The events in the first week explored some of the central thematics of the Aftereffects and Untold Histories programme.
DISCUSSION/Q&A: Setting the Scene
Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Annie Fletcher, Sarah Glennie, Johanne Mullan
Thursday 15th April, 4pm - 5.30pm
This discussion set the scene of the Aftereffects and Untold Histories programme with an opening conversation between Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Annie Fletcher, Sarah Glennie, and Johanne Mullan, followed by a Q&A, elaborating on the context of the L’Internationale project. The event reflected on the research into 1990s Irish performance art commissioned by the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and approaches to archiving performance art practices by the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL).
About the speakers:
Dr. Jennifer Fitzgibbon is administrator at The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) is a public research resource dedicated to the documentation of 20th and 21st century Irish visual art and design. NIVAL collects, stores and makes accessible for research an unparalleled collection of documentation about Irish art in all media. NIVAL’s performance art collections consist of files on artists, subjects and venues as well as Special Collections on artists such as Brian Connolly and organisations such as Women Artists Action Group and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios.
Housed in NCAD and resourced through a strategic partnership between NCAD and The Arts Council, NIVAL is committed to making our collections accessible to everyone for exploration, education and research. NIVAL sustains its collections through active collaboration with artists, designers and cultural organisations. Its collection policy includes Irish visual art from the whole island as well as Irish art abroad and non-Irish artists working in Ireland. Information is acquired on artists, designers, galleries, arts organisations and institutions, critics and other related subjects. The collection contains documentary material in all formats including books, catalogues, videos, slides, artists’ papers and ephemera in print and digital format and is central to NCAD's commitment to supporting new thinking and research in the fields of contemporary art and design.
Annie Fletcher is currently Director of IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art). Previously she was Chief Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and a tutor at de Appel, Amsterdam, the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and the Design Academy Eindhoven. Fletcher originally initiated the touring exhibition "The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis" at the Van Abbemuseum in 2019. Other recent projects include “The Universe Flickered” at SALT Istanbul, "Trade Markings; Frontier Imaginaries Ed No.5" and the solo exhibition of Qiu Zhijie "Journeys without Arrivals", the "Museum of Arte Util" with Tanja Bruguera, and a retrospective of Hito Steyerl. Other solo presentations include Sheela Gowda, Anna Boghiguian, David Maljkovic, Jo Baer, Jutta Koether, Deimantas Narkevicius and Minerva Cuevas. She curated "After the Future" as eva International Biennial of Visual Art in 2012. She has developed the long-term projects, Be(com)ing Dutch (2006-09) and Cork Caucus (2005) with Charles Esche. She was co-founder and co-director of the rolling curatorial platform If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution with Frederique Bergholtz and Tanja Elstgeest (2005-10). In 2012, she was Curator of Ireland’s Contemporary Art biennale EVA International and is regularly called upon to sit on International juries, including the 2019 Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin; the 2016 Irish Pavilion at Venice; the 2015 Köler Prize, Estonia; the 2014 Turner Prize, UK; the 2013 Leopold Bloom Art Award, Hungary; and the 2011 BC21 Art Award, Austria.
Professor Sarah Glennie is Director of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland
She is a distinguished leader in the arts in Ireland and internationally, working professionally in the cultural realm for twenty years, with extensive experience of directing and working in a number of public cultural institutions in both Ireland and Britain.
Prior to NCAD she was Director of The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2012-2015) and previously as Director of the Irish Film Institute (IFI) (2008-2012), where she oversaw a major redevelopment programme. At both organisations she developed new programmatic and organisational strategies that led to significant audience growth and greater financial sustainability. Among other roles, she was also Artistic Director of the Model Arts and Niland Gallery in Sligo (2005-2008), Commissioner of Ireland's participation in the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 and Curator with the Henry Moore Foundation Contemporary Project where she curated many other notable visual art projects, both in Ireland and internationally, including Romantic Detachment at PSI MOMA in 2004 and Stopover at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Her curatorial experience includes exhibitions and projects by Olafur Eliasson, Dorothy Cross, Paul McCarthy, Duncan Campbell, Jaki Irvine, Tacita Dean and Isabel Nolan amongst many others. In 2018 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Bristol in recognition of her contribution to the arts.
The National College of Art and Design offers the largest range of Art and Design degrees in Ireland at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and is the only Irish university institution specialising in Art and Design.
