in the opposite direction, though not before snapping a quick picture on their phone.

I remained still when Morrigan approached me. When we stood toe to toe with our faces were mere inches apart, I was surprised to see a salty, tear running its way down her face. The vulnerability and intimacy of it made me feel uncertain. Meeting her eyes, I found myself blinking several times to briefly interrupt our connection because the intensity was overwhelming but I found myself unable to turn away. I gave a slight smile, hoping the empathy I felt translated to my eyes. As she moved slowly past me, our connection dissolved back into the rhythms of the performance. Live performance can produce these intense moments of interconnection and the uncertainty that accompanies one’s response to them serves to produce meaningful encounters. SIRENS part III coupled these bodily encounters with a DIY aesthetic carried throughout the performance- found in the construction of the mountain, the elaborate costumes and even the wheeled speaker that propped open the gallery door. In doing so, the performance aimed to open up a space for exploring the current conditions of young people in rural Donegal by drawing connections between the fringe culture of rally car racing and Celtic mythology as a way of thinking through past and present Ireland.

SIRENS part III was presented at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery 22 to 31 August 2019, with a live performance on 22 August.

Dr Kate Antosik-Parsons is an art historian who writes about Irish time-based art, gender and sexuality. She is a researcher at NCAD for the project ‘Performance art in Ireland in the 1990s’ as part of L’Internationale’s ‘Our Many Europes’. www.kateap.com

In conversation with Oran Leong concerning POST-DANCE Dublin.

Coming off the heels of Post-Dance, a performance and lecture researched and commissioned by Sara Muthi at the Project Arts Centre on August 15^th – curator Sara Muthi sits down with dance artist Oran Leong to reflect on the cross-section of contemporary dance and performance art in Dublin following his Post-Dance performance commission.

Oran Leong Post-Dance at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. Aug 2019. Photography by Kristian Mantalvanos.

SM: What is your take on contemporary dance in terms of the wider visual arts context? Where are those lines drawn for you?

OL: Contemporary dance is really broad. It’s everything from stage production, to outdoor performances, to performances in a gallery – but such creations are not obviously called performance art by their dance-makers. I think with anything that is contemporary the lines are always blurred – but there are still going to be specific parameters which you create and demonstrate for a cohesive work. If there wasn’t, there would be a mish-mash of anything and everything goes. That’s where I appreciate people’s frustration at contemporary art. People like to know what they see as it helps in their understanding. But where can one begin to understand when perhaps his or her first conscious engagement with art is the accumulation of many styles and philosophies?

SM: Do you think there’s enough of cross-pollination happening between dance artists and visual artists?

OL: I think even from Post-Dance being in Dublin that’s an example of it happening in a very strong sense, there’s always a merging, always a blend. Even in contemporary dance there are collaborations happening all the time with visual artists or what happened between Aoife Kavanagh (composer) and myself. There can always be more cross-pollination. If there wasn’t we wouldn’t still be growing and developing, and finding new things to make interesting, innovative art.

SM: Do you think there’s a purpose of cross-pollinating contemporary dance and visual art? It is also true that not everything needs to overlap. As far as I know there’s no one talking about the cross-pollination between ceramics and performance art, for example. Is there a more productive element in considering dance and visual arts?

OL: People can have the same idea about something but a painter would absolutely approach it from a different place to what I would as a mover. We’re still answering the same question – or attempting to discover the root to a question or concept and produce two very different things.

SM: So you’re saying cross-pollinating media gives us new tools to explore concepts?

OL: Yes, but really, it’s also nice to be able to communicate with someone that isn’t always talking about dance! If I’m saying something dancy to a visual artist and they’re seeing it fresh for the first time – that interaction can stimulate a different pathway in the brain and enable it to create something that’s new.

SM: So that’s where the value is injected for you – in different vocabularies of production.

OL: Exactly. There’s also a monetary purpose.  I’ve found funding bodies often encourage and look for collaboration in working productively with people from other disciplines.

SM: To bring this into Post-Dance. You as a dancer, since you’ve been more aware of this new terminology, what tools does that give you in developing your practice?

OL: I thought you were going to ask that and in a regular interview I’d be very prepared with bullet points. However, in the essence of Post-Dance I’m just going to speak off the cuff. I think Post-Dance is accepting the now of whatever that is – without the influence or stereotype or bias of other dance styles or other voices coming in and inhibiting what you bring to the floor. When I was asked to make work previously – I thought: what is the aesthetic of the choreographer who is asking this of me? And how do I comply to that aesthetic? You, being a curator – I felt there was less of an expectation. Also, Post-Dance was quite freeing to be able to accept whatever it was and say that this is true once I feel it’s authentic and real. So initially I was thinking Post-Dance… Post-Modernism? And I was trying to turn away from post-modern ideas in my mind’s eye and being cautious not to be too post-modern-ish. Almost immediately I back-peddled on that because this is something else. Post-modernism is infusing with what I am doing right now to not be post-modern, but if it happens that it comes off as such those are my own gremlins that I have to deal with – not what Post-Dance is: because Post-Dance is a vessel that you can fill. And there might be a combination of things that are very performance art, very post-modern, very balletic, whatever – throw in a bag of chips if you want. That became quite liberating and enabled me to move without inhibition. That has actually been a problem of mine as an artist. To then say, this is a canvas, and whatever you draw on this is going to be right. There is no right or wrong. Even as a creative task, it allowed me to find things I don’t think I could have found any other way had I been doing it in a dance setting. Since that time that we created the Post-Dance commission I’m looking at movement differently.

