Aoife Desmond

bury our hearts at the bend of the river is a feature length 16mm spilt screen film work funded by an Arts Council Film Project Award. This experimental documentary film traces the River Lee in County Cork from source to sea through three journeys; by foot, by boat and through performance. The first walking journey starts at the source in the Shehy mountains and follows the river downstream, passing Lough Allua, The Gearagh nature reserve, a hydro-electric scheme with reservoirs at Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra, Cork city centre, through the inner and outer harbours to the open Celtic sea. This journey emphasises the river as experienced from land, parts of the riverside are impassable by walking, much of the land is in private ownership.. The second journey follows the river by boat, a quicker passage, requiring collaboration with boats people such as Naomhóga Chorchaí. This journey downstream requires a different knowledge of the river, its weirs, currents and tides. It prioritises the river as a moving body of water. The third journey selects parts of the river as locations for site responsive performance improvisations. These improvisations have been devised in collaboration with local dance/performance artists Siobhán Ní Dhuinnín and Kanako Haru. Here the embodied relationship is less quotidian and communicates a felt and somatic understanding of the riverscape.

‘bury our hearts at the bend of the river’ explores a local landscape in a way that prioritises lived and felt experience. The slow tracing of the river allows for a deep sensing of the river’s terrain contrasting industrial, agricultural, urban and rural contexts. The film explores questions of human and non-human interdependence at a time of ecological crisis through a prioritisation of experiential knowledge. Plant and animal life are layered within human adaptations of the land and waterscapes. Co-existence with a river patterns our living habits. Research into the history, community and political contexts that shape the rivers form are foregrounded in the voiceover and soundscape .

Cinematographers: Aoife Desmond, Andrew O’Reilly, Peter Martin and J.P. Quill.

Sound recordists: Billy Kemp, Will Bock and Sean Phair.

Performers: Aoife Desmond, Siobhán Ní Dhuinnín and Kanako Haru. With special appearances by Macha Shewolf (drums and flute) and Solamh Kelly (drums)

Screenings include world premiere Cork International Film Festival November 2023, International premiere Marienbad Film Festival, Czech Republic, May 2024, Lima Alterna Film Festival, Peru, October 2024, Sirius Arts Centre one off screening in conjunction with solo exhibition of 'sirius: harbour's mouth' March/April 2024.

Short 16mm film work commissioned by Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh. East Cork. A companion film to 'bury our hearts at the bend of the river'.

unbuild, unbuild, unbuild, unbuild

Repetitive actions, daily routines, machine time, space and time slip and in-between there is a pause, an opening, a breath. A female body responds to industrial and colonial architectures through a punctuation of gentle movements, undulating, waiting, watching, tracing, a river runs through, a day unfolds, ships pass. An empty room, an empty gallery is filled with the distant hum of machines, water lapping and bird cries. A quiet performance marks the space, calling between the exterior and interior. The surrounding harbour is caught here between production, transport and pockets of natural shoreline. A layered built environment formed through residential, merchant, maritime and military histories. Here is an invitation to unbuild, remember the rivers source and journey to the open sea, lying beyond at the harbours mouth.

Performance, direction, edit by Aoife Desmond / Cinematography Peter Martin / Sound recording Billy Kemp / Sound composition Aoife Desmond & Billy Kemp.

Screenings include Aoife Desmond focus programme at Sirius Arts Centre as part of Cork International Film Festival 2023, solo exhibition at Sirius Arts Centre March/April 2023, IMMA Earth Rising Festival September 2024.

