AN OPEN CALL TO THE IRISH IMAGINATION

Transcription

1 ISSUE 3 AN OPEN CALL TO THE IRISH IMAGINATION ART:2016 is the Arts Council s programme as part of Ireland The Arts Council is placing the artist and the arts at the centre of how it responds to the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The role of artists in the Celtic Revival and in the events leading up to the Rising cannot be underestimated. They challenged and provoked a different narrative that sought to imagine a new, culturally defined Ireland. In the century since the Rising, artists have continued to be the great signifiers of our island. Their work has been the enduring imagination of what Ireland can become. ART:2016 is a diverse and distinctive public showcase of Irish art being presented across Ireland and abroad throughout the year. Key programme strands include the Open Call National Project Awards; the Next Generation Bursary Awards; and A Nation s Voice, a free concert featuring new choral and orchestral work by Shaun Davey and Paul Muldoon and the voices of a thousand-strong choir, which took place at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks on Easter Sunday. ART:2016 is part of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme and is supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, and created with a range of partners local, national and international. This, the third and final issue of the programme, is focused mainly on the Open Call National Projects, reflecting on work to date, and providing updates and additional information on events happening between September and December THESE ROOMS by ANU Productions and CoisCéim Dance Theatre Production image featuring Justine Cooper by Ros Kavanagh

2 HEED FM Garrett Phelan HEED FM - MELVIN - UNTITLED I HAD SO MANY QUESTIONS IN MY MIND AS A CHILD LIKE, WHERE THE FUCK DO I BELONG MY FRIENDS ARE OUT PLAYING FOOTBALL BUT IM STUCK INSIDE WRITING SONGS IM WONDERING WHY I COULDNT DEFINE BETWEEN WHATS RIGHT AND WRONG HEED FM is a twenty-eight-day anonymous sound portrait created through one-to-one and group conversations in Dublin with people aged and from all backgrounds. The sound portrait presents a generation whose opinions and beliefs are rarely heard in the public sphere and who lack institutional advocacy on their behalf. HEED FM shuns preconceptions and de-sensationalises this generation without judgement, giving time and voice to the ambitions, aspirations and passions of those that took part. HEED FM will be broadcast to the Greater Dublin area on HEED FM 94.3 from 22 October 18 November It will also be broadcast to Dublin and Cork on digital radio (DAB/DAB+), and will be available online at THE LIGHTS WENT OFF AND MOM IS GONE