SM: Really?

OL: Absolutely. I’m challenging my own doubts of “why can’t I do this? Cause in Post-Dance I’d be allowed to do this”. It’s helped me to grow as a dance artist but also as a mover – someone who does things with time and space.

SM: That’s very satisfying for a curator to hear. Lastly, now that you’ve been integrated into concepts of Post-Dance and performance art, do you think you’ll have those frames of reference continue?

OL: I think so – I definitely draw on all my previous experiences.

SM: Do you think contemporary dancers would benefit to being introduced to performance art practices?

OL: I think it depends on the stage of the dancer – they need to have a thirst for it. There’s no point in putting something on them that they don’t want. They might not have exhausted everything within dance for them to move into performance art. They might become confused in their own artistic voice of what is it that they want to say. If a dancer is curious about an expression outside of dance, I think performance art is a good place to start. It’s not so far removed from the physicality of what it is dancers already do. Any experience can be utilised or rejected. In my case it’s something that I’ve definitely benefited from as an artist and human being.

—

Post-dance is the second performance event researched and developed by Sara Muthi. As opposed to publishing text as the result of her research Sara prefers to forefront the questions, shortcomings and potential surrounding live-art practices in the Ireland through performance and open dialogue. By way of commissioning live-art in collaboration with visual artists, dancers and musicians in conjunction with institutions and venues across Dublin, Sara aims to re-examine the often preconceived ontology surrounding performance practice. With one eye on the developments of performance practices internationally, particularly in Europe, it is through vigorous research, collaboration and an element of education that Sara develops her research based events.

POST-DANCE was researched and curated by Sara Muthi, performed by Oran Leong, composition by Aoife Kavanagh followed by a lecture by Amanda Øiestad Nilsen at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin on August 15^th. Photography and videography by Kristian Mantalvanos.

 

by Fergus Byrne

Johnston presents a formally rigorous show with  video works and text, the narratives of which  are in dialogue with each other.

The central piece, ‘That Apart’, is installed in a timber frame corridor. Johnston’s collaborator Richard Ashrowan filmed her performing to camera in the  gallery space.  Both have edited the same footage to produce this two screen work.

A text written by Johnston on the gallery wall gives  a perspective  from which to view and hear the show.  As I read it  I was hearing the percussive sound track of Ashrowan’s edit, the sounds of which assume greater violence in relation to the accounts of bombings and paramilitary activites.  These interspersed with related sensory perceptions convey the embodied experience of violence.

In the film Johnston engages physically with objects – a brick, a stack of bowls, army boots. Her improvisation exceeds their prescribed use.   Drumsticks are clutched in the hand and rattled on the concrete floor. She wears a pair of Northern Ireland issue  British Army boots. The image of her standing still, her black clothes matching the boots, is heavily grounded in the floor where the thick soled boots… stamp and fall back against the wall, stamp, fall back against the wall. Back bounce off wall. Boots on hands catch her as outstretched  arms fall against the wall. This is the fast editing of  Ashrowan’s video, intercut  with cracking drumsticks, and ceramic bowls circling and scraping upon each other. The martial energy of the objects is conveyed in Ashrowan’s edit while  Johnston’s conveys more the pace of her actions and extended periods of waiting out characteristic of her performance.

A smaller blacked out space contains TV footage of a march by the Peace People in London in 1976 and documentation of a performance by  Johnston in Belfast from 2000.  This latter video is overdubbed with an interview with Mairead Maguire, founder of the Peace People, conducted by Johnston in 2003. Maguire describes her aversion to  ‘putting up monuments’ that are ‘locking people into the tragedy of what we’ve all suffered’. This viewpoint is  countered by the show’s return to the past in the form of objects and text that recall violence.  This oscillation is reflective of the persistent tension in Northern Ireland  despite a publicly lauded Peace Process. The wall text and an open discussion on the opening night both drew attention to smouldering aggressions in Northern Ireland.

Johnston’s collaboration with Ashrowan presents a fruitful dialogue whereby the film mediates performance actions usually made to a live audience. The process has produced a very strong film that does not reduce the intensity of Johnston’s actions. Ashrowan’s 16mm film of  Johnston in haptic dialogue with a tree resonates with a section of Maguire’s interview in which she cites the appreciation of natural beauty as  a counterpoint to living with trauma.   There are constant moments where the works inform each other sometimes through the smallest details.  This dialogue creates a tension wherby moments of balance and of light yield to rupture.   The proximity of these opposing states is well described when Johnston writes of the void left by an explosion – ‘Perhaps it is perverse to say it but I see here in its chaotic heart a piercing beauty, as if the air has become chrystal, its momentous darkness haemorrhaging with light’.

