Placing Voices - Voicing Places: Project Blog

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Terry Fagan's RTE Radio Documentary is Broadcast

2009-08-04T15:05:00.001+01:00

Last week Terry Fagan's RTE Radio Documentary 'The Runners' was broadcast. You can listen or download the podcast here.

There's also a good review article in the Sunday Tribute here.

Second Clanbrassil Street 'zine launched

2009-06-22T23:54:00.002+01:00

Sean Lynch has released his second research 'zine on the Clanbrassil Street area.

Read a copy of the 'zine here.

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The Irish Recession: Massive queues for Londis Jobs

2009-04-24T06:39:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday, 22 April, a massive queue occurred in the centre of Dublin. It wasn't for concert tickets or a book signing. This was a queue for Sales Assistant positions with Londis. Joerg Steegmueller (Dublin Free Event Guide) reported that the queue stretched from the Londis Shop on Stephen's Green (between Grafton Street and Dawson Street) down all the way into Grafton Street until Korky's or the "3" shop. Hundreds of people queuing for hours to apply for work in a Londis shop? Is this a sign of the times?

From Context to Exhibition Talks - The Lab, Dublin

2009-04-22T12:28:00.003+01:00

From Context to Exhibition - The Lab - 23-30 April 2009

The Lab, Dublin on Foley Street (in collaboration with CREATE) is hosting a series of talks that are strongly related to our projects ambitions.

23 April - 6pm - Launch - Peggy Shaw - Performative Introduction

24 April - 6pm - What Isn't Socially Engaged - Faisal Abdu'Allah in conversation with Mick Wilson

25 April - 12pm - Producing Communities - Paul O'Neill

27 April - 6pm - Towards a Critical Pedagogy - Milena Dragicevic Sesic in conversation with Jesse Jones

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[From CREATE's website]

To be launched by Peggy Shaw, international performance artist on 23rd April at 6pm.

From Context to Exhibition presents the work of undergraduate arts students made collaboratively with communities of place and/or interest. The ‘exhibition’ explores and questions the politics of translating the work from the context of production (the community) to a formal arts space (the gallery). The ‘exhibition’ will be accompanied by a Talks Series. All events will all take place at The LAB, Dublin City Council Gallery.

In 2009, the Learning Development Placement Programme has brought together students from NCAD, IADT Dun Laoghaire, DIT and the Tisch School of the Arts (New York University).

April 23 From Context to Exhibition Launch. 6pm

Peggy Shaw, New York based performing artist to launch and Create guest tutor to the Learning Development programme.

April 24 What Isn’t Socially Engaged? 6-8pm

Faisal Abdu’Allah in conversation with Professor Mick Wilson.

Faisal Abdu’Allah is an artist whose work evolves primarily from the interface of photography, the printed image and lens-based installations. He graduated in Fine Arts at the Royal College of Art in London. Abdu’Allah appropriates iconography from popular culture to constantly reposition values and ideologies pertaining to representation. Recent projects include: Britannia Works (Xippas Gallery, Greece 2004), Garden of Eden (Chisenhale Gallery, London 2003). He is a recipient of the “Decibel Visual Arts Award” (Visual Artist 2004-5) and is currently Artist in Residence at The Serpentine Gallery (London).

April 25 Producing Communities. 12 - 4pm

Open Roundtable with participating communities and students artists. Chaired by Paul O’Neill.

Dr Paul O'Neill is an artist, curator and writer. He is GWR Research Fellow with Situations at the University of the West of England, where he is leading the international research project Locating the Producers.

April 27 Towards a Critical Pedagogy. 6-8pm

Professor Milena Dragicevic Šešic in conversation with artist Jesse Jones.

Professor Milena Dragicevic Šešic UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management (Interculturalism and mediation in the Balkans) University of Arts, Belgrade Former President of University of Arts, Belgrade, now Head of UNESCO Chair in Interculturalism, Art Management and Mediation, professor of Cultural Policy & Cultural Management, Cultural studies, Media studies. Commandeur dans l`Ordre des Palmes Academiques, 2002. Member of National Council for Science and Technology (since 2006). President of the Cultural Policy Research Award (European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam). President of the Board of the European Diploma in Cultural Project Management (Foundation Marcel Hicter, Bruxelles). Chair of Art & Culture Subboard of OSI (Soros network). Former ENCATC and ELIA Board Member. IUC Dubrovnik Board member (since 2008). Pro Helvetia Regional Board member(since 2008). Advisor to the Minister of Culture Republic of Serbia (since 2007)

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More information on the exhibition, its concept and backgound is availabel here.

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Clanbrassil St Research 'Zine Launched

2009-04-21T13:03:00.006+01:00

Sean Lynch has released his research 'zine on the Clanbrassil Street area.

Read a copy of the 'zine here.

_

Pop-Up Landscapes: Mediating landscape intra-action

2009-04-15T21:12:00.000+01:00

How do landscapes change? How are we involved in their becoming? If they are just abstract concepts or human projections onto the world, how can we better mediate those projections to negotiate our ecological interactions?

