Reflections from a series of four residencies completed by Micheál O'Connell at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in 2021 and 2022 to create new work in response to an Arts Council Commissions Award granted in 2020. Initially the work forms a solo exhibition, 'System Interference', which opened at Uillinn on 17th Sep. 2022, and will then, thanks to Touring and Dissemination funding, travel to Wexford Arts Centre (from Aug. 2023) and Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (opening Nov. 2023).
Thursday, June 30, 2022
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Residency 4, Day 8: 'AI will be responsible for reducing [car accidents] one of the leading causes of death in the world.' - Mark Zuckerberg
Robot artists Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler sent some pictures from the studio visit they made a month or so ago, with the pleasing message, 'we found some pictures of the studio visit at your place in Skibbereen. What a great moment :)'. I don't think I'll bother posting them or sharing them yet. A hell of a lot is happening. Rather than share everything here in advance, I'll encourage people to turn up on Saturday, 17th September at 2pm, for the opening event. This though, begs the question, about what to post about (here). Maybe the issue of 'craft' is worth mentioning (again!!!)?
My craft is in striving to not make (or craft) anything. In other words, the extent to which I find myself making or crafting something is the extent to which I have failed. And, believe me, it takes huge effort not to make anything.
Thinking about those 'sky dancers' with blowers and the possibility of having one outside the art centre, on the roof of the connected café, during the exhibition, there are so many things to consider. Intuition says there's something wrong with the idea of having one at all. A word GIMMICK positioned on the side of it, might, 'em, 'work'. ('It works', another on of those problematic phrases often thrown about long ago.) That would be funny (-ish), but then how does a 'whacky dancer' contribute or somehow connect to the general themes? Maybe text like WIND POWER, or WIND ENERGY would be better. Then again having text printed on the side constitutes designing and that's against the principle just discussed. To do it properly would involve searching until some whacky sky dancer jumps out, so to speak, and seems appropriate to the show. I can't imagine what that would look like. It might take months to find. There might be nothing out there. Besides, words like mad, crazy, whacky or complex undermine the intentionality too. These are stresses and strains in Mocksim's life.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Residency 4, Day 7: 'In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.' - Michel Foucault
Another day has passed. At a certain point every human activity ends with a spreadsheet, and so it has been here.
Monday, June 27, 2022
Residency 4, Day 6: 'The possibility of a thinking machine and the actuality of the human agent should be exposed as a false dichotomy.' - Reza Negarestani
Been brewing titles for the upcoming show:
- Find Yourself - 2022
- Insecurity Camera Dance -2021
- Irish Signatures (More PODS) - 2019
- Soi-veillance - 2022
- Uillinn Pipes - 2022
- Typical Cross Section - 2021
- Array - 2021
- Insurance - 2021
- Boring 2 (Drive-by) - 2022
- Inflatable Wind Turbines - 2022
- Stupid Plugs - 2022
- Battery Powered Wind Farm - 2022
- #camponagolfcourse Tent - 2022
- #camponagolfcourse Poster - 2022
- You are Trespassing - 2022
- Insecurity Guards - 2022
- Immersive Interactive Installation - 2021
- Signage 2 - 2022
- Battery Power - 2022
- Solar Power - 2022
- Wind Power - 2022
- Hand Power - 2022
- Making Wind - 2019
- Breaking Wind - 2022
- Dutch Stamp - 2020
- Turbogolfing Real - 2021
- Turbogolfing Real Still - Probably won't do this
- Turbogolfing - 2019
- Turbogolfing Still - 2021
- Turbogolf Proposal - 2021
- Signage 1 - 2022
- Spare Balls - 2022
- Ball on Pipe - 2021
- Reserection (Easter Rising) - 2022
- Balling - 2021
- Loading Bay, and the Rest - 2022
- Green NRG - Probably won't do this
- Killed Negative - 2022
- Turbine Kick - 2021
- Autofocus Feedback Loop - 2021
- Die Cast! - Probably won't do this
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Residency 4, Day 5: 'Art will always be a site divided between subversion and institution, contemplative passivity and active rupture, the State and the crowd, creation and the market. An important work displaces these frontiers but it cannot abolish them.' - Alain Badiou
Today involved getting up close to wind turbines again, driving over my reading glasses and smashing them to smithereens, getting new ones in Macroom (2 for €12!!), chatting with and listening to the wisdom of Miriam O'Connor on the question of residencies in a) a cattle mart, and b) a field (of her own), listening to the world premiere of Amy Rooney's Pendulums and Sundials, and even more.
Saturday, June 25, 2022
Friday, June 24, 2022
Residency 4, Day 3: 'Video... displayed in a temporal manner might be considered as theatre whereas video displayed... as part of an installation... results from the abandonment of the movement of time in favour of an emphasis on the spatial dimensions of exhibition.' - Bridget Crone
I got another phone call from Google HQ in Dublin last week, this time about the traffic jam promoted as tourist attraction, and business, on Google Maps. ‘Hello, is this Skibbereen Traffic Jam?’, they asked. The call took me by surprise, for some reason I was made to feel guilty, and lost my nerve. Rudely, I hung up on the caller but regretted it immediately. The location/business was then removed from Maps.
But why should I accept this? Fair enough, Skibbereen Traffic Jam is not yet a successful business, in the profit-making sense, but I do see it as a tourist attraction, and doubly fascinating, in that you can simply observe it, the vehicles, the facial expressions, bathe in its murmuring engine sounds, OR you can participate in it yourself (ideally with a car but possibly on foot). For my part, I had completed a street photography project in connection with the jam, and a film will be shown as part of the exhibition opening at @uillinnwestcorkarts the West Cork Arts Centre on 17th September.
In addition, I had begun, in discussion with experienced entrepreneurs, to think up ways of expanding the enterprise by producing actual Traffic Jam, in different flavours, to sell at the famous farmer’s market and/or directly to drivers trapped in their cars. So I have put the location back up on Google Maps as Plódú tráchta sa Sciobairín: https://goo.gl/maps/g6G3uWoNEWZT5yfn9
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Residency 4, Day 2: 'As long as I live I will have control over my being.' - Artemisia Gentileschi
It is not always easy to know what to do. In fact, arguably, it is surprising people are motivated to do anything at all. That is considering there is no meaning in the universe, especially. About a year ago, I arranged to meet the person who ran the MAFA I completed about two decades ago. He'd had health problems including a period, speculatively due to the medication prescribed, of having zero drive. It sounded terrible, to my ears unimaginable. The ordinary way he described it got me thinking. Perhaps curiosity, and the energy to pursue interests, is not special or mysterious, but simply chemical or equivalent. On the other hand, and this is maybe Beckettian, once you have decided life is worth living, or a slightly better option than not being alive, then that slightly becomes enormous, if not infinite. Leaving out the question of pain or love, if you accept that not being alive would be one-hundred percent nothing, then existence and consciousness becomes everything. So, it is a binary thing. Which would you like: nothing or everything? I'll have everything please. And it is enchanting, it has its charms, this existing business.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Thursday, June 2, 2022
UCC #DigiArt22 Event: 'Does the fixation on 'making' reflect a lack of interest in the world?'
Some humming & hawing but the point about expanded notions of digital art for #DigiArt22 comes across:
The Programme & Book of Abstracts are archived on CORA: https://cora.ucc.ie/handle/10468/13144
Brilliant event it was!
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