 

Sandra Johnston’s exhibition Wait it Out runs from 29 August until 19 October at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin.

by EL Putnam

In a darkened room, gestural drawn interpretations of knitting patterns and wool intermingle with images of archetypal Aran jumpers and a nude male torso through overlaying slide projections. Sitting on a small bench that can only accommodate two people, I listen to a deeply intimate narration by the artist Pauline Cummins, as she shifts from innuendo to explicit sexual reference. Bodies are presented as incomplete forms, fleshed out in the viewer’s imagination, where a performance is manifest with the guidance of Cummins’ narration. This is Inis t’Oirr: Aran Dance, a multimedia work originally created in 1985 and was recently exhibited as part of the GAZE exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Through this work, Cummins draws parallels from the knitting of Aran jumpers in the West of Ireland to the sexualised, nude male body, where the manipulation of yarn and the resulting patterns in the jumpers are influenced by the knitter’s desire; a knitter who is presented as a mother, as she creates for herself, her children, and her husband. These jumpers, historically created on the Aran Islands just to the west of the Irish coast, have come to symbolise traditional Irish culture through the burgeoning tourist market throughout the island, evoking qualities of rural quaintness. Cummins subverts this seemingly innocuous garment through her drawing together of the male body and landscape through knitting pattern. She “radicalises rather than rejects” this traditional craft and allusions to traditional Irish domestic femininity (Nash 1996, 161) using an interplay of lens-based imagery and the body through gesture. As such, there is a strong tactile quality to the work, as indicated through the textures of the jumper patterns, the hairy nude torso overlaid with images, as well as the gestural qualities of the drawn lines. Cummins’ language also emphasises the sense of touch. At one point she lists verbs that evoke haptic sexual acts: spreading, glistening, slipping, sliding, pushing out, deseminating, tipping the navel. Other descriptions evoke kinesthetic empathy, drawing attention to my embodied state:

The hidden male body, buried, suppressed.
Touch the hip, into the waist. Squeeze, Rub up.
The back. The spine bending, extending, joining the shoulder, broad, wide, thick.
Arms, hairy, sinuous, strength.
Thighs, joining, apart. And the butterfly motif (Cummins quoted in Nash 1996, 164)

Through this process, Cummins transforms the domestic craft of knitting, traditionally performed by Irish women–wives and mothers–into a sublimation of sexual desire. Catherine Nash emphasises the political and cultural context of this work, which was “was made and exhibited in the mid-1980s in Southern Ireland when women’ s reproductive rights were being debated and women were attempting to negotiate personal identity with traditional Catholic and nationalist ideas of Irish femininity” (1996, 153). In contrast to Catholic ideology that emphasises how sexual acts must be reproductive rather than erotic, Cummins undermines traditional presumptions of the Irish maternal as “represent[ing] Irish women as sexually active and desiring both now and in the past” (Nash 1996, 166).

When first witnessing this piece at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, I noted how the audio played through two sets of headphones. While the use of headphones is a common installation practice for works that include audio in order to reduce sound cross-over, their use in this context added to the intimacy of the piece. Sitting alone on the bench, I listen to Cummins describe the “hidden male body” of Aran jumpers, unleashing the suppression of desire through the repetitious act of looping yarn over needles over and over again, creating thick, woolly garments that embrace the wearer. As her language becomes increasingly sexual, I become aware of my physical presence in the room, observant of other gallery attendees who enter the space, but do not listen to the provided headphones and so are unaware of Cummin’s narration, thereby increasing the intimate exchange that the work encompasses. I was grateful that for the most part that I witnessed this work in solitude and without the awkward acknowledgment of simultaneous private, intimate moments that the work affords, cultivating a complex eroticism that continues to be poignant, even decades after the work was first created in the 1980s.

Inis t’Oirr: Aran Dance was included in Gaze, curated by Johanne Mullan, at the IMMA Freud Centre as part of the Freud Project from 04 Oct 2018–19 May 2019. This text is an excerpt from Dr. EL Putnam’s lecture response, “Haptic Gaze: Inviting Touch”, which took place at IMMA on 1 May 2019.

Works Cited

Nash, Catherine. 1996. “Reclaiming Vision: Looking at Landscape and the Body.” Gender, Place & Culture 3 (2): 149–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/09663699650021864.

by Sara Muthi

Coming off the back of a performance at K-Fest Music and the arts Festival I sat down with performance artist Conor Coady just before he opened the group show GROUP as part of PLATFORM 2019 with his piece Epoch commissioned by the Draíocht Gallery.

SM: So the work you’re performing here at the Draíocht Gallery to kick off GROUP is the latest rendition of Epoch. I must say that I, and perhaps many others would instantly recognise this work from various IG posts over the past year. Would you like to share a little about this work beyond the surface imagery?

CC: I was very keen at looking at extensions of the body and making an internal non-physical thing come out into a physical form; and in that highlighting parts of the body. I suppose I wanted to depict an act of a kind of ongoing struggle.

SM: And you’re doing this through your use of the briars which of course have become quite iconic in your work.

CC: Exactly; I’m using that very specific material and the connection of my hands and going from there so it’s that kind of ongoing dialogue with myself and the material; emulating feelings through the briars and making energy come out through that.

I’m manipulating the material in a way so it becomes the body and the body becomes the material. In my mind there is this exchange between the two and that was the basis of my intention and thinking around the materiality of the briars.

SM: And where does this connection between you and your material come from?

CC: I was looking at rural landscapes for its physical aesthetic and the idea of the brambles came quite naturally while walking through a space such as field or a landscape. The natural dynamic of brambles and what they do and the difficulty present in them appealed to me and my research in a very real way. They felt like an appropriate kind of material to engage with from a mental health perspective, a queer perspective. Then there’s also a cultural recontextualization from my own basis that would be on the deeper planes of what that dialogue is.

SM: Working with materials found in natural landscapes is quite prevalent within Irish artists, particularly working in performance art. I can think of a few names already, but for you, what is it about the natural environment that makes it so irreplaceable? Or perhaps irresistible?

CC: To put it simply I think I’m drawn to it because it is exactly what it is.