These are some of the questions that the Pop-Up Landscapes project is raising through its year long series of workshops, installations and happenings. Headed by Teresa Dillon, Tuomo Tammenpää and lok Arquitectura, the project seeks to explore the becoming of different landscape forms in urban, rural and natural environments in Spain, Portugal and Finland. The project will realise an interactive media-installation or playspace where people can dynamically alter and ship digital triptychs through their physical presence.

The year long series of workshops and installations have already begun with the construction of prototypes in Barcelona at Hangar. For more information on the becoming of the project, you can follow it here.

Tactical engagements with civic space

2009-04-13T17:46:00.002+01:00

Searching for the abandoned tunnel under Phoenix Park with Paddy Bloomer, Dublin, March 2009

Exploring the gaps in urban fabric, the Tactic Project in Dublin has been exploring forgotten spaces and creating new gaps for social activity. Recently completing a residency at the Lab on Foley Street, the group has been reflecting on their productivity and impact on Dublin city.

From the group's mission statement:

"Tactic is a cross-national laboratory for tactical art making: investigation, intervention, discovery, testing and application. It is a space for activists and artists to meet in Dublin and inform each other's practice, develop projects and engage a public."

“Tactics... are isolated actions or events that take advantage of opportunities offered by the gaps within a given strategic system, although the tactician never holds onto these advantages. Tactics cut across a strategic field, exploiting gaps in it to generate novel and inventive outcomes.”

Philosophically basing their activism within the thought of Michel de Certeau:

“These "ways of operating" constitute the innumerable practices by means of which users reappropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production... the goal is to perceive and analyze the microbe-like operations proliferating within technocratic structures and deflecting their functioning by means of a multitude of "tactics" articulated in the details of everyday life;... to bring to light the clandestine forms taken by the dispersed, tactical, and makeshift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the nets of "discipline:" Pushed to their ideal limits, these procedures and ruses of consumers compose the network of an antidiscipline..”

Contextualising the groups aspirations within the work of more familiar art-agonists K Foundation or the NSK, there is always a question or criticism of to what extent such initiatives actively engage with urban communities or whether they skate along the surface of the city in indulgent flaneurie. Whichever the case may be, the energy, enthusiasm and initiative is something to be embraced and supported critically.

Street intervention by Paul Hickey, Dublin, March 2009 (photo by Ralph Borland)

TRESPASS: Forgotten urban landscapes

2009-02-26T22:30:00.001Z

The LAB
brought to you by Dublin City Council

is pleased to present

TRESPASS

TRESPASS is a collaborative art project by Aoife Desmond and Seoidín O'Sullivan that engages research and action with forgotten urban landscapes

Preview - Thursday 5 March 2009 6pm - 8pm

Exhibition continues to 18 April 2009

Gallery Talk: Tuesday 7 April 2009

Stalker/Observatorie Nomade are an architectural collective based in Rome who explore nomadic possibilities within the urban environment. For this talk/event Francesco Careri and Lorenzo Romito will present Stalker/Observatorie.

Aoife Desmond and Seoidín O'Sullivan will guide the event. The intention is to create an engaged discussion into the functions and potentials of wasteland sites in cities.

Trespass investigate and intervene in disused urban space. They research and reveal the delicate balance between nature and the built environment. ‘Trespass’ investigates the different issues around land use and ownership through documentation and performative actions. This project was initiated in Dublin where the two artists are based. They have been working with several sites in Dublin over the last 3 years. They recently were awarded a Project New Work Award by the arts council in 2007 and participated in The One Year Project 2 at The Land Foundation for 2 months in 2008 where they developed a new body of work in response to their time there.

Contact: TRESPASSproject@gmail.com

The LAB | Dublin City Council Arts Office | Foley Street | Dublin 1

T 222 7850

E sheena.barrett@dublincity.ie

10am to 6pm Monday-Saturday

www.dublincity.ie

Heritages, spaces and buildings: 'The Wire' Season 3 Opening

2009-02-01T12:20:00.003Z

Having finally started watching 'The Wire', the quality of the narrative of the show and the themes with which it deals are starting to affect my thoughts on other aspects of my work.

This clip is the opening of Season 3 (originally aired in 2004). In the clip three of the shows characters discuss the impending destruction of the high-rise tower blocks (project housing) in Eastern Baltimore. The Mayor of the city is pledging a 'new Baltimore' where affordable houses would be available in place of the 'failed' project towers.

Visceral and edgy, the men walking to the site of the demolition recall stories (personal and social) that relate/resonate from the towers. Although some may level moral judgements on the heritages that they are mourning the passing of as the physical architecture of their community is forever altered, it highlights the many different heritages that can be attached to a place - both personal and social. Furthermore, I would argue that heritages are not things/sentiments which can be moralised fundamentally. The narratives, spaces and things of drug use, crime, violence and sexual conquest are potent sentiments for the generation of heritage sensibilities.

In the context of Ireland, this is reminiscent of the demolition/regeneration of the Ballymun.

Iterim Report Released

2009-01-29T01:15:00.002Z

The Placing Voices - Voicing Places project teams has released an interim report on the project which is available for download.

Please feel free to disseminate the report to all who may be interested.

Download the report here.