Mná and Sons is a site-specific film directed by Aoife Desmond. It combines a critical essay response to Kyrl's Quay, Cork city with inserted performative actions. The film is structured around seasonal changes, documenting evolving plant, bird and insect life, development of architectural interventions and transformation of a city centre site from a state of vacancy to temporary inhabitation. The site-responsive performance sequence 'gold woman never said this would be easy' presents a series of solo and collective improvisations which ritualise and acknowledge environmental loss and transition. Aoife Desmond is joined by Macha Shewolf (voice, drums and movement), Kanako Haru (movement) and Dan Walsh (drums). These contrasted visual elements are framed with layers of field recordings, vocal loops, acoustic interventions and voiceover. Aoife Desmond has filmed in 16mm, with additional performance cinematography by Narayan Van Maale, Denise Woods and Andrew O’Reilly with sound design by Fiona Sheil. This layered approach is used to create a film work which captures abstract and reflective aspects of the collaborative urban research project TEST SITE.

https://testsitekyrlsquay.ie/film-performance/

TEST SITE is a collaborative project and space co-created by architect Ailbhe Cunningham and Aoife Desmond in 2020. This project transformed a city centre derelict site into a dynamic public space through architectural interventions and a programme of performances, talks, workshops, music events and screenings. The project focuses on cross disciplinary explorations into ecology, urban planning and architectural heritage with community engagement at its core.

https://testsitekyrlsquay.ie/

River Action #1 took place daily between April 15th and 20th 2019 on Lavitt’s Quay, Kryl’s Quay and Pope’s Quay. This collective performative action was intended as an act of solidarity with the River Lee against proposed flood walls and existing processes of pollution. Each performer stood holding blue fabric with her/his eyelids covered in silver leaf as symbolic signifiers of water. Ranging from 2 to 8 performers daily at high tide, the performers sang an improvised score to the river while keeping eye contact with their river partner at an opposite quay step. Each performance lasted between 15 and 30 mins.

Performers: Aoife Desmond, Helga Deasy, Amy Prendergast, Maria Svensson, Cathy Walsh, Diviane Helena, Sara Murphy, Darragh MacFiachra, Suzy O’Mullane, Lisa Cahill, Natasha Bourke, Siobhain Ni Dhuinnin, Isobel Bernhart, Elisa Gallo Rosso and Christina Feiersinger

Photography: Harry Moore and Christina Feiersinger

Concept and direction: Aoife Desmond

River Action #2 took place on June 15th 2019 as part of the Art, Activism and Environment: Conversations and Community event at Glucksman Gallery grounds, UCC organised by Bodies of Water and Perform Theatre UCC including Global Water Dances. This collective durational performance responded to The Glucksman’s Gallery and Grounds using blue fabric and eyelids covered in silver leaf to signify water. Combining improvised voice work and the ‘Unchained Melody” song by the Righteous Brothers. This performance drew audiences attention to the River Lee and it’s flood plains and stood in solidarity with the river against existing processes of pollution and proposed flood walls.

Performers: Aoife Desmond, Carol Healy, Darragh MacFiachra, Roslyn Steer, Cilla Woodhouse, Macha Shewolf and Natasha Bourke

Photography: Cassandra Eustace

Concept and direction: Aoife Desmond

Through this research project ‘shaman non shaman’ I explore what I am calling the non- shaman. The non-shaman, like the traditional shaman, uses nature to heal and to transform consciousness. The non-shaman (you or me) does this through relying on shared skills and embodied knowledge. This art project and body of research is a response to ecological crisis, trauma, and metabolic rifts with and within nature. I use the figure of the non- shaman as a visualisation of collective solidarity around contemporary ecological awareness. In tandem with critical research I have developed a new body of work in the form of sculpture, performance and film. Test performances have been presented at Eco-cosmology & Spirit of Resilience conference, UCC 2018, Zolala Klub #25, Cork 2018 and an Amanda Coogan masterclass organised by Firkin Crane dance residents Junk Ensemble, Cork 2018.

