The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
July – August 2016
23
PROJECT PROFILE
Discipline, Resistance, Resilience EL PUTNAM REPORTS ON THE PERFORMANCE ART EVENT ‘FUTURE HISTORIES’, WHICH TOOK PLACE AT KILMAINHAM GAOL ON 21 MAY 2016.
Ciara McKeon, Clear and Bright Blue Line; photograph by Joseph Carr
Francis Fay, The Singing Flame; photograph by Fiona Killeen/Blueprint Photography
WHAT is commemoration? An act of remembrance performed in the present tense. ‘Future Histories’, curated by Niamh Murphy and Áine Phillips, took place at Kilmainham Gaol on 21 May 2016. From 10am until 10pm, live and digital media artists transformed the former prison, the site where most of the 1916 Easter Rising rebellion leaders were imprisoned and then executed. Commemoration in this context is performative – constitutive – where history is told and reconsidered through embodied scenarios of memory, forgetting and contemplation of the current state of Ireland. The participating artists – Michelle Browne, Fergus Byrne, Brian Connolly, Pauline Cummins, Francis Fay, Debbie Guinnane, Sandra Johnston, Dr. Laura McAtackney, Danny McCarthy, Ciara McKeon, Alastair McLennan, Níamh Murphy, Katherine Nolan, Sinéad O’Donnell, Méabh Redmond, Dominic Thorpe and Helena Walsh – engaged different artistic strategies, though all took advantage of the material qualities of time and space. Additionally, each of the artists tackled the act of remembrance from a different angle, producing a rich and diverse array of actions and encounters. According to Phillips, “It has been said that a ghost is unfinished business and I think the 1916 Rising promised a republic that was never fully realised; it initiated social, cultural and economic business that is still left incomplete”.1 Such was the impetus for the artists presenting in ‘Future Histories’. Within this monumental structure, opening up areas not commonly accessible to the public, the artists created a palimpsest that imbued the architectural and historical framework with new meaning. As a whole, the performances can be loosely broken down into gestures of discipline, resistance and resilience, three key characteristics of revolutionary action, which raise questions about whether the Ireland of today has fulfilled the vision and promises of a century ago. In live performance, duration provides repetition with change over time. As such, artists who decide to engage in an action for hours require discipline of the self, the body and the material. In his sonic installation and performance, (Re)TYPING the TYPE(cast), Danny McCarthy evoked the institutional regulatory structures of the educational system within the context of an East Wing prison cell. Drawing from Padraig Pearse’s work as an educationalist, McCarthy designed the cell to evoke a classroom environment. Small blackboards hung from the wall with bits of chalk lining the floor, providing traces of primary school instruction. Throughout various points in the day, McCarthy sat still at a desk under a black cloak topped with a mortar-
board in front of a typewriter that remained untouched, offering an image of restraint and discipline with his hidden, docile body. In another part of the building, Sandra Johnston and Dominic Thorpe presented the work Difference Fostered. Set in the Governor’s Quarters above the museum, which is an area typically closed to visitors, Johnston and Thorpe passed the time performing a series of tasks – sanding wine glasses and creating nails from forks – that were frivolous but presented with mechanical dedication. Their gestures and presence were evocative of servants who were methodically misbehaving. The minute precision of their actions offered a dedicated discipline that was absurd and yet subversive to rational authority through its duration. Johnston and Thorpe’s intensity was hypnotic, as each drew from the energy of the other, fuelling the endurance that allowed them to carry out these demanding, futile acts of labour. Discipline took a different form in the work of Fergus Byrne. From midday to 9pm, he repeated the 40-minute performance Small Instruments that Make Revolutions, on the hour, every hour, in the Condemned Man’s Yard. Without stopping for the sporadic rainfall that occurred throughout the day, Byrne drew correlation between the mechanics of the body and of institutions with the machine of history, through corporeal motions and interactions with kinetic sculptures. Twisting and turning his arm and hips in rhythm with oversized joints and gears, he told the story of three journalists shot at the Portobello Barracks in 1916 through a montage of historic texts. Like McCarthy, his work eludes to the disciplinary structures of institutional systems through his mechanic parallels that transform the body into a gear of history. These disciplinary behaviours were mixed with acts of resistance. Drawing her strength from subtlety, Debbie Guinnane slipped through a matrix of social expectations. Dressed in denim jeans and a white t-shirt, it was not clear at first glance that she was performing. However, a closer look revealed that she was undertaking a series of meditative actions, manipulating a chunk of clay. Her gestures were minimal: the slow dripping of spittle from the lip, a concentrated examination of performances through a molded frame. She was both out of place and in every place, standing at a threshold between artist and audience. She roamed the entirety of the space that day, creeping in and out of performances while presenting her own non-disruptive interventions. There was an honesty to her presence as time passed in this institutional structure. In her work, Guinnane draws energy from the act of witnessing, using it as fuel for her own contemplative