Ireland from a Polish perspective: A Polish archaeologist's blog on life in Ireland

2009-01-05T22:55:00.005Z

I just came across this blog, and I thought it might interest the project team (particularly Tadhg). It's titled 'Ireland from a Polish perspective', and it was started by Krystian Kozerawski who came to Ireland as an archaeologist and ended up becoming a journalist for newly established Polish newspapers.

Although the blog isn't updated anymore, there are some interesting thoughts on Irish society and that Krystian is an archaeologist, there are some good cross-disciplinary thoughts that could be provocative for the project.

Check out the blog here:

http://www.drakkart.com/eire2/

A long page of posts on archaeology can be found here.

Present absences: Lost - The Art of Asbestos

2008-11-27T09:00:00.001Z

[From: www.culturge.com]

How many things go unnoticed in our day to day lives? How many things get taken for granted? The Art of Asbestos' mutli-series project over the last few years in Dublin has been urging the human traffic of footpaths around the city to think about just such things.

The 63 interventions in the 7 series of 'Lost' take as subjects the things in our daily lives that we don't really think about that often, but ironically, when they go missing they can become a central story in the telling of a day's or life's adventures. In the spirit of Heidegger's object-oriented philosophy in 'Das Ding', the 'Lost' series highlights our ontological relationships to things that we rarely acknowledge until they become absent or broken.

Beyond its charming and insightful qualities, the 'Lost' project also illustrates the effectiveness of viral design in guerilla art interventions in the generation of lateral relationships and social reflection. Mobilising the passing moments waiting for buses or walking a long a footpath, the 'Lost' project offers an amusing and gentle provocation to think more broadly and laterally about how we engage in our world.

The Art of Living with Strangers: Urban cohabitation

2008-11-26T12:59:00.002Z

Printed Project Issue 10 - 'The Art of Living with Strangers'

'The Art of Living with Strangers' curated / edited by Lolita Jablonskiene is based around the experience of the immigrant within their adopted environment and is indebted to the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman's assertions that inhabitants of the contemporary city are -- "permanent strangers," and that cohabitation, according to Bauman, is "an art which, like all arts, requires study and exercise". Moreover, Lolita Jablonskiene describes her edition of Printed Project "as a workshop - constructed in the spirit of Alexander Rodchenko's Workers' Club -- offering socio-political enlightenment, a platform for debate, and a space for the renewal of our energy at the end of a long working day".

The writing is on the wall: Graffiti Archaeology

2008-11-25T12:07:00.003Z

[From: http://grafarc.org]

Graffiti Archaeology is a project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time. The core of the project is a timelapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. The photos were taken in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other cities, over a timespan from the late 1990's to the present.

Using the grafarc explorer, you can visit some classic graffiti spots, see what they looked like in the past, and explore how they have changed over the years.

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You can also explore the Grafarc Flickr photo pool and discussion board - currently boasting 47,171 images.

For example - notice the palimpsestic changing of this wall over time.

The Cardiff Arcades Project

2008-11-19T16:23:00.001Z

Friends in Cardiff have for few months embarked on a place-making project. The Arcades Project: A 3D Documentary explores the famed arcades of Cardiff. The city is known for having the highest concentration of Victorian and Edwardian arcades in the UK, hence its rebranding as the city of arcades (not just rugby folks).

The lead artist Jennie Savage assisted by Andrew Cochrane have developed a series of art events and responses to Walter Benjamin's unfinished Arcades Project on the the Parisian arcades. The events both interrogate the spaces from theoretical and aesthetic perspectives, but they also seek to engage with the communities of businesses, patrons and passersby who frequent the arcades, activating and enhancing the social percolations of urban architecture in inner city Cardiff.

The project features artist talks, peripatetic media (a la Janet Cardiff) and a 3D mapping project. Savage's process focuses on response and interaction with others hoping to draw out the constellations of linkages and meanings shared by all those frequenting the arcades.

Wander over to the project home site and peek into their happenings.

Fearghus O'Conchuir's Fox in Foley Street Park

2008-11-14T09:55:00.000Z

Fearghus O'Conchuir's choreography and performance art interrogates the capricious, flowing relationships between bodies and buildings through contemporary dance. In January 2008, Stéphane Hisler and Bernadette Iglich brought his choreographed work 'Fox' into Foley Street Park in the Monto.

Fearghus is an artist in residence with Dublin City Council and works between Dublin and London. His recent work 'Niche' at the Project Arts Centre explored the ways we all try to find our place in the world.

I feel that Fearghus' work and his process of reflective/reflexive research (externalised on his blog) is a good example of artistic practice that synergises with the aims of the collaborative elements of our project. Have a read of his blog and let me know what you think...

Clanbrassil Street by bike

2008-11-13T16:08:00.002Z

Thought it might be useful to consider the streetscapes we're studying as flowing corridors rather than just static facades...

Memory and Forgetting: WNYC Radio Lab

2008-11-02T20:31:00.005Z

[From: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08]

According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory.

Listen to the whole show

Download MP3

Show includes:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat

What is a memory? Science writer Jonah Lehrer tells us is it’s a physical thing in the brain… not some ephemeral flash. It’s a concrete thing made of matter. And NYU neuroscientist Joe LeDoux, who studies fear memories in rats, tells us how with a one shock, one tone, and one drug injection, you can bust up this piece of matter, and prevent a rat from every making a memory. LeDoux’s research goes sci-fi, when he and his colleague Karim Nader start trying to erase memories. And Nader applies this research to humans suffering from PTSD.