Performance: Aoife Desmond

Camera: Natasha Bourke

LInked to this research is the solo performance/sculpture installation Fig, Mask, Blanket developed in a movement residency at Greywood Arts, East Cork in 2019. Through this solo performance work I adopt an alter-persona who is a semi-magical part human, part animal figure drawing on archetypes inherent to animism, yet also relating to memes from pop culture and science fiction. There is a form of fictioning or othering happening through minimal costume elements such as gold and silver leaf face decoration, animal print and colour. Vocal loops and movement loops are interspersed through a strange landscape comprising an old wool blanket, a dead fig tree resembling antlers, a piece of wood become a mask, pink linen thread and a square of golden foil. Through this charged landscape a dance unfolds in which a catharsis can take place.

Performance: Aoife Desmond

Camera: Rob Monaghan

Shot at pre-dawn at Drombeg stone circle in West Cork, a woman faces the camera and blinks and claps alternatively. A simple rhythm represented by clapping on the soundtrack is juxtaposed with a local mans stories of the stones and who built them. A contemporary proposition for a ritual that can connect to the ancestors of this site and yet be of present relevance. This short film was shot on 16mm fomapan reversal B&W stock supported by Deep Time a filmmakers opportunity curated by Mayes Creative in association with Cinestar, LUX and Plymouth University Media Research. Funding support kindly provided by Arts Council England and Feast. Lux are providing distribution support.

Comprising drawing, sculpture, film and photography this work takes as it’s starting point moments of renewal and transformation within the everyday.  Linking to acts of clearing and renovation in the artists family home, everyday occurrences, such as the play of light through the building, the change and growth of the garden and the potency of household objects to become sculptural material or material for performance actions are the basis of a formal enquiry. These new works play between abstract and literal interpretations of deeply familiar territory.

RetroReflection focuses on the interplay between a building, it's river bank location and the research within. ERI (Environmental Research Institute) is a UCC building dedicated to environmental scientific research located on the floodplain of the River Lee on the outskirts of Cork city. The building itself though the main protagonist of the film and project becomes in some sense invisible, an interface. The building is revealed predominantly through it's reflective glass surfaces linking the interconnected interior and exterior spaces. The film has been entirely shot on location in 16mm between March 2015 and January 2016. The medium of 16mm is referenced in the voiceover, the splicing and assemblage of film and transfer of light to celluloid are an integral part of the conception of the film. The filmmaking process through this traditional medium links to the laboratory work documented in the filming. The critical aims for this project investigate man made divisions between interior and exterior, between natural and artificial, between human and non-human, questioning these potentially damaging distinctions.

Salford Diamonds is a short Super 8mm film (2015) shot on residency at Islington Mill a collective artists studios in Salford City, Greater Manchester. Paddy Shine from the band Gnod (based at Islington Mill) composed a new album Ayn Sof, made at the same time as Salford Diamonds, an extract is used for the sound track. This film work is envisaged as a form of City Symphony film, making parallels between the urban location in flux and the artists working there. The Salford area is shifting rapidly through redevelopment and has a complex industrial and working class history.

PARIS DREAMING (2015, 8mins, Super 8mm film and 35mm photographic slides, B&W, sound)
Paris Dreaming consists of a dual projection of photographic slides and Super 8 film with a separate sound recording. The film, slides and sound document a series of walks through the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie and Parc Zoologique at Vincennes in Paris. The filmed encounters with the animals and birds in captivity focus on the relationship between the camera's gaze and the uncomfortable position of the viewer. The soundtrack recorded in the menagerie and the courtyard at the Centre Culturel Irlandaise juxtaposes radio and birdsong in the foreground with Paris demonstrations in the background. This film has been redeveloped with the addition of a bilingual text written by Desmond which is overlaid in subtitle form. This text has been informed by an ongoing conversation with the philosopher and editor of Semiotexte Sylvere Lotringer. The film explores duality, interior and exterior, caged and uncaged, through the methodologies of image, sound and text until these distinctions blur.

This was a site-specific installation at The Guesthouse project space. Aoife Desmond used her February/ March residency time at The Guesthouse to resolve and develop her ongoing project The Fifth Bardo. The Fifth Bardo represents ‘the luminosity of true nature’ and focuses on the positive potential within wastelands and a state of intermediate existence. The Fifth Bardo is a term from Tibetan Buddhism.

