IRL show at IMOCA from 15th July until 30th July 2011

Our collaborative film which was made as part of the project is to be shown at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin this week. The show runs for a couple of weeks so if you’re in the vicinity be sure to drop in.

Liminality installation shot 2. Photo by Susan Walsh

Volunteer agreeing to a Time Donation. Photo by Susan Walsh.

Liminality installation shot 3. Photo by Susan Walsh

The change over for a time donation by a volunteer. Photo by Susan Walsh

Liminality installation shot by Susan Walsh

Eimear Walshe (2nd year sculpture student at NCAD) and Sinead Sweeney today intervened in the discursive area of the project. I invited them to respond in some shape or form to the projects subject matter. Their responses were startling:

Eimear started the ball rolling with ‘Homesickness’ (2011) a mixed media installation.

'Homesickness' (2011), Eimear Walshe, mixed media installation: plinths, Mac book pros

This work understands transplant, in terms of uprooting and migration, the removal of a living thing from its environment and implanting it into another living, moving environment. Not fully belonging to one or the other, it is positioned with one foot on either side of a wall. The video attempts to transmit this through the position of its subject, being in both places, at home and in the gallery, but also being in neither place, the internet. It demonstrates Limonality in a play between aura and engagement, being on the cusp of communication, nearly but never fully letting itself go.

Later in the afternoon Sinead performed the haunting ‘Killing Time’ which she described as :

My piece is a performance,where I am reciting my inner thoughts while being in hospital.Although Patients may be lying still in hospital beds,their minds are always working,always wandering to different places.There is a distance,a stiffness,between patients and visitors when in hospital,as patients enter into a deeper inner place of thought and reflection.While reciting,I will be moving through the chairs but only time will tell if I will make it to the 15th chair,to top of the waiting list before my time is up,but I am hopeful,holding out for hope and if no hope,no fear,i hope.

Both were a fantastic response to the projects subject matter, no easy thing to do at short notice. Tomorrow between 2pm and 3pm Jennifer Flannagan (2nd year sculpture, NCAD) will install ‘State’ (2011) a site specific video piece. Jennifer says :

State’ considers the issue of state of mind versus the sate of body. As a space of uncertainty and discomfort the mind confines the body and the state of health which is aided through the donation of the organ, creating an uncomfortable membrane . This internal conflict is considered through the medium of latex in a video piece. Within a latex cylinder, the subject acknowledges this boundary however slowly becomes irritated by it’s presence and slowly begins to overcome it through its destruction.

‘State’ (2011), Jenniger Flanagan, video still.

Do come along if you’re in the vicinity.

It was remarkably weird to be in the space, in a hospital bed while these film shorts were being screened. All that was visible from my side were shadows and vaguely surreal moving colours. The effect was one of over hearing a conversation, an account which I tried simultaneously to listen and avoid. Meanwhile, people outside continued to stare, occasionally banging vigorously on the window to try and catch my already wandering attention. Welcome to the twilight zone.

The endless (and it does seem endless) time is starting to drag. You’ve no idea the relief when someone kindly agrees to take my place, even if it’s only 15min. It feels like heaven to get up and walk away without a second glance. Sheer unadulterated heaven.

My replacement. Photo Tim Hunter

Transplant (2008), 35min by Tim Wainwright and John Wynne. The Transplant project began with a year-long residency at Harefield Hospital, one of the world’s leading centres for heart and lung transplants. Working closely with photographer Tim Wainwright, I recorded patients, the devices they were attached to or had implanted in them, and the hospital itself. “In various ways, heart and lung transplants blur the easy distinctions between life and death, between being alive and not. The transplant unit at Harefield is a place where all these issues cross, where dying and living has a different and more elastic meaning than in the world outside.’ Charles Darwent (Art critic, Independent on Sunday).

I used to say it was gold, but really it’s a platinum one, Platinum (2011) 21min, by The Living Gift Transplant Support Group and Ciara McMahon. This film resulted from a 9month collaboration between the Living Gift members and Ciara McMahon. It discusses life after transplantation.

Seminar participants

At the seminar this morning Tina Kinsella presented some research on Bracha Ettinger’s art practice, philosophical and psychoanalytical position. Using these as a compliment to a reading of Jean Luke Nancy’s personal account of his heart transplant. Evesdropping from the bed on the other side of the dividing curtain was a strange halfway place for me. I could hear the discussion but not see the images under discussion, the body language and eye contact of the participants. It felt as if I was present, but not … a frustrating, liminal place to be.

Above Left to right: Tim Wainwright, John Wynne, Ciara McMahon. Photo Marie Soffe.

Last nights screening of ITU by John Wynne and Tim Wainwright provided impetus for a engaging and stimulating discussion. Facilitated by Francis Halsall, topics included, amongst other things, whether a ‘medicalised’ subject is able to choose freely to participate within participatory art projects, audioscapes – with associated sound levels – within an ITU and the success or failure of visual imaging (still/moving) in recording/communicating an individuals life experience to a third party. Thought provoking , complex stuff as always.

Body as a site of Liminality photo : Marie Soffe

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0205/1224289071205.html

“LAST YEAR saw the worst decline in organ donation on record. A 35 per cent drop meant there were just 58 deceased donors who provided organs for some 243 transplant operations, a significant reduction compared with 2009.

For those waiting for much-needed kidneys, hearts, liver and lungs, the figures represent a severe setback to their hopes of avoiding premature death. It means the Republic has dropped back to transplant activity levels not seen since 1989…

NCAD Gallery 11.00 – 13.00 h
Free to the Public

‘I was made “other” there in that space with them.
In that space in the margins, that lived-in segregated world of my past and present, I was not “other”.
They did not meet me there in that space. [...]
They say that the discourse on marginality, on difference has moved beyond a discussion of us and them.
They do not speak of how this movement has taken space.
This is a response from the radical space of my marginality.
It is a space of resistance.
It is a space I choose.’

hooks, bell (1990) ‘marginality as a site of resistance’ in Ferguson, Gever, Min-ha, West (eds.) Out There. Marginalisation and Contemporary Cultures, New York: The Museum of Contemporary Art & Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 341 – 343.

In connection with Ciara McMahon’s project in NCAD Gallery, and in co-operation with Mick Wilson and Edia Connole from the Dead Public GradCAM seminar group, I would like to discuss the concept of liminal space as transformative space. One option to look at in-between space is to perceive it as hybrid, where the borders of home and the world become confused and result in displacement – a space often associated with victimhood. In order to shift that perception and to look at the space of the limen or threshold as a site of intense emotional value, bell hooks’ attached text ‘marginality as a site of resistance’ has been chosen for discussion. To enter a space of resistance can make you understand; and to understand both, margin and centre, makes you powerful.

Silvia Loeffler

Today saw the first seminar of the project. A gentle start to a full week.

Aislinn O’Donnell opened a dialogue on the thought of Bernard Steigler and Simone Weil in relation to differing forms of attention…. relevant stuff to experiences of education but also to how confinement is potentially experienced. Deep vs Hyper attention. Which is it to be? There’s nothing like withdrawing internet access, limiting the technology of a book to raise the relevance of such questions.

Catherine Barrgary followed with a magic realism performative story gently questioning what it means to be human or rather what we imply by calling ourselves human. As a proud dog owner (is it possible to own another species?) I’m aware my dog can urinate in public broad daylight without fear of incrimination …. Humans don’t (usually) …. but humans are animals aren’t they?

Is it possible to escape a narrow definition defined by genetics, history and culture?