Adding Memory

We start this section off with a question from writer Andrei Codrescu: "where do computers get their extra memory from?" And then we take it literally. Can you add memories? Dr. Elizabeth Loftus says yes. She’s a psychologist in the department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California at Irvine, and her research shows that you can implant memories—wholly false memories—pretty easily into the brains of humans. Her work challenges the reliability of eye-witness testimony, and is so controversial that she once had to call the bomb squad. Then, producer Neda Pourang brings us the story of finding a lost memory. Painter Joe Andoe incessantly paints huge canvasses of seemingly random images: horses, pastures, and - more recently - a girl with a particular about-to-say-something look on her face. He didn't realize until recently that he'd been painting a day from his past, a fragment of an afternoon 30 years earlier.

Clive

The story of a man who’s lost everything. Clive Wearing has what Oliver Sacks calls “the most severe case of amnesia ever documented.” Clive’s wife, Deborah Wearing, tells us the story along with Oliver Sacks. And they try to understand why, amidst so much forgetting, Clive remembers two things: Music and Love.

Thanks to Uden Associates Productions for excerpts from the 1986 film about Clive Wearing, "Equinox: Prisoner of Consciousness."

New Londoners: Reflections on Home

2008-10-29T11:15:00.002Z

[From: http://www.photovoice.org/html/galleryandshop/publications/]

New Londoners: Reflections on Home is a collection of photographs and stories by young refugees who have been mentored by a selection of London's most established and up and coming photographers.

The book was launched by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, at the Tate Modern on October 20th.

The New Londoners come from around the world, with diverse experiences and backgrounds. They are aged from 13 to 23, and come from ten different countries. The participants all share one common experience: they are young refugees separated from their families and homes, who are re-building their lives in London.

Photographer mentors on the project are: Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Gayle Chong Kwan, Marysa Dowling, Suki Dhanda, Jillian Edelstein, Liane Harris, Crispin Hughes, Anna Kari, Anthony Lam, Jenny Matthews, Jo Metson Scott, Sarah Moon and Ilona Suschitsky, and Othello de Souza Hartley.

The book has additional contributions by writer Hari Kunzru, broadcaster George Alagiah and curator Charlotte Cotton.

Through the work we glimpse a side of London little seen and understood, from the point of view of some of the city’s newest arrivals. It reflects on their experiences of home: both the place they have left and the place where they have arrived.

For further information about the New Londoners project, click here.

Monto: The Dubliners

2008-10-23T15:23:00.003+01:00

For the craic... but seriously, this is part of popular heritage. And as a provocation, should we be engaging with these popularisations?

In loving memory... Heritage goes digital

2008-10-23T15:14:00.003+01:00

From the Irish Times (23/10/2008)

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1023/1224625123961.html

PADDY CLANCY

IRISH WAKES have gone online. Ireland’s first online memorial site [www.inlovingmemory.ie], launched in recent weeks, offers families and friends of dead people an opportunity to record the life stories and their memories of loved ones in words, pictures and video.

The site is the brainchild of business partners Hugh O’Donnell and Joe McGuiggan.

Contributors can tell the story of their nearest and dearest by uploading anecdotes, shared memories, photos, music and video clips.

Mr O’Donnell, a restaurant and bar owner in Killybegs, Co Donegal, said: “The site continues online the tradition of the Irish wake where stories are told and memories shared.”

Co-director Mr McGuiggan, a Derry-based Library Service Executive, said: “Irish people have a strong love for remembering their dead as seen by attendance at wakes, putting memorials into newspapers and by sending out memorial cards.

“They now have the opportunity to tell the life story of their loved one in a very visual and interactive way, and record it for future generations to appreciate.”

The website allows the person who creates the tribute to have editorial control of all shared memories which come in from friends and family. Nothing can be added without being screened by the tribute controller. One of the first tributes on the site commemorates the life of Killybegs fisherman Noble Morrow, a father of four who died in 1986 at the age of 39.

His brother Norman uploaded this memory: “On one occasion, he came off his motorbike on the way back from the shop. While our parents fretted over his cut knee and what might have happened, all that bothered Noble was that I didn’t open the Coke until it had settled after bouncing all over the road.

“Coming off the bike was history, drinking the Coke was more important. Noble was talented in many ways but I suppose Noble’s greatest gift was that he never had a bad word to say about anyone.

“Wherever he is now, I’m sure the front yard is cluttered with bits of engines, a few buoys, a few battered air tanks and the compressor will be humming away doing its job!

“Noble, we miss you.”

Anne Keeney-Amir who lives in New York was devastated on hearing of the sudden death of her sister Bernie in Killybegs in 2005.