ITS DARK AND EVERY NIGHT WAS LONG THINK OF DEPRESSION AS A BOXER I WASN T SKILLED ENOUGH TO FIGHT THIS SHIT MY COACH WAS A COUNCILLOR THAT RECOMMENDED ME TO A PSYCHIATRIST WHAT KIND OF LIFE IS THIS, YOU NEVER REALLY KISSED A FIGHTERS FIST GIMME THE FUEL I NEED TO MY FIRE I SWEAR TO GOD THAT IMMA LIGHT THIS BITCH SPAR WITH MY ANGER LOST IN A FOG TRYNA FIND AN ANSWER FRANCIS WAS THE ONLY ONE THAT GAVE A SHIT UNTIL LATER ON SHE DIED OF CANCER TAUGHT ME NEARLY EVERYTHING ABOUT MUSIC LIKE WHATS THE DEFINITION OF A STANZA HOW TO PLAY THE GUITAR SHE WAS LIKE A BEST FRIEND WE SHARED THE LOVE AND BANTER BUT LIFE IS LIKE A TWILIGHT THAT S WHAT I LIKE CAUSE WHENEVER YOU THINK IT ENDS IT BEGINS MY SOUL ON A PAPER THATS WHAT I WRITE THIS IS MY LIFE AND I AM THANKFUL FOR THIS PEN HAD TO REALLY LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH EMOTIONS WITHOUT TAKING DRUGS TO EXPRESS IT AGAIN WRETCHED I FELT LIKE A PESSIMIST PISSED OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT DEAD IN THE SAND SO LETS TAKE A WALK IN A PLACE WHERE I GREW UP IN DUBLINS NORTH INNER CITY STREETS BRIDGE WATER HALL SUMMER HILL PARADE IN THE NYP COME TAKE A LITTLE PEEK AS A FOREIGN NATIONAL I CAME AND THEY EMBRACED ME LIKE THEIR OWN YEAH I LIVED IN A HOUSE BUT THE PROJECT IS A PLACE I REALLY CALL MY HOME AND THE SWAN YOUTH SERVICE IN A PLACE WHERE I FOUND TRUE PURPOSE A PLATFORM FOR MY MUSIC TO FLOURISH AND TO STAND ON HERES A BRAND NEW SURFACE IT KEPT ME OUT OF TROUBLE IN A TIME OF STRUGGLE AND IT REALLY HELPED TO RE ENERGISE AND RECOVER BUT MY PET PEEVE WAS THE PEOPLE ON PLACEMENT THAT WAS SPEAKING TO ME HOWEVER THE FUCK THEY WANNA BUT THEY DON T KNOW ME SO HOW CAN THEY JUDGE I TELL THEM MY STORY EVEN THOUGH I KNOW THAT HALF OF THEM DON T GIVE A FUCK SEE ME CRAVING FOR THE DRUGS WHEN THE ONLY THING I WAS CRAVING FOR WAS LOVE PUBLIC BROADCAST 22 October 18 November 2016 HEED FM 94.3 (Dublin only) DAB/DAB+ (Dublin and Cork only) (online live stream) The station will run for twenty-four hours, seven days a week over a twenty-eight-day period. HEED FM, Melvin Untitled, spoken word/rap, 2016 SOME OF US DON T GET IT OUTSIDE THE YOUTH CLUB AND MY YOUTH WORKERS TRULY UNDERSTOOD SO I PAINT A SMILE ON MY FACE AND I AM GIVING OFF A FEELING THAT I AM HAPPY THATS WHAT I AM LIKE ACTING COOL AINT REALLY MY STYLE IVE PUT A LOT OF ENERGY IN LETTING TIME FLY SOME OF US GET RICH SOME OF US DIE TRYING OUT OF THE ABYSS WITH A LIGHT IN MY EYE LOOKING AT THE STARS UP IN THE NIGHT SKY TAUGHT ME ALWAYS TO LOOK AT THE BRIGHT SIDE TO MY PAST I AM WAVING GOODBYE I HAVE DONE BAD THINGS BUT I AM STILL A GOOD GUY HEED FM, Sarah McIlroy Gel Nails, digital print, 2016 HEED FM, Hossin Moazemi Life Risk for Unknown Life, mixed media on paper, 2016