responses. Her occupation of this liminal space became a connective force between the various performances throughout the site that day, while simultaneously resisting unity. Deep within the belly of the prison, Laura McAtackney and Niamh Murphy sat in the darkened punishment cells of the East Wing. In a performance only witnessed by six women at a time, McAtackney and Murphy acknowledged the women marginalised during the creation of the Irish nation. They recited the Hail Mary in Irish – the only prominent Catholic prayer that provides direct reference to women. Standing in the darkened space, fingers touching the cool stone walls, I considered the histories and experiences of the prisoners that occupied this space. Even though I do not understand Irish, I recognised the rhythm of the familiar prayer with both a sense of solace and a twinge of disdain. Through the insistence of presence, despite being placed under erasure, this acknowledgement of marginalised women became an act of resistance through the ironic recitation of a prayer. That is, while the invocation of the Hail Mary defines a restricted role for women, which was emphasised in the formation of the Irish State through its constitution, McAtackney and Murphy’s reframing of the prayer in a cold, darkened basement cell to a female audience brings attention to the excluded and overlooked complexities of female subjectivity that persist in the shadows. While gestures of resistance tend to be subtle, these compliment more obtuse acts of resilience. Throughout the 12 hours of the event, Helena Walsh maintained watch in the centre of the East Wing, the famous Victorian era Panopticon. Decorating the central stairwell like a spring trestle, Easter lilies and apples became her weapons of choice. Walsh spends the day glaring at the audience, many of whom awkwardly attempt to deflect her stare. Her disruption of the gaze, occupying both the position of the watcher and the watched, in the centre of the Panopticon, offered a strong presence in the space, with her heels clicking up and down the stairs in a repetitious rhythm that dominated the room. Every once in a while her hands came together, tips and fingers touching to create a gaping hole in reference to the Sheelana-gig fertility sculptures that once adorned buildings in Ireland. Drawing inspiration from the women involved in the 1916 rising, Walsh created a scene of resilience, of female subjectivity deferred through the creation of the Irish nation. Walsh’s resilience echoed through the theatrical gestures of Katherine Nolan. Every hour, she descended the spiral staircase of the East Wing, tossing her body around with exaggerated movements. This energy was never fully released. Instead she returned over and over again, haunting the space with persistence. In the Clear and Bright Blue Line, Ciara McKeon spent most of the day asleep in a cell, with a copy of the Irish Constitution and a positive pregnancy test resting next to her subconscious body. She awoke several times during the day, performing actions that draw attention to the vulnerability of women’s bodies exposed through gendered inconsistencies of Irish legislation. Michelle Browne closed the day with a lecture that specifically addressed the contributions of women to the Easter Rising, hinged on the notion of dressing appropriately for battle. These performances raised prominent concerns about the ongoing treatment of women in Ireland as incomplete subjects. The above descriptions are only glimpses into the multitude of actions that took place that day. As a whole, the artists involved in ‘Future Histories’ contemplated the narratives emerging from 1916, framing them in the contemporary context, while opening up spaces for consideration of what the future holds for Ireland. The ephemeral nature of these works put art in motion. Even though the actions have ceased, they linger in the memories of the audience – a mix of art spectators and tourists visiting the Gaol. As such, the works remain incomplete. The narrative of commemoration, like that of rebellion, must remain unfinished in order to allow the propensity for change to contribute to the growth of a multifaceted, rich society. EL Putnam is an artist and writer living in Dublin. She is cofounder of in:Action – Irish Live Art Review (inaction.edu).= Note 1. Áine Phillips, ‘1916 – 2016: Revolution was the script for the performance of Republic’, in:Action — Irish Live Art Review, 11 May, 2016 (inaction.ie)