“When a friend submits a photo I have never seen before or a shared memory I hadn’t heard about,” she said, “I feel I am part of a community that remembers what a wonderful person my sister was.” The website can be visited at www.inlovingmemory.ie

A crisis in urban creativity? by Dr Franco Bianchini

2008-10-23T12:34:00.002+01:00

From: Artfactories (http://www.artfactories.net/article.php3?id_article=1109)

A Crisis in Urban Creativity?
Reflections on the Cultural Impacts of Globalisation, and on the Potential of Urban Cultural Policies

by Dr. Franco Bianchini

Paper presented at the international symposium The Age of the City: the Challenges for Creative Cites, Osaka, February 7th-10th 2004

ABSTRACT: The work in progress presented at this symposium considers some aspects of the cultural impacts of globalisation (1) on contemporary Western European cities, and some of their implications for urban creativity. It concentrates on trends which have the potential of undermining the conditions for urban creativity. These include the following: the dispersal of urban functions and the problem of the ‘hypertrophic’ city; the emergence of ‘non-places’ and of the ‘experience economy’; the reduction in leisure time for people in work; the consequences of ’information overload’ and of the ’audit explosion’, particularly for public sector organisations. The paper then considers the creative potential of a further trend: the increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural composition of cities in the UK and other European countries. The concluding sections of the paper discuss aspects of the potential of urban cultural policies in counteracting an emerging crisis in urban creativity and innovation.

by Dr Franco Bianchini
International Cultural Planning and Policy Unit
De Montfort University
The Gateway
LEICESTER LE1 9BH
ENGLAND

Read the full essay here:

http://www.artfactories.net/IMG/pdf/crisis_urban_creatvity.pdf

Archaeology of the contemporary

2008-10-22T10:30:00.003+01:00

I came across the following excerpt from James Clifford's The Predicament of Culture, reproduced in Interpreting Objects and Collections, Susan Pearce (ed), Routledge (1994):

Clifford is writing about the way we value objects in collections and notes how we find "intrinsic interest and beauty in objects from a past time" and how we assume that "collecting everyday objects from ancient (preferably vanished) civilisations will be more rewarding than collecting, for example decorated thermoses from modern China or customised T-shirts from Oceania...Temporailty is reified and salvaged as origin, beauty and knowledge". (261-62)

This pretty elegantly sums up, I think, a central issue for the practice of archaeology in contemporary contexts. Of course, an interesting question is whether shifting the focus onto the contemporary for the purposes of collection can constitute merely another order of reficiation--the reification lying more in the system of collection than the things collected.

Dublin divided? Deep ecologies and social complexity

2008-10-16T09:15:00.003+01:00

I was recently thinking about popular conceptions of Dublin urban geography. The most dominant one is probably the North:South divide. Quoted from a site found from a quick Google search for 'Dublin inner city culture' (www.streetsofdublin.com):

"Traditionally, a north versus south division has existed in Dublin with the dividing line provided by the River Liffey. The Northside is generally seen as working-class, while the Southside is seen as middle and upper middle class. Dublin postal districts reflect the North/South divide, with odd numbers being used for districts on the Northside, e.g: Phibsboro is in Dublin 7, and even numbers for ones on the Southside, e.g: Sandymount is in Dublin 4." (Read the rest of the page here)

The article does go on to give a deeper history for divisions and also discusses East:West issues. What I was thinking was, however, that I feel our project should make some direct statements about the problems with such reductive and essentialised divisions. Bifurcating the urban fabric creates dangers territorial conceptions and in many way reifies boundary - almost regressing debate to early 20th century siedlungsarchaologie (settlement archaeology) - advocating notions of Gustaf Kossinna's kulturkries (culture area).

I feel our project - through the optics of social research, archaeology and art - has the potential to offer constructive complexity to the conception of Dublin's geography. Most critically, it should add two more dimensions to the standard 2D boundary lines of N:S bifurcations. Adding both depth and temporality.

It's an ambitious goal, but one certainly attainable - developing a process that both captures and enlivens the flow of a 4D conception of social space in Dublin in which all civic participants can feel they have representation and a stake.

Let the comments and debate begin...

Re-murmring about Murmur...

2008-10-13T19:58:00.004+01:00

Food for thought - I thought we might consider a previous inner-city oral history project - Murmur. Instigated by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority as part of of the 2007 Bealtaine Festival, we saw a series of metal green ears add to the fabric of Dublin's inner-city streets. The project concept was simple - record locals who would in their own voice recount stories and histories of the local area. Passers-by could ring the number on the green ear and key in a code in order to have the recording played.

Today the green ears remain a residue of the installation, and the recordings are still available online at the project website.

What I wanted to reflect on was the difficulty in designing local story-telling projects using new media while foregrounding issues of accessibility. Granted, many people today do have mobile phones - so it is understandable that this could be used as a component of the project. It is a playful idea to have the voices of the 'past' recounted through new and emerging media often personally associated with contemporary or future plans.

But that these local phone calls would cost credit I think is a flaw in the design. It is unfortunate that a freephone number could not have been used to provide more easily - less costly access. However, a counter argument would be that the phone credit/call cost would be something of a ticket price for the performance. However, the costs do not support the project, they support the corporations that own the phone companies.

I do not mean to fault Murmur directly, but I feel that with inner-city storytelling projects, care must be taken in designing the access to the stories. It is not enough merely to put the stories of local communities on display for those who can afford to access them.