SM: Does that relate to the fact you’re scantily clad in your performances?

CC: For me, yes definitely. I was very intentional in highlighting this very bare element. Showing the bareness of the body was also quite minimal in aesthetic which I was leaning very heaving on while developing this work. At the same time however it was also scary. I was often asking myself “am I so bare that it’s too bare?”, but in actual fact that was a breeding ground to push more and to bring out more.

I think with the natural it’s like somethings that’s been coming out of my work more strongly in the last year maybe two. I’m very much focused on the natural, what is natural, what’s not natural, what we deem to be one or the other. The body, nature, environment. And speaking of environment, it does goes out in that direction in an environmental sense to an extent. Of course I am aware that I am bringing in this raw natural material. I’m presenting and working with the natural, but it is because it is what it is, as I said before.

I think looking at it from a queer perspective when you go through so many layers of growing up and you finally arrive at a point of independence and begin to contextualise for yourself and being to process all these things you’ve gone through i.e. so many layers of conditioning and social systems and conformities and distractions. So, for me just looking at nature for what it is – is kinda in itself something I want to emulate from that perspective. There is no fluff with it, there is no walls to be pushing down or people’s minds to convince. Nature is what it is and connecting that to the body, that being part of the body and me as a performer would be where the natural perspective is coming from.

—-

Conor Coady’s briars are both fashioned from five or six thick, dried and hardened stems that were bound together with woven pink wool to form handles from which they reach into the space. They remain fastened to the gallery wall from which they were picked up and returned during Epoch. They form a sort of natural arch reaching into the white cute. Stains from his hands and belly remain on the gallery wall as a symbol of the body, of the gesture, of the artists presence elevating the work beyond what might otherwise be seen as a sculptural object.

 

Epoch was performed at the Draíocht Gallery on 20th of June 2019 as part of GROUP curated by Sharon Murphy. GROUP presents Conor Coady, Victoria J Dean, Sarah Farrell, Cara Farnan, Anna Hryniewicz, Riin Kaljurand, Oran Leong, and Éanna Mac Cana. The exhibition runs until the 31st of August 2019.

by Heather Kapplow

Saturday

Exiting South Station, I feel already surrounded by every day performance: the busy-ness of travel and transit, which always feels quite put on to me. The visible invisibility performed by our homeless folk, an elegant tightrope walk between tourists. It is fine tourist weather…

CENTER FOR RESTORING THE MEANING OF FAKE WORDS

A sign reading “Fake Words” is visible through the greenery as I approach The Rose Kennedy Greenway from South Station. The starkness of its black-and-white-ness stands out from a distance, and then, when I grow closer, seems related to the more permanent public art in the same area, Aakash Nihalani’s Balancing Act. The visual contrast between the two works is that of handmade versus machine wrought, but the notion of balancing is good preparation for Milan Kohout’s project. He’s chosen his site well.

When I arrive he is trying to convince a young lady with long navy blue fingernails to be his first meaning-restorer of the day. She’s game to talk to him, but is hesitant to pick a word. It turns out she just doesn’t want to be in any pictures. She’s curious and beautiful and there are maybe too many men gathering around her.

Milan gives her a New York Times to look through. She says her problem is that “what’s fake is a feeling not a word.”  Then she says maybe it’s “happiness.” It’s what everybody says they are but she doesn’t believe they’re happy every day. “I’m so happy at my job at Target! I’m so happy with my new baby…” Milan holds up a mirror and lets her say the empty phrases into it, then asks her to make up a new word to replace “happy.”

It’s green here, but we are essentially in the middle of a traffic island. There’s honking and a highway onramp is nearby. It is an unlikely place for language to be retooled, but that’s what makes it feel plausible. Milan isn’t just prompting people to think about how meaning is stolen from us and what else might be being stolen from us by those in power. He’s teaching the techniques that might allow a reversal of these trends. He’s letting people practice taking power back.

Her word is “pinco.” Milan calls out to the traffic and to passersby “Are you pinco?!” Then he pulls her words, from a long white paper roll, out like a carpet onto the grass. The woman with the word works for the trains. She has time to kill—she has to be on standby, close to the station.

Milan begins announcing through his loudspeaker: “All the treasured words are emptied.” His ‘ch’s stick—it’s part of his accent—and they ring out loudly after the rest of the words are completed. His pronouncement about how all of the wealthy pigs are hoarding money in the basements of the tall buildings echoes off of them. “Let’s be ‘pinco’ again!!”

WOULD YOU SIT WITH ME?

Pavana Reid is taking a cloth from a woman who is sitting in one of two chairs and the woman gets up. Pavana puts the cloth on the chair and a man comes up and sits in the other chair. Pavana puts the chair with the cloth on it so that it is facing him, and then sits in the second chair herself, handing him the cloth. They speak with one another but I can’t hear. Slowly the tableaux shifts: Pavana and the man in the chair are still talking beyond my ear-range, but now they are sitting with their chairs back to back. I step in to experience the piece.

I am sitting. Pavana gives me the cloth. It’s warm. She smells like lavender. She feels like a stranger. We talk quietly about how that feels. About what makes her feel the least like a stranger. (It’s when people stop and help her or answer a question for her on the street.) She feels that time is the most precious thing that people can give to each other. She mentions an anti-suicide ad that she saw on the subway so I tell her about the memorial service for a friend and teacher of mine that I am missing in order to be at the Greenway—that he committed suicide and that I am thinking of his close friends and family while I am sitting with her. Pavana gets up and wraps me in her cloth, swaddling me to the chair. Then she wraps herself up in the other end of the cloth and tucks herself in close and tight to me. She says my story made her feel like she wanted to be closer to me, and asks if that’s okay. It’s okay. Just being together brings the strange kind of peace that being with someone you are close to does, but it feels uncanny because Pavana is, of course, a stranger.