The Tibetan word Bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state", "in-between state" or "liminal state". Used loosely, the term "bardo" refers to the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth. According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one's next birth, one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, it exists in bardo. Chönyid bardo (Tibetan): is the fifth bardo of the luminosity of true nature, which commences after the final 'inner breath'

Spontaneous Togetherness is the title of the current work from The Fifth Bardo, found objects and collected materials are playfully assembled. Obtuse and minimal, a delicate balance is achieved. The studio project space becomes a three dimensional palimpsest changing each day. Through photography the studio work is linked to the nearby wasteland site Lady’s Well, formerly a holy well now disused and used as a street drinking spot. Desmond seeks in her practice to achieve a subtle kind of alchemy and transformation. Seemingly banal everyday materials are seen as talismanic. 

The untitled dance performance by Desmond references Joseph Beuys performance “How to explain pictures to a dead hare”. This performance aims to embody and enact a tangible shift from one state to another, from darkness to light, from death to life.

Passage Migrants / 2013 / 30mins / colour & B&W / sound / Super 8 mm

Passage Migrants is an essay film work by Aoife Desmond, documenting Poolbeg peninsula, Dublin Bay. Utilising the camera as a walking diary, the work explores movement and aspects of the physical and transitory landscape. A voice over spoken by Regan O’Brien and written by Aoife Desmond combined with breath and field recordings create the soundscape. Based on the artists physical passage through the peninsula, this film critiques and observes the particular intersections between trade, development, waste management, energy production, human usages and nature reserve at Poolbeg. It can also be seen as a love story between a scrap of land and a body of water. 

This film work was commissioned as part of Landing Place a series of commissioned new works in response to Poolbeg peninsula and Pigeon House precinct in conjunction with Dublin City Heritage Council funded by an Arts Council Project Award and curated by Rosie Lynch and Hollie Kearns (Commonage). The four new works by Aoife Desmond (film), Ema Nik Thomas (performance), Fiona MacDonald (sculpture) and Sven Anderson (sound) were presented onsite at Pigeon House Precinct for one weekend May 25th -26th  2013. 

This site-specific installation was created for the vitrine gallery Fragil curated by Guillermo Espinosa in Madrid. Utilising lichen covered branches, a mimosa tree, linen thread, a dead rose-ringed parakeet and a coloured wall drawing, this temporal installation responded to walks through Madrid's streets, public gardens and park areas. The starting point was the wall drawing, a corresponding work on paper made in Ireland used this series of coloured diamond shapes in pink, yellow, green and blue. This drawing became the template for the found elements in Madrid, the mimosa tree = yellow, the lichen sticks = yellow, the rose-ringed parakeet= blue and green, the linen threads = pink. This response to the walked city, revealed these found colours which in themselves pointed to complex local ecologies. Both the Mimosa and the rose-ringed parakeet though common and strikingly pretty due to their strong colours are both seen as invasive species. The Mimosa thrives in wasteland sites and the parakeet competes with the native bird populations for food. Looking for moments of joy, I found Madrid at that time to be tinged with sadness. 

Only the world remains / 2013

Only the world remains is a series of drawings in which I have redrawn/painted gems and precious stones from a colour plate in a well used Standard English Dictionary from LFTT library. I am interested in the idea of study and contemplation. The precious stones function as a metaphor for desired knowledge and the act of study becomes a form of interior investigation or quest. The precious stones reveal something hidden that can be unearthed or discovered. I have chosen to draw/paint them onto discarded silver foil chocolate wrappers because this sets up a relationship between waste matter and precious material, a kind of alchemical transformation occurs. The metallic surface of the foil wrappers emphasizes the luminosity of the precious stones and also hinders the drawing process. The precious stones relate to inaccessible matter and also to distance. Reminiscent of science fiction images of the landscapes of other planets they imply the impossibility of truly understanding the universe. They are installed illuminated by a single light shone on mirrored Perspex reflected back onto the drawings. This creates a closed loop of reflection, looking back onto oneself.