(Disclaimer - if anyone has further information about the project and whether they did indeed provide for some gifting over of outcomes to the communities involved, please leave a comment)

Streetmapping: Artist Lian Bell from Out of Site Festival 2007

2008-10-07T14:59:00.007+01:00

Dean Street pavement, Dublin
Sunday 26 Aug
12pm-6pm

I planned to draw a map in chalk on the pavement of the Liberties area of Dublin, by asking passers-by for advice. The Liberties is an old area of the city full of intricate streets which have seen vast development recently and which looks set to continue at a hectic pace. The local community is an eclectic mix of older people, people who’ve lived locally their whole lives, immigrants, students and young professionals moving in to newly built apartment blocks. There is a lot of social housing in the area, with the reputation of being one of the poorest parts of the city centre, as well as having a recognised drug problem. However, parts of the Liberties are being gentrified and local businesses combine traditional markets (Thomas Street and Meath Street) with architecture and design studios, art galleries and antique shops (Thomas Street and Francis Street).

I moved into an apartment on Francis Street recently and don’t know the layout of the area at all well. To draw a map, I’d need a lot of help from passers-by. I was a little worried that if it didn’t work, or if something negative happened I would still be living around the corner. I did an hour of mental preparation before I headed out. It was a warm Sunday afternoon at a busy intersection with a wide pavement. Businesses nearby were open – a video, tanning and internet shop, a bookmakers, two pubs (Fallon’s and Nash’s), a Spar and a gallery.

As soon as I’d written a sign on a sandwich board (Hello. I’m drawing a map of the area. Can you help?) someone stopped and asked what I was doing. A young man living locally who was so enthusiastic about the idea even before I’d opened a box of chalk I was quite surprised. He promised to return later in the afternoon and even to bring me some water.

I drew the opening part of the map: what I could see from the pavement of the intersection and the street signs that were visible. I marked where we were with an X. Though I do know many of the main roads (probably about 15% of the map) and their names, I only wanted to fill in what people told me to, with the spelling mistakes, the warped scale, the missing streets.

Apart from one bathroom break, from about 12.15 to 5.45 I had about four 5 minute breaks – the rest of the time was filled with talking to people, explaining the project and filling out the map. In terms of getting people involved the event was far more successful than I had imagined it would be. People stopped and talked for long periods of time, argued with each other about the layout and names of streets, phoned and texted friends for help, returned through the afternoon, went to get other people to come and help, went to find out the names of streets they had forgotten. There were no negative comments (to me anyway) and the enthusiasm people had for the idea was a little overwhelming.

I regret not having more time to take stock of what was going on, maybe make a note of some of the stories and local history that people came out with and ask more about specific things that arose.

Attitudes towards the map ranged from puzzle-solving to friendly competition. Some people focuse¬d on how to make sections join up, some wanted to have their street put on it, some wanted to just make sure they added some street or placename to it. Some people sounded concerned with my request for ‘help’, asking if I needed directions. A couple of people offered maps.

All kinds of people stopped – tourists, locals, Dubliners, immigrants, kids, architects, a local historian, a couple of junkies, an alcoholic street artist, students. Irish, French, Swedish, German, Polish, American. Men came back and forth from the two pubs. A passer-by insisted on giving me 5 euro. Someone bought me a coffee. A young man from the bookies and a young woman working in a gallery around the corner came back throughout the afternoon. People chatted to each other around me.

Someone started talking about how there wasn’t enough street art in the area. A woman living in Blackpitts said the council should have a ‘real’ map of the area carved into the pavement – she was always giving directions to people who were lost around the area. Someone suggested varnishing the chalk map to the pavement. Some people were happy for me to cheat the map in the areas where the scale didn’t match up, others got me to rub out bits that were wrong.

The first man came back and talked about doing a version based around disabled access. One woman marked in a local food co-op with its opening times. One kid wrote his name in a corner. A man marked the layout of a local derelict church and an underground river. I gave a couple of boxes of chalk to kids and one to the street artist, who said he liked to draw Vikings and then played Raglan Road on a tin whistle for me.

At 5.45pm I packed up. Someone in the doorway of Fallon’s offered me a pint, but I was tired and went home.

-Posted courtesy of Lian Bell

The archaeological sensibility - a radical example from Argos

2008-10-06T16:49:00.003+01:00

The Metamedia Lab at Stanford University under the stewardship of Michael Shanks has supported the development of some rather provocative reflexive practice in archaeological experssion. One example is Archaeography - the digi-project managed by Christopher Witmore (now a fellow at Brown University).

Stated briefly, the archaeological sensibility is that capricious sensation (both embodied and intellectual) experienced by humans today which suggests that things encountered index or embody complex temporal possibilities. The archaeology of the contemporary past suggests that by seeing the past as a complex of things experienced today, the past is liberated from boundaries and distinctions built into its rendering.

Simply stated, things from different times, or of different peoples or just things which wouldn't normally be thought of as existing together are approached as co-temporal happenings. A mesolithic flint or a medieval wooden comb or a piece of rubbish left from last week's binmen are all of the same temporality because we experience them together, presently, now, as part of living of the contemporary. And by experiencing pasts in this liberated contemporary sense, many new possibilities could be made evident - such as in Chris Witmore's photographic studies of squatter's dwellings in Argos, Greece.