3 LOOSE ENDS Willie Doherty The RCC is presenting one of the biggest projects it has ever organized, as part of the Ireland 2016 centenary programme. It is hosting the world premiere of Loose Ends, a major new multi-screen video installation by world-renowned Derry/Donegal artist Willie Doherty. The video installation, with a voice-over by the great Donegal actor Sean McGinley, and a number of large-scale photographic works have been produced in locations on Gola Island, County Donegal and Moore Street in Dublin, that are connected with the Rising. Donegal Daily, 27 June 2016 Loose Ends is a new commission that considers how people, places and events associated with the 1916 Easter Rising are remembered and imagined today. The work explores if a residual response to these events continues to be played out, and how the voices and actions of one generation resonate in the unconscious of another. Loose Ends is commissioned by Donegal County Council/Regional Cultural Centre in partnership with Nerve Centre, Earagail Arts Festival, Kerlin Gallery and Matt s Gallery CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS Loose Ends Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny 10 July 24 September 2016 Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 3 September 19 October 2016 Matt s Gallery, London Spring 2017 Loose Ends by Willie Doherty

4 FUTURE HISTORIES Performance Art Live Foundation Helena Walsh performing in Future Histories at Kilmainham Gaol, 21 May 2016 Photo: Clodagh Kilcoyne Curated by Áine Phillips and Niamh Murphy Artists: Michelle Browne, Fergus Byrne, Brian Connolly, Pauline Cummins, Francis Fay, Debbie Guinnane, Sandra Johnston, Dr Laura McAtackney, Danny McCarthy, Ciara McKeon, Alastair McLennan, Katherine Nolan, Sinéad O Donnell, Méabh Redmond, Dominic Thorpe and Helena Walsh. Over fifteen hundred people attended Future Histories a live-performance art and digital-media event at Kilmainham Gaol on 21 May Invited artists engaged with the commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising through time-based performances. Exploring themes of nationality, freedom and gender, the artists created contemporary perspectives on our shared past, conflicts, crises and passions in relation to the Rising and its greatest monument, Kilmainham Gaol. THESE ROOMS ANU Productions and CoisCéim Dance Theatre These Rooms le ANU Productions agus le CoisCéim Dance Theatre Íomhá léiriúcháin le Ros Kavanagh ina bhfuil Justine Cooper ann. These Rooms, an important new collaboration between ANU Productions and CoisCéim Dance Theatre, is an intimate and immersive live performance that cross-pollinates contemporary dance, theatre and visual art. The work is based on a historical incident that took place in North King Street, Dublin in April Drawing audiences into the events of one hundred years ago, These Rooms explores the 1916 Rising from the perspective of civilians whose homes and lives were violated by the conflict, with devastating consequences. These Rooms combines eye-witness testimonies from thirty-eight women with the recently released findings of the government inquiry that followed, and investigates questions of dignity and trauma, belonging and dispossession. It is a fearless and embodied physical performance that focuses on the effects of conflict on ordinary people s lives, and reaffirms the role of art in negotiating history. Information and booking details at: FORTHCOMING PERFORMANCES These Rooms Location: 85/86 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin Previews 27, 28 September, 7.30pm World premiere as part of Dublin Theatre Festival September 2016, 7.30pm Dates 30 September, 4 7 October, October, 7.30pm and 9.30pm; 1, 8, 15 October, 2.30pm, 7.30pm and 9.30pm; 2, 9, 16 October, 4.30pm and 7.30pm

5 THE CASEMENT PROJECT Fearghus Ó Conchúir The Casement Project dances with the queer body of British knight, Irish rebel and international humanitarian Roger Casement to imagine a national body that welcomes the stranger from beyond the border, as well as the one already inside. This choreography of bodies and ideas by choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir takes place across national boundaries and includes a stage performance, a celebratory festival of dance, a short film, an academic symposium, and a series of participatory events to address the legacy of FORTHCOMING PERFORMANCES Butterflies and Bones: The Casement Project Tanzmesse 2016 (open studio), Düsseldorf, Germany 2 September 2016 The MAC, Belfast, as part of the Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival 13 October 2016 Project Arts Centre, Dublin October 2016 Butterflies and Bones: The Casement Project, world premiere, The Place, London, 11 June 2016 Photo: Stephen Wrighth Féile Fáilte as part of The Casement Project, Banna Strand, Tralee, Co. Kerry, 23 July 2016 Ar chlé: Ó Loose Ends le Willie Doherty Photos: Clare Keogh

6 IN THE SHADOW OF THE STATE Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones Throughout 2016, artists Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones have been developing In the Shadow of the State across Ireland and the UK. The project investigates the role of the nation state in the regulation of the female body, tracking the everyday institutions of the state, including the home itself. The next iteration of the project, The Touching Contract, will explore the qualities of how we encounter the touch of the state every day, with and without consent. Staged in the Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital, the first lying-in hospital in the British Isles, The Touching Contract examines the intimate gesture of touch as a site of contact with the state through an immersive-performance work. Engaging with the audience directly, The Touching Contract proposes a kind of hypersensitivity to touch as a way of dramatising usually unfelt political realities. The performance will feature a newly commissioned soundscape by Alma Kelliher, and a legal score developed by the artists with legal academic and activist Máiréad Enright. This event follows on from Of Milk and Marble, the first public performance of the project staged in Derry in February. In July, Browne and Jones presented The Truncheon and the Speculum, a live telefeminist broadcast from Liverpool at part of the Liverpool Biennial. The final public event in the series will take place in London in December In the Shadow of the State is a co-commission of Artangel and Create. FORTHCOMING PUBLIC EVENTS The Touching Contract Location: Pillar Room, Rotunda Hospital, Dublin Dates: 23, 24, 25 September 2016 Information and booking details at In the Shadow of the State by Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones The Touching Contract, 2016 Graphic artwork by Sarah Browne, Jesse Jones and Miriam O Connor