Drawing and sculptural installation as part of Things in Translation: The Legs Foundation group exhibition at the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda. The LFTT (Legs Foundation for the Translation of Things*) Library is a four hundred year old library which was rescued from near abandonment and reinvigorated as an independent traveling art space. It was once the private library of a group of Franciscan Monks. Now as a mobile archive and movable venue it forms a unique context and body of material for initiating creative projects.

Meva's Garden / 2012 / 17mins / colour / sound / super 8mm

This film documents Meva, a Bosnian woman and her garden on a piece of vacant land opposite her house in North inner city Dublin. The audio uses recorded conversations with Meva, site recordings and fragments of narrative to tell Meva's story but also the artist's own relationship to gardening and wasteland sites. The film documents the garden in Springtime and the adjacent vacant plot of land which was used for the temporary garden project "Flowers for the Altar" by Aoife Desmond as part of The Five Lamps Festival in April 2012.  Meva's Garden is shot on super 8 with an audio soundtrack made collaboratively with Karl Burke. Part documentary part self reflective essay film, the film explores overlaps between Meva's story and the artists own, both have the desire to create a garden from a wasteland site. Both realise that the act of creating a garden on a site which is not owned by them can only be temporary. This temporary garden becomes an act of trying to create a sense of belonging or rootedness where that is not possible. 

This site temporarily became  a community garden, 'Five Lamps Garden'. Both gardens are situated at the corner of Dunne Street and North William Street next to St Agatha's church in the heart of the Five Lamps, Dublin 1. This film was commissioned by Five Lamps Festival and funded by Dublin City Council Arts Office.

Buddleja Forest / 2012 / 6 mins / colour / sound / super 8mm

 This film focuses on Buddleja plants which are in bloom in May and which take over vacant lots and decaying buildings.  The soundtrack combines an ambient sound recording from the Botanical gardens with four contrasting interviews. Buddleja Forest documents buddleja plants at three different stages of growth in Dublin over the span of a year. By filming plants that I encountered as part of my daily journeys in the city I have created a document of not only the plants but their habitats, vacants lots, walls and empty buildings mainly but also a part of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. The audio recordings are with four practitioners in different disciplines whose specialization leads them to have a unique perspective on the plant. Anne Varley (herbalist), Alan Mee (architect), John Parnell (botanist) and Jane Stout (botanist) talk about the plants healing properties, role as a signifier of neglect, an urban coloniser and food source for bees respectively. A final voice recording of  Harriet Sheehy reading an extract from Walden by Henry David Thoreau 'Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard plots—now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;—the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died—blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors.'

This work was presented as part of Conquested at Temple bar Galleries curated by Aoife Tunney. The installation at Temple Bar Gallery was intended to create an intimate viewing space so that the viewer may add their own layer of interpretation to the experience. The film may be interpreted differently according to which interview you listen to.

'Displaced Ballast Mound' was made in 2011 for the group exhibition Conquested curated by Aoife Tunney. An accompanying film work 'Buddleja Forest' was exhibited in Temple Bar Galleries, 'Displaced Ballast Mound' was exhibited in an old warehouse 'The Paper Store' on Sheriff Street. This piece was originally conceived in response to the mounds of earth that dot the Dublin Docklands and reference the history of shipping when earth was used to balance the weight of ships and then off loaded on the destinations shore. The Paper Store warehouse was once used to house goods that were waiting to be transported outwards by ship. Mounds of earth in Dublin now are more commonly a by product of construction and deconstruction. This interior mound contains waste matter from local offices such as Treasury Holdings stored in The Paper Store, residue from the recent economic boom. Relating specifically to trade and commerce, the artist created a mound of earth and office debris which visually referenced  mounds of earth on Dublin port, which suggest ballast mounds as ships would have displaced earth on shore from other countries when empty with cargo. These ballast mounds often introduced new species of flora into the existent ecology.

"Day 4 - I take the road that forks off the ‘Ossians dead end’ road. I know according to my map that this will loop back to Cushendall. Again it feels wrong to be a pedestrian, these roads are not for walking on, only driving.  Sunshine and many greenhouses, sheds and structures seen from the road, over hedges. The road curves and rises, every bend seems to curve higher and further away from Cushendall, no sign of where it will loop to. Mist descends, that sunshine is back in Cushendall now, eventually far across the valley a parallel road appears but no sign of the one that I am on connecting to it. Cars pass, headlights on because of the mist. A cyclist appears, luminous in yellow, some likeness in speed. He passes too and slowly weaves out of view, revealing the link to the parallel road far ahead. Walk on, walk on, walk on. Reach the other road and turn in the direction of Cushendall again. Still slow but seems a bit faster because it is a return not a going. A car stops and an elderly couple offers me a lift, I am very touched particularly as the back seat contains two sleeping babies, but I decline their offer, saying that I want to walk which is true, but it is far longer and more arduous than I had imagined. Walk on walk on, past the pieced together Nordic looking house perched on the edge, walk on walk on, how many more turns till I come to the point I had reached before and return to the village."

Extract from a diary from a residency at The Curfew Tower in Cushendall 2011 curated by Catalyst Arts Belfast. I took a series of photographs of greenhouse structures in the landscape around Cushendall. I use the term green house loosely to include glasshouses, polytunnels, lichen green painted sheds and a boat overgrown by foliage. 

“Nature, too, shall live its own life. We must beware not to disrupt it with the color of our houses and interior fittings. Yet we should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together into a higher unity.” Mies van der Rohe

For this piece I have questioned the relationship to nature in modernist architecture. Essentially a research piece this installation references the work and writings of iconic modernist architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. I am reflecting on the influence of their thinking on contemporary attitudes to plants and landscape within built environments. I have situated this work in The Plastic House as it is an example of a contemporary building that maintains a clear lineage to early modernist ideals. This work subtly presents a human relationship to nature and built space through the use of plants, photography, drawing and text. Situated in the study area of the house, several of the images chosen refer to spaces for contemplation and study. Extracts from Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ and Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ are also included.

For the film and interdisciplinary work ' Orchard Revisited'  I have revisited the surviving apple trees planted at SCR Garden from 'Temporary Refuge' an interior white flowering garden exhibited at Four Gallery in 2007.  In revisiting and filming 'The Orchard' I am presenting the possibility of this orchard and garden as an example of 'authentic dwelling' as understood in the writings of Heidegger.

Through this project I worked with a group of formerly homeless men to create a series of photographs and text that explored urban spaces and park areas in Dublin, frequently used by homeless people to sleep and hang out in. The photographic images documented sites that had been previously frequented by the participants. The images documented the inhabited sites/landscapes. The photographs were taken both by the participants and Desmond, the participants guided the photography sessions through well known sites such as Stephens Green and Phoenix park from a homeless persons perspective. The photographs present the reality of sleeping rough in Dublin and to juxtapose this reality by exploring links to Romantic texts about living with nature, living simply and close to the elements. Extracts from Thoreau's book Walden are presented with the photographs. Analogue photography skills were developed through this project including darkroom skills. A selection of the final photographs and texts was presented at Electric Picnic, Stradbally Co.Laois as part of ‘Lifes no Picnic on the Streets’ a collaborative arts event organised by De Paul Ireland.