 

 

Pavana wraps the whole cloth around herself as she unwinds it from me, and it looks like she’s a flower—there are hints of the wrapping of saris and ceremonial kimonos in the gesture…

ARTIFACT

I see a scrambling movement up ahead. Sara June is in white on the ground, bouncing, for lack of better word, while someone else on the ground is engaging with her in a way that is a little unclear from a distance.

When I approach, Sara is sitting on the ground, legs out straight in front of her, feet bare. Black hair, white outfit, a pile of round mossy stones behind her. Her seat is astroturf on grass. In front of her are four colored buttons. Or are they lights?

She moves slowly. A group of kids speaking a language I can’t identify congregate around her, but don’t engage. Sara continues her slow cycle of movement. Maybe she is turning? A woman with a dog stops and takes her picture.

I press the green button and it makes a videogame sound, and Sara moves a new way. I step on the red button a few times. It makes an alarm sound each time I step on it and she leaps, turns and rolls. I press the blue button and it plays a triumphant sound. Sara leaps up and down each time I press it. Someone else presses the orange button and she leans in towards them. Each button triggers a different gesture, slower, faster. She evolves very slowly between button pressing, regal.

The title of the piece throws me off, but slowly it dawns on me that despite her seeming humanity, Sara is a digital artifact. The motions are rote, evolving in the way that permutations do, but never having the kind of variation that living things organically do. A strange thing to say about a living thing that is performing, but it is a good performance of the non-living. (Also raising unanswerable questions about performing as a non-living thing.)

A NOSE FOR THE TRUTH

I see two women dressed in red, one with a gold shopping cart full of gold bags. The cart is strung with cassette tape innards and has a stash of cassettes on the bottom. They seem to have been interviewing a young lady. She puts her cassette in their basket and then is invited to pull on the tape while remembering her words and what they mean to her. With loud construction sounds in the background, she steps out onto the grass, walking backwards, the tape streaming. Light glints off of it.

The ladies in red discuss the poem she spoke into their recorder. “I stand in the water and wait for the water god.” The girl is pulling the tape as if the act were a dance, smiling back at them from about 20 feet away, then moving closer again, the cassette tape still streaming around her.

The piece moves fluidly between something a bit transcendent—sharp spots of beauty—and something very mundane and scatological. There is true artfulness in the performance of what are essentially crone roles—an inspiring mixture of faux dottiness, real warmth, darkness, and mysticism, all played out like a game with the props.

The ladies in red are laughing. Mari Novotny-Jones says to the girl “I said to Frances, that was so elegant!” They ask her to say her poem again and she recites some of it: “The sound of rushing water fills my brain, my jaw begins to numb….” Construction sounds drown her out for a bit and when she is audible again she’s saying “Prismatic hues form an expanding ring of colors. The water grows louder and louder.”

 

She explains to Mari and Frances Mezzetti how the thing she spoke is related to her research on shamanism—it’s a performance she’s developing. As she says this, a dog gets caught up in her tape/words. It takes a shit (literally) on it/them. Frances gathers up the tape while Mari continues talking to the woman. A little girl calls out “What are they doing?” Mari explains about the tape itself—the detritus of people’s stories. Frances continues gathering. Light reflects off of the tape.

Gold, cloth bags, bags crocheted out of tape. “That’s life though, the little dog comes and shits on your work.”

PRIVATE PERFORMANCES FOR SOLOIST TROMBONE

AND SINGLE AUDIENCE MEMBER

Construction sounds ring out. There are jackhammers and the smell of hot tar.

The trombone fits in perfectly. And it’s a break from everything.

 

I close my eyes, sit, my hands cupping the headphones against my ears, and emotion floods through me for a second. Then the music turns more playful—I can hear Tom Plsek breathing, open my eyes, see his feet tapping out a rhythm. It gets diggery-doo-ey. Then synchs up with the construction. Then ends. We sit and talk about the sound and the mechanics of the device. And the construction—he’s been trying to resist it all day, but this time gave in and played along with it.

A NOSE FOR THE TRUTH again

When I get back to the ladies in red, they have unpacked one of the “bags” in their cart and it’s a tube. Mari is in one end and a woman with glasses on is in the other end. Frances is holding the center of the tube still while they record in there, butts sticking out of either end, cassette tape streaking off of the cart.

I realize now that the gold “basket” is actually a big soft nose.

ARTIFACT again

Someone is emptying the trash near Sara’s piece. I’m watching him, watching a little kid enthusiastically pushing Sara’s buttons. Sara drops and hops, jumps and leans, rolls, hops, curls in a ball, hops, falls, jumps up, falls, scoots forward and back, rolls, hops. Her astroturf is littered with moss-rocks now. She stacks them on her legs, an action to fill space, calmly between actions. Also a reminder that there is never non-action in her piece.

WOULD YOU SIT WITH ME? again

Pavana is dancing almost with her interlocutor. They slowly fold the cloth between them, and then Pavana holds it, standing between the two chairs.