7 THE SOUVENIR SHOP Rita Duffy Over eighteen hundred people attended Rita Duffy s Souvenir Shop at 13 North Great George s Street, Dublin between 25 April and 11 June Referencing the city-centre shops once owned by Proclamation signatory Tom Clarke, Duffy created a shop as an art installation filled with ordinary, everyday goods and foodstuffs packaged and interwoven with images of the Rising and its heroes. The Souvenir Shop explores the shifting meanings of gestures and symbols associated with the revolution, examining how the images, objects and themes of the 1916 Easter Rising, and conflict more generally, become souvenirs. It is, of course, much too early to say what the overall response of artists to the 1916 centenaries will look like. But one thing we can say is that an old template has been shattered. There used to be a choice for artists reverence for the Rising or scathing scepticism. Now, it is possible to be scathing and reverent at the same time. The Rising may at once be upheld as a gift from the past, a rebuke to the present and a challenge for the future. Fintan O Toole, Irish Times, 30 July 2016 FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS The Souvenir Shop Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris 16 September 1 October 2016 Rise Up Baking Soda, 2016 The Souvenir Shop by Rita Duffy Photo: Stanislav Nikolov

8 MAKING IRELAND MODERN Curated by Gary A. Boyd and John McLaughlin Architects Making Ireland Modern explores the relationship between architecture, infrastructure and technology in the building of a new nation. Making Ireland Modern describes architecture s role in transforming the physical and cultural identity of the new state through its intercession in the everyday lives of its population. Making Ireland Modern is a touring project as part of ART: It was originally presented as Infra Éireann Making Ireland Modern at the 2014 International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Arts Council. EXHIBITION TOUR Making Ireland Modern St Peter s Church, Cork 8 September 1 October 2016 Installation image. Making Ireland Modern at Bailey Allen Hall, University Road, NUI Galway as part of the Galway International Arts Festival, July 2016 Photo: Alice Clancy Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 13 October 12 November VISIONARIES AND THEIR WORDS Lorcán Mac Mathúna A cycle of songs inspired by the ideals of the leaders of the Easter Rising, written and performed by Lorcán Mac Mathúna. Drawing from the writings of Pearse, Connolly, Plunkett and others, Lorcán Mac Mathúna explores the vision of the revolutionaries and its contemporary resonance. Featuring new music, as well as traditional songs, 1916 Visionaries and their Words is an audiovisual experience of music, song and archive imagery. Songs such as Johnny Seoighe, White Dove of the Wild Dark Eyes, Óró sé di bheatha abhaile provided touching yet haunting musical accounts of a time long since gone but still felt in the heart of every Irish man and woman. With so much of our history steeped in politics and troubles, it is easy to forget the culture and traditions that have developed, soared and excelled through time. Review in Ireland Today, 3 February Visionaries and their Words premiered in Dublin in January (as part of TradFest), and was presented in Ennis, Co. Clare (as part of Fleadh Cheoil na héireann) and in Brittany, France (as part of Le Festival interceltique de Lorient) in August to popular and critical acclaim. A POET S RISING Irish Writers Centre The Irish Writers Centre commissioned six poems from influential contemporary poets Theo Dorgan, Paul Muldoon, Thomas McCarthy, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Jessica Traynor. The poems reflect on significant figures and events associated with the Rising, including James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Elizabeth O Farrell and Michael Joseph O Rahilly. Each poet was filmed reciting their poem at locations including Dublin s Moore Street, City Hall, the GPO, Liberty Hall and the Garden of Remembrance. The Irish Writers Centre launched A Poet s Rising on 31 March with readings by the commissioned poets and a live performance of the commissioned film score by Colm Mac Con Iomaire. A Poet s Rising (the film) was broadcast on RTÉ 1 on 19 April, and the poems were published in the Irish Times during the anniversary of Easter Week, from April. A copy of the printed programme, featuring all poems, can be downloaded from Art-2016/A-Poet_s-Rising/, and an online app is currently under development. The Arts Council, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, is the national government agency charged with developing and promoting the arts in Ireland. It works in partnership with artists, arts organisations, public policymakers and others to build a central place for the arts in Irish life. The Arts Council is guided by its strategy Making Great Art Work: Leading the Development of the Arts in Ireland.