Johanne Mullan is Curator of Collections at IMMA. She has curated a wide range of exhibitions, most recently IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre (2019-2020); Gaze as part of the Freud project (2018) and Willie Doherty, Remains, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea (2017). She is currently co-curating The Narrow Gate of the Here-Now: 30 years of the Global Contemporary as part of IMMA’s 30th birthday celebrations and plays a lead role in the Museum’s Commemoration Programme and the IMMA Collection and Archive Digitisation Project.
She has worked closely with a number of artists on commissions and curatorial projects such as Daphne Wright, The Ethics of Scrutiny (2018) and Trove, Dorothy Cross Selects from the National Collections (2015). She has written extensively on the IMMA Collection and contributed to a number of publications such as Art and Architecture of Ireland, Volume V Twentieth Century.
KEYNOTE PERFORMANCE/Q&A
For God’s sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country*
Maria Fusco
Friday 16th April, 7pm - 8pm
“Every historian of the multitude, the dispossessed… is forced to grapple with power and authority and the limits they set on what can be known, whose perspective matters, and who is endowed with the gravity and authority of historical actor.”
Saidya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
Maria Fusco presented For God's sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country, a performative reading of work-in-progress experimental opera about the peacelines in Ardoyne, Belfast where Fusco grew up, that she is currently developing with the Royal Opera House, London. As a first-hand ‘contemporary witness’, Maria discussed the driving question in this work about how socio-political concerns, in addition to affording subject, can structure how a performance work is produced. Working iteratively across discipline, challenging normative forms of trained vocal annunciation, uncovering of marginalised voices within history, probing the imperfect fit between voice and world, she asked who is allowed to speak and in what way? Maria’s live, undocumented performance was followed by a 20-minute Q&A.
*The title for this keynote is a quote by Reginald Maudling, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
About the speaker:
Maria Fusco is a working-class Belfast-born interdisciplinary writer based in Scotland. Her award-winning writing crosses the registers of fiction, performance and theory and is translated into twelve languages; she is founder of The Happy Hypocrite journal. Her latest books are Legend of the Necessary Dreamer (2017) described by Chris Kraus as “a new classic of female philosophical fiction”, Give Up Art: Collected Critical Writings (2018) of which James Elkins had written, "after a book like this, most nonfiction seems curiously unaware of what writing can be.” She is Professor of Interdisciplinary Writing at the University of Dundee, previously Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths and currently Visiting Professor at the University of Art & Design Offenbach am Main, Frankfurt. More information about her work can be found at www.mariafusco.net
NIVAL ARCHIVAL SELECTION
This week’s selection from NIVAL, curated by Jennifer Fitzgibbon, presents some key moments from the early years of performance art in Ireland, suggesting that these years of ‘setting the scene’ were marked by a culture of experimentation, collaboration and exchange. Material presented from NIVAL’s artist files and special collections will include Nigel Rolfe, Alastair MacLennan, Danny McCarthy and Brian Connolly, among others.
Aftereffects and Untold Histories, Politics and Spaces of Performance since the 1990s aims to explore the story of performance art in Ireland in the last thirty years. The programme cannot, however, claim to present a comprehensive history of this time and instead represents a starting point. You are invited to participate in the conversation by contributing your memories and stories from this time. NIVAL is interested in hearing from artists and practitioners active during the 1990s who wish to submit performance documentation or information. You can find further information on NIVAL’s acquisitions policy and procedures and information on how to book an appointment at NIVAL.
The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) is a public research resource dedicated to the documentation of 20th and 21st century Irish visual art and design. NIVAL collects, stores and makes accessible for research an unparalleled collection of documentation about Irish art in all media. NIVAL’s performance art collections consist of files on artists, subjects and venues as well as Special Collections on artists such as Brian Connolly and organisations such as Women Artists Action Group and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios.
Housed in NCAD and resourced through a strategic partnership between NCAD and The Arts Council, NIVAL is committed to making our collections accessible to everyone for exploration, education and research. NIVAL sustains its collections through active collaboration with artists, designers and cultural organisations. Its collection policy includes Irish visual art from the whole island as well as Irish art abroad and non-Irish artists working in Ireland. Information is acquired on artists, designers, galleries, arts organisations and institutions, critics and other related subjects. The collection contains documentary material in all formats including books, catalogues, videos, slides, artists’ papers and ephemera in print and digital format and is central to NCAD's commitment to supporting new thinking and research in the fields of contemporary art and design.