When the next visitor comes forward, she hands him the cloth. She pulls the chairs so that they are sitting knee to knee. His hands are on the cloth, folded in his lap, and hers are too. Between his. They are talking quietly. He smiles and the wind rustles the trees.

The two do not move at all. Then they stand and Pavana lays the two chairs down on the ground. They sit on the chairs lying down, heads in opposite directions, and their conversation becomes very loud. “Can you hear me?” “What do you see?” “Do you think we see the same thing?”

The “not moving at all” seems a key to Pavana’s piece, despite the fact that the performance is improvised anew with each person, the call to sit with her, seems sometimes not as much about the sitting with her, as about just sitting in a special, set-aside-from-everything-else way. Taking time to really settle. But Pavana provides the excuse by offering her company.

CENTER FOR RESTORING THE MEANING OF FAKE WORDS again

There is an echo between Milan’s paper and Pavana’s cloth. They were similar in size and shape earlier, but Milan’s paper is very long now. As I grow closer to him his amplified voice booms off of the buildings in the area. “All thoughts are fake!!”

Here are some new words:

Idealistic=FKNAL

Crazy=YUGEN

Truth=HUGE!

Life=DEBT

Money=TETHER

Luxury=YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT

Cruelty Free=JUST GET RID OF THIS BECAUSE IN THE REVOLUTION THERE WILL BE NO NEED FOR THIS.

Milan’s voice continues to bounce around. “Words are all privately owned. The word ‘delicious’ does not mean anything any more!”

Could this really be true? He might be right. I’m not sure I remember what ‘delicious’ is for me, and then, right there, wondering about whether I really know deliciousness, Milan gives me an incredible gift: an understanding of Capitalism as something akin to clinical depression or mourning. They’re the only other things that can strip away meaning and flavor from life.

WOULD YOU SIT WITH ME? again

Pavana sits with Marilyn. Black outfits, one next to the other. Sara in white moving very slowly in the background.

Pavana puts her chair back to back with Marilyn’s then slowly unfurls the cloth, making a path outward to one side of Marilyn’s lap. The smell of weed wafts over from somewhere.

Pavana moves the empty chair, wraps Marilyn slowly and almost entirely, then rolls herself in the rest of the cloth and sits back to back with her in a similar cocoon. They speak over their shoulders to one another, looking like kids at a sleepover, then they cover their heads completely and become a sculpture for awhile before Pavana unwraps things, gathering the cloth in a crumpled bundle this time rather than folding it. The chairs stand empty for a bit.

The final guest folds the cloth into something organized again with Pavana and takes one of two seats set next to each other as guided. Pavana spreads the cloth across her lap, shaping it so it flows down to the ground like a skirt, and kneels at her feet. The woman gets off the chair and comes down to her level. They kneel together, touching and kneading the fabric between them, smiling and talking, leaving the two empty chairs side by side. We sit in another row of chairs, watching.

Sunday

It’s a bit of breakneck hustle getting there—driving to three places on a fruitless errand earlier in the morning then it taking forever to find parking. Running for the red and blue lines, barely making both. Then emerging from the station, pushing through traffic with arms full: I’m the one performing the role of busy person in transit today…

I learned yesterday that the pieces all weave together no matter which direction you move in, so I’m starting at the other end of The Rose Kennedy Greenway this time.

MOTHERS WALK

I’ve gathered with Frances Mezzetti and Jimena Bermejo a little before noon, and we’re waiting for other mothers dressed in white to arrive. It’s a bit chilly. Frances tells us about the Irish (pagan) equinox celebration of Demeter and Persephone (“seed becomes fruit, fruit becomes seed”) which focuses on motherhood, creativity, and the circle of life; Jimena talks about finding gestures related to the experience of motherhood; and I speak briefly of the tradition of mothers as activists and demonstrators.

Then three women in white begin moving in a slow circle around the perimeter of The Greenway’s Rings Fountain. They are pacing thoughtfully and the mist makes it all look very romantic. They are leaving a stream of white rose petals in their wake.

There’s no way to know from looking that they are mothers. The piece relies on the subtlety involved in knowing the name of the pathway they’re tracing, though Frances, invigilating, does explain to visitors about what’s going on. Even without explanation, you feel their presence as serious and mystical. The piece of motherhood not visible at the surface here is the daily difficulty of it. The image is much more poetic than mundane.

STILL WORKING IT ALL OUT

Dogs and their owners are running in circles across the large lawn. Something brightly colored is happening in one corner of the grass.

It’s a free class! There is a circle of yoga mats with piles of something on each one, and Sinead Bhreathnach-Cashell, wearing a pink visor, is playing with a small child on one of the mats. She’s demonstrating a duckbill that you can wear on your face to squawk like a duck. The class is called “How to Draw Like a Beginner.”

Now the mom of the kid has a drawing tablet on her head and is drawing on top of her head. The small boy draws with a marker on a long stick and then opens an umbrella.

The class is very small—tailored—but it’s clear already that this is no ordinary class. The mom is working harder than the young boy, or maybe they are working equally hard. In any case, they are equally beginners, and the act of being new at something as a distinct experience, best supported by an environment that emphasizes play, comes through strong and clear.

MOTHERS WALK again

I see the three women in white pacing by in the background.

Jimena leaves a rose stem at the end of the Mother’s Walk and turns around.

WATER TABLE PERFORMANCE

I round the corner of the beer garden and see some kind of construction is in place. A strong/sturdy looking man, Brian Connolly, is fixing one of the tables it looks like.