“ Urban Foxes” is a collaborative project initiated by the dancer Ema Nik Thomas and visual artist Aoife Desmond. The starting point was a number of site-specific dance sketches performed by Ema and recorded on Super 8 film by Aoife at Grand Canal Wharf, Dublin in 2009/10. Centering on an abandoned graving dock that acts as an accidental amphitheatre, this project focuses on an area both rich in history and a pivotal site in the current development of Dublin Docklands. The series of 5 dance sketches explore a physical and imagined relationship to these sites. References to early Chaplin films and the prevalent alter ego of the urban fox are hinted at through the movement and filming. A rich world of interior imagery informs the movement and filmmaking decisions. In order to develop this work further a third collaborative partner has been added the sound artist Sven Anderson. His contribution so far has been to take a number of field recordings from the performance sites, which can be used in the films, theatre performances and exhibition installations. These three artists will develop the work for a range of presentation modes; onsite and offsite performance, film screening and exhibition.

 ( RELOCATION OF LIMERICK WASTELANDS) 

This site-specific project for ev+a comprises 18 photographs documenting Atlas Avenue and its environs, screen-printed onto the glassed corridor of Limericks City Hall. Atlas Avenue is situated off the Dock Road beside Limerick harbour. The surprisingly poetic name sits in contrast to its mismatched collection of vacant and active spaces. By nature peripheral like many industrial areas it is in some sense rendered invisible. The French term for wasteland ‘terrain vague’ - unclear or cloudy territory - seems apt. 

 Though an early 1990’s design, the glassed corridor of Limericks City Hall is reminiscent of a Victorian winter garden. This post modernist structure functions as an interior street, obliquely linking to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project based on obsolete shopping arcades in Paris. The photographs portraying the ruined and worker areas of Atlas Avenue form a reverse of the bureaucratic city’s official front.

In ‘Submerged Garden’ a lone heron visits the manmade ponds of the “Jardin des Plantes’ in Paris each day.  A strange displacement occurs, the gardens slip in and out of order and disorder. Some days the ordered classified garden is neglected, full of weeds and wild birds. On other days, cleared beds and labels re-assert a representation of nature. The heron regards his reflection and ignores the passers by. This piece consists of an interior pondscape and a simultaneous projection of Super 8 and slide footage shot in the ‘Jardin des Plantes’ in 2007. 

  Trespass is a collaborative project that engages research and action with forgotten urban space, abandoned landscapes and sites under transformation. Trespass is a response to neglected green sites in the city, overlooked they have become diverse ecologically and in their urban uses.  Over a period of 4 years Aoife Desmond & Seoidín O’Sullivan have worked with several sites in Dublin City. Methods of intervention in these sites include film, photography, soundand live actions. This investigative art project combines social research with poetic action.

These super 8 films are part of an interdisciplinary project that traces the paths of migrating birds, particularly Brent Geese that link Ireland, Iceland and the Arctic. There is a poetic strand to this practice that explores human and aviary connection or collision. A personal migration or temporary nomadic route is juxtaposed with that of the birds more established and fixed paths. Through a trusting of a magnetic pull, an aesthetic journey becomes physically enacted. The working process explores migration and travel as a pursuit of desire. The films are shot in Ireland at Wexfords’ North Slob, in Iceland between Landmannalaugar and Thorsmork and the sound is recorded at Belfast Harbour.

This work consists of a simultaneous projection of photographic slides and Super 8 film within a temporary cinematic environment with an accompanying research booklet. The footage is the result of numerous walks through and around Blackrock Park between early January and the May 2008. Through this documentation I am tracing changes in light and season and building up a subtle relationship with the park. The park exists in several states of transition; between land and sea, industrial and wild, Victorian and future development. The park has several boundaries of road, rail, water, wasteland and building. The status of this piece of land is blurred between these merging boundaries. Within this fragile ecology several protagonists; 4 herons, 2 swans and a lone egret live and survive. Their daily routines of feeding, resting and flying between sites play out within this shifting environment. The natural ecology of the park is that of a salt marsh like Booterstown Bird Sanctuary. It is the park’s relationship to it’s former geography and to the sea that I have emphasised in this work.