Are Chris' photos any less 'archaeological' than an excavation of a bronze age settlement?

Taking things seriously

2008-10-02T14:53:00.003+01:00

I've been reading a rather compelling book before bed. In Taking Things Serious: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance, Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes have compiled a series of narratives from designers around the world - revealing their personal attachments to some everyday things that, for them, have more-than-everyday-meanings. The book resonates with an insight I gained from reading John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity. In Law 7, he reflects on the importance of emotion in design - saying that people have emotive connections to things:

"Aichaku (ahy-chaw-koo) is the Japanese term for the sense of attachment one can feel for an artifact. […It] describes a deeper kind of emotinal attachment that person can feel for an object. It is a kind of symbiotic love for an object that deserves affection not for what it does, but for what it is.” (Maeda 2008, 69)

Although we could deconstruct these sentiments as being essentialist or reductive, what they do point to is the importance of acknowledging emotive affect within the study of 'things' (read in here - 'material culture').

Perhaps this acceptance or exploration of emotive affect (and subsequent engagement/management of it) is what has been lost through the abstraction and sanitisation (emotional) of things through archaeological science to become 'data'.

Sean Lynch | Recent Finds | Gallery of Photography

2008-09-29T10:25:00.002+01:00

September 25th to November 9th 2008
http://galleryofphotography.ie/exhibitions/sean_lynch.html

Sean Lynch’s artworks investigate a wide range of almost-forgotten historical subjects. Using his practice as a platform against the cultural amnesia that surrounds varied topics, Lynch’s research, photographs and installations disclose and build upon fragile stories and objects, magnifying traces of an often-idiosyncratic existence.

Views of Dublin, a new artwork commissioned by the Gallery of Photography, is presented as part of the exhibition. In cut-out archival photographs and an accompanying publication, Lynch traces and interconnects a series of events taking place during and after the making of the film, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in Dublin in spring 1965. A replica of the Berlin Wall was constructed in Smithfield Market. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton stayed at the Gresham Hotel for ten weeks, attracting much attention around the city. Afterwards, the materials of the wall were recycled to form part of Saint Christopher’s School, the first Travellers’ school in Ireland. Situated in Cherry Orchard, the school was organized and run independently of the Department of Education by civil rights activist Grattan Puxon.

Provoking an active remembering that reinterprets the role of history, Lynch’s speculative energy circulates in several more artworks. A collection of photographs and artifacts consider the remains and rumours surrounding Richard Long’s artworks in the Irish landscape; Joseph Beuys’ Irish visit of 1974; the last street Walter Benjamin saw; and a vandalized statue of Bill Clinton.

About the artist: Sean Lynch was born in Kerry in 1978. He studied history at the University of Limerick and fine art at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt, and is currently an artist-in-residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He has completed solo exhibitions at Heaven’s Full, London (2008), Galway Arts Centre (2007), Limerick City Gallery of Art (2007), and has featured in recent group exhibitions at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork and Office Baroque, Antwerp.

Sean Lynch was awarded the Gallery of Photography Artist Award for 2008. An article previewing the exhibition written by Isobel Harbison, appears in the autumn edition of the Irish Arts Review, media partner for the Award.

Opening reception: Wednesday September 24, 6pm

Artist’s Talk: Wednesday October 22 at 1.15pm

Gallery of Photography is open: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm and on Sunday from 1pm-6pm

All events and access to the Gallery are free.

For further information, press scans or to interview the artist, please contact: Tanya Kiang, Gallery of Photography 353-1-6714654, tanya@galleryofphotography.ie

The Magic Tree

2008-09-23T20:30:00.002+01:00

After seeing Ursula's play this past weekend, I thought we might start some conversations. Here's some provocation.

Summary: The story of a love born in a very dark place between a man who wants to belong and a woman who wants to be forgotten. On a stormy night, they shelter in an abandoned summer home on Dublin's coast and tentatively discover what unites and divides them. Written and directed by Ursula Rani Sarma.

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The Edinburgh Fringe Fest review:

In The Magic Tree, Irish-Indian playwright Ursula Rani Sarma evokes a cliff-edge ride along an emotional path with as many twists and turns in it as a mountain road in Cambodia, where the action ends up. At the beginning, we are introduced to the two central characters: Lamb (a young woman, running away from home) and Gordy (a young man, naïve, suggestible, different). It’s a stormy night and Gordy has followed Lamb into a deserted squat. They get talking. (READ THE REST HERE)

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Here's Sarah Keating's interview with Ursula from the Cork Midsummer Fest...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2008/0701/1214842852446.html

Material Musings

2008-09-19T18:20:00.001+01:00

I have a question re Ian's recent email outlining his prooposed approach to material culture in the context of Placing Voices. The question circles around the stated intention to abjure the traditional academic approach of documenting and creating 'typologies or evidenced based argumentation for the existence of specific identities'. Instead, immersion in the affective practices of the flaneur and recorder of stories is proposed. My question is: are the outcomes of these experiential encounters to be reshaped/processed into academic interpretations or do they exist as self-explanatory stories or evidence in their own right? Are these experiences to be converted in any sense into analysis? I'm not clear on this.This question is partly provoked by Daniel Miller's latest book The Comfort of Things which I'm reading at the moment. Miller's book takes the form of a series of elegantly crafted short stories of encounters with people in their homes in a London Street. The people, their homes, their contents and their lifeworlds are evoked in pieces that could easily pass for short-stories in the conventional literary sense. But Miller is professor of Anthropology at London University, and I'm having difficulty identifying the particular disciplinary practice involved here. Does the new epistemology involve an increasingly blurred line between the creative and the analytical?

Material Culture Mission Statement: Subjects not objects

2008-09-19T18:15:00.000+01:00

I am interested in encountering and documenting the material culture (things) of the contemporary Monto as subjects of inspiration/inquiry rather than as scientific objects of interrogation/data.

The modern construction of a ‘material culture’ as something distinct from the embodied experience of the contemporary – as something separate or ‘other’ – I feel is an impediment to the articulation of the complex, constellated stories of places such as the Monto and Clanbrassil Street.

Rather than attempting to document and create typologies or evidenced based argumentation for the existence of specific identities, my work will focus on things as inspiration for storytelling.

The appearance of things and the story of their encounter and their subsequent ability to act as mnemonic devices, triggering old and new stories (both ‘true’ and ‘false’ and a mixture between) will the subject of study.

It is intended that this ‘show and tell’ approach will allow for a rich synergy with the digital storytelling aspects of the project as well as the sociological interviews.
The strategy for the study will include:

-Walks of the area (as a flaneur) with frenetic and iterative encounter with things of the streetscapes

-Show and tell sessions where members of the community will have the opportunity to bring forward things which they feel are significant

-To be conducted in collaboration with Alice and Darcy’s work

-Case-studies of specific residences/addresses

-These will be determined through the identification of study areas by Tadhg and Paddy’s research and Cormac and Alice’s ability to arrange access to premises

-These will incorporate both conversations with the residents in some instances as well as personal explorations of the items of the house

-Ideally it will be possible to discover how things are utilized in different ways to create stories (Stories with things)

-Some will be representative (e.g. mantlepieces) – supporting identifications with places/peoples/memories

-Some will be hidden (e.g. piles of things or bottoms of boxes) – unintended memories, forgotten traces, obscured identifiations

-Some will be incidental/accidental residue (e.g. rubbish)

All things will be photographed digitally, with the intention of uploading them either into a weblog or into a storytelling engine or photo-spatial engine (e.g. Photosynth).

The deliverable will be a Story with Things – showing how both ‘old’ and ‘new’ things interact creating complex environments for memory activation, identification maintenance and ideological representation. In this way, it should provide a process-based time-slice of the lived negotiation of contemporary space.

Photosynth - Navigating Pictures

2008-09-18T11:54:00.013+01:00

Photosynth is recently developed software which allows you to upload and knit together a number of images of the same location into a navigable cyberspace. This video depicts the application of the software to the site of Stonehenge by National Geographic. This is something we could apply to the Monto or Clanbrassil Street - creating an online, navigable streetscape which could incorporate photographs of traces or objects of archaeological interest that might otherwise be glossed over.

Story Architectures - Jonathan Harris

2008-09-18T11:54:00.009+01:00

Jonathan Harris has dedicated his life to collecting and sharing stories. He has developed some of the most inspiring and cutting edge story-telling media around. This recent talk at TED demonstrates how powerful digital storytelling platforms can be. We could possibly deploy something similar in capturing stories in the Monto or Clanbrassil Street.

His project The Whale Hunt shows the different possibilities for mobilising digital photographs and metadata to construct navigable digital photo-stories - creating different story-lines by select specific components. Have a play through the hunt HERE. Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the screen to play with the different modes (mosaic, timeline, pinwheel, etc.).

His and Sep Kamvar's project - We Feel Fine - is an amazing demonstration of the possibilities of public blogging to capture a sense of how we feel about the world - creating shared communal stories. The We Feel Fine applet allows you to dive through a storm of contemporary emotions - shared publicly to the world. (This one is my personal favourite.)

StoryMapping

2008-09-18T11:54:00.006+01:00

Darcy Alexandra passed on this amazing project to me. The Center for Digital Storytelling has an interesting project exploring the application of digital storytelling to mapping and place-understanding. StoryMapping in their own words is:

"StoryMapping is a call to action. We are taking the lessons learned from more than a decade of work in Digital Storytelling, and integrating it with an emergent tool set of digital mapping technologies now available to the broad public.

Whether it is geo-tagging images on Flickr, building story-based GoogleMaps, developing Windows Live virtual tours, organizing local cell phone walking tours, or the permanent imbedding stories into locations to be received by Bluetooth and other wireless information, we can now create maps that share stories about the places that matter to us, and place our life stories in countless geographic contexts."

It could be an exciting possibility to explore similar synergies between archaeological visualisation techniques and digital storytelling in the context of Placing Voices / Voicing Places. This could help erode divisions between tangible and intangible in the context of heritage - as well as undercut temporal divisions between the 'past' and the 'present' in the understanding of management of heritage - particularly in diverse complex inner-city areas.