There are four tall 2” x 4”s propped against each other like a teepee.

Some more are lying on the ground in shorter lengths with signs on them, around the perimeter of the circle (this is all happening in a circle.)

There is also a chair in the circle, and a table. A very tall table which the man is making taller, slowly, by clamping the 2” x 4”s to each leg.

The signs on the ground have images of water with logos floating over them: DuPont, Marathon Oil, FTS International. The 2” x 4”s without signs seem to be waiting for signs.

The table, now about five feet tall, has a pan of water underneath it, a pendulum hangs from beneath the table, over the pan of water. What looks like another pan of water is on the table’s surface, along with a dish (silver) with a sphere (silver) set inside of it. Some wisps of plant also seem to be coming out of the top of the table. Brian supports the table with his head as he adjusts it.

The pyramid/teepee also has a bowl (silver) under it and a feather hangs on a thread with a block of wood above from a tree. Brian makes another sign out of one of the 2” by 4”s, stapling paper on it.

The pieces of the piece feel abstract—require a bit of puzzling together—but then it becomes abundantly clear: water is teetering in the balance. Mankind is pushing its limits.

HOW FAR APART

Up ahead is a small hill with trees and a man lying on it. Dominic Thorpe has the leg of a black chair balanced on his (shaved or bald) head. He is turning on the ground very slowly, holding a black marker to his stomach which leaves a line as he turns. I don’t notice this until the chair falls off of his head. There are many beautiful, wavy lines on his stomach. They look like rings on a tree stump, circling around his core.

Dominic replaces the chair when it falls, and begins the slow turn—like a very slow motion rotating spit—again. It’s like a nap in the grass in one way, but not at all like a nap in the grass in another way: he’s relaxed, but you can feel the pressure and tension of the precariously balanced chair.

A tourist trolley drives by and I can hear the pickup of a truck’s engine and a bus engine on either side of the path simultaneously, a stereo whooshing, then three different cars broadcasting the music they’re listening to, then a motorcycle.

Dominic’s back is facing me now, for the first time.

From the other angle (I’ve moved around to his front,) the image Dominic is making is so different. The copse of trees and the fact that he is on a hill among them feels more evident and important.

Overall, the esthetic quality of all the works has been very sharp and bold—they are blending into nature, but also standing out as strongly as the less ephemeral artworks do against the ground. They feel more organic than the fabricated things because they consist of bodies, cloth and other simple materials with less degrees of removal from nature.

As I cross the street, a group composed of men and women pushing baby carriages and visibly preggers pause, unsure of whether to move through The Greenway or to walk alongside it on the sidewalk. They split into two groups, each taking one pathway.

An oil truck with a logo similar to one on one of Brian’s signs is idling at the light.

GLOBAL

I see a woman in black with some kind of small bags hanging from her dress. She is talking to a man in hat. They part and she—it’s Margaret Bellafiore—takes something, a dark blue paper cup, from one of the bags and begins drawing something on the ground with a white powder in the cup.

Cars honk. Some youths step around one of her drawings carefully and she invites them to engage, but they decline shyly.

Margaret draws an elaborate butterfly. There is also a penguin.

The (canvas? hemp?) drawstring bags pinned to her dress have drawings of animals on them as well: there are turtles, birds, fish…in white on the ground, in black on the bags.

A family stops to talk to her. She asks them what they know about penguins. The young boy answers, and they begin to discuss global warming and its impact on penguin eggs. Then cod reproduction. The family tells her what they know, she tells them what she knows of the subject. The white chalk is graceful between them on the ground.

The disbursement of the chalk becomes the disappearance of the animals, destroyed by human footprints.

MOTHERS WALK again

On my way back to check in on the mothers walking, I see two mothers along The Greenway re-dressing their children. One child was peeing in the bushes, another had gotten its shirt wet.

The Mother’s Walk, is strewn with white rose petals and stems. I step into the performance, holding space for mothers, because I am not one, so I do not walk, but I follow Jimena’s instructions as she followed mine, finding three gestures that connect/resonate/feel true to my only experience of mothering (of myself, from a very young age.) I trace the straightness of a rose stem between two fingers; softly stroke my own hair into place around my face; shift my weight from foot to foot occasionally.

A wall of parents and children lines up between me and the fountain. The fog comes up. I feel as if I am invigilating for motherhood, watching over it as it is performed in real life.

The walking mothers return from their break and make their first circuit. I’m trying to discern their gestures.

I love how everyday they look—not costumed—just two mothers on a walk, disappearing into the crowd. This is the mundane element I was looking for. As they trace the path, their route takes them through the misty, romanticized circling of the fountain, but also across the street with the dead pigeon in the crosswalk.

STILL WORKING IT ALL OUT again

Sinead and Pavana Reid have umbrellas open with rubber ducks and pinecones balanced on them. They are trying to pass them to one another without their falling but it doesn’t work. Now they are applying temporary tattoos or stickers to themselves with Frances. Pavana holds a gold square to her chest and takes a bow. Sinead’s yoga mat has a banana, an apple a headset mic. There’s not much action now but the yoga mats look much less organized now than they did before, and the last time I passed by there was a good crowd of people—mostly with young children—at the yoga mat-circle.

Sinead is on a break with a “shall return at ___” sign, and tidies everything for the next “lesson.”

The mothers drift by again.

WATER TABLE PERFORMANCE again

Brian has more signs now: BP, OXY, Andarko.

The table I would say is now about 12 feet tall. Brian is on a ladder. Things are wobbly, but stable.

Is this where we are now? As the piece progresses, I feel as if it’s mapping a situation in more and more accurate real time.

 

GLOBAL again

Margaret’s chalk is more ground in than spread around. It looks like constellations. I’m standing on a moose. The chalk is losing the race to adapt to its environment.

HOW FAR APART again

Dominic’s line is darker and thicker. His feet are black now. I can’t help but think about his view.

People are really stopping to watch for the duration now. It’s hard to tell which element of what he’s doing they are focused in on.

I notice the fallen leaves now, the steady rate at which he slowly traces his lines, the peace on his face, the beauty of the lines themselves. Somehow the chair doesn’t ever slip off of his head anymore. Without looking at the guide to learn what his piece is about, I can tell that it involves paying more attention than people usually do. That it’s about how action accretes and adds up to a shape it may not have intended by simply being a repetitive pattern.

WATER TABLE PERFORMANCE again

The table now looks to be about 15 feet high. The teepee is gone: every board is a sign. People are exploring close-up. Brian is making a mini-teepee out of signs on posts.

How can it be so high and not tip over? How has nothing spilled yet?

STILL WORKING IT ALL OUT again

Sinead has a full class—every yoga mat is occupied. Everyone is holding a mirror—she is helping them see the sky, the ground, what’s behind them on either side. Then they “warm” their mirrors up with a paintbrush and everyone paints a leaf on their mirror with a brush dipped in water.

The tracing of nothing on a reflective surface feels like a magic spell—like the magic spell—the one that makes things out of nothing. This last piece I’m seeing today feels like the bookend to the first piece I saw yesterday. Sinead is teaching people how to do to knowledge what Milan Kohout was teaching people to do with language. Take control of it by making your own.

I also see Jimena pacing in the background, picking up rose stems, alone now.

Sinead’s voice is so present. Everyone flicks their fingers as she guides them, “Flick, flick, flick.”

Then she gives everyone something to take away: a small square of gold leaf. It’s like she’s giving communion. I remember that you can eat gold leaf. As if she could hear my thought, Sinead’s amplified voice says, “It is not edible. The edible stuff is really expensive, but you can get a kind that you can eat.”

She brings me a piece. I don’t eat it.

A crowd roars somehow nearby—a ballgame at a bar with an open air seating area I assume.

A rabbit hops across my path as I make my way back to the Mother’s Walk.

Photos by Jordan Hutchings

 

by Sara Muthi

It is needless to say that present day Belfast is a very complex, sensitive context tightly wound up with the well-known aftermath we know to be the Troubles. Stepping in from the outside onto Northern Ireland’s traumatically unresolved terrain it is difficult to feel you should have anything to comment, as if doing so would be wholly out of place and ignorant of the fragility of the context. Oona Doherty’s Death of a Hunter at the Golden Thread Gallery translates the contemporary conditions of working class lives in Belfast to an audience outside of the context from which her movement is spawned.

London born, Belfast-bred choreographer Oona Doherty works within the context of such politically and historically charged spaces. She however does not look back to Belfast’s Troubles, nor does she deal with such political matters explicitly. With that said, indirectness is not indifference, in fact quite the opposite. As many Northern Irish artists must, she deals with unimaginably sensitive spaces carefully and considerately. Doherty however aware of the socio-political context she must be pays forensic attention to the seemingly familiar patterns present in the working class culture of today.

Death of a Hunter is Doherty’s visual arts debut. Trained as a dancer and now a practicing choreographer, her work is not what is expected to be found in a visual arts space. Her subject matter and execution in collaboration with video makers and sound artists give the work the oomph to seamlessly slide into a gallery context. One space in the gallery showcases a multi-part video work while the other hosts an installation composed of the heart-breaking presence of a crashed car.

The multi-part video installation is difficult and at times uncomfortable to watch. Each short film deals eloquently with a differing aspect of the physico‐sociological state as witnessed by her within Belfast’s urban culture. The first episode of Doherty’s video installation is titled Lazarus & The Bird of Paradise. Here is where I believe the cream of the crop of Doherty’s practise lies. Her lone figure lies motionless against the indistinguishable clamber of familiar loutish behaviour that acts as the score for this work. Soon she gently arises like a man possessed, being swiftly glided to her feet in relation to the weight of her own body. Her movements following this is the result of forensic observation of “smicks”, a derogatory term used to describe young lower-class persons of brash behaviour. It is the energy of this culture, the subtleties of an unsteady stance, a shrug of the shoulders and a rub of the nose which by itself may not be doing much but is threading a line between anxiety, fear and unrest that Doherty “tries on”, as someone would try on an outfit. She splits and splices these urban gestures with her unique style of contemporary dance that I can only describe as guttural. Unlike our general perception of contemporary dance in which the face stays motionless, Doherty utilises facial expressions to further try on these urban attitudes wholly to become completely engrossed in the character she takes from.

Her movement is visceral and sets the scene for the following episode, Sugar Army, which abstractly regurgitates recognisable gestures of young defiant girls, posturing to the camera. Once again this work is generally not consumed by those considered to be the subject matter. Rather what Doherty does is she delicately and intentionally presents to us these characters in order to suggest an understanding of the deep psychological past that may have created such a culture. The work through her movements and direction are humanly honest and reveal a painful society which far too often lacks empathy.

Oona Doherty’s Death of a Hunter runs from the 20th of October to the 3rd of November 2018 at the Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast.