Occupy Issue 6

nov-apr 2010/2011
OCCUPY PAPER ISSUE 6 A
TITLE(basenine)
issue 6
in-flux
sheenagh geoghan
julie merriman
erica eyres
emmet kierans
videogram limerick
six memos
state of the union
millepide
luke fowler
1 OCCUPY PAPER ISSUE 6
editorial
Occupy Space located on Thomas Street,

Limerick was set up in 2009 to facilitate an
ever expanding need for artistic exhibition
spaces in Limerick. It is an artist-led project,
run by a revolving board of members on a
voluntary basis. Occupy Space is committed
to delivering a relentlessly energetic
It’s all change at Occupy Space. Welcome programme of exhibitions and events.
to the new look Occupy Paper. Both the
paper and gallery have recently gotten a Our intention is that the space will be a
redesign and new logos courtesy of our central axis for a wide variety of creative
lovely resident designer Sheena Flynn. people to experiment and present their
Occupy Space would like to welcome our work. The organization encourages
new board members Jessica Kelly, Noelle openness and accessibility to artists and the
Collins, Eoin Francis McCormack and John visiting public alike, and aims to provide
Galvin and we also have exciting news of an open solid platform for the visual arts.
the launch of our artist-led art fair hosted Our program involves hosting exhibitions
by Occupy Space in May on page [1]. of emerging and established artists, with a
As usual, this issue also contains a round- strong emphasis on exhibiting those based
up of recent exhibitions and events in the in Limerick. Occupy Space also hosts other
gallery as well as reviews from around the artist-led projects such as artists talks,
country. Featured articles include our event seminars and collaborative events with other
nights Videogram[35]and Millepide[39] creative practitioners and organizations.
and articles from Six Memos by Shinnors
Scholar and curator Mary Conlon[19], This visual art journal is intended to expand
artists Helen Horgan[27] and James on the exhibitions and events happening in
Merrigan[21] and a review of Trompe le the gallery as well as provide a platform
Monde by David Brancaleone[31]. We for critique and dialogue between emerging
also have a review of Luke Fowler’s show and established artists in Limerick and
in TBG&S by Curt Riegelnegg[41], an beyond. Artists, critical writers and other
art writer from Pittsburgh currently on the art practitioners are invited to submit to
MAVIS programme with IADT. Enjoy! the journal and engage with it as a means
-Ed of testing, experimenting, developing and
expanding on new ideas and concepts.
OCCUPY PAPER ISSUE 6 2
contents
in_flux artist-led art fair
26-29 may 2011 3
julie merriman measured fall
11-27 nov 2010 5
sheenagh geoghan dweller
2-18 dec 2010 9
erica eyres compulsory touching
13
emmet kierans make.believe.
13-29 jan 2011
six memos: trompe le monde

3 feb- 4 mar 2011 19
35
videogram limerick
alan o’keeffe and joanna hopkins
state of the union
16 mar-1 apr 2011 37
millepide
1 apr 2011 39
luke fowler pilgrimage from scattered points
41
temple bar gallery and studios
18 feb -26 mar 2011
In_flux
traditional Art-Fair format in which non-profit
artist-led spaces present exhibitions rather
than commercial galleries striving to sell
work.
In_flux aims to encourage collaboration

between spaces of similar orientations,
to create new opportunities for artists
locally, nationally and internationally and
endeavours to promote the strength of
visual culture in Limerick.
In_flux will be launched on Thursday 26th

May in Occupy Space. A series of events
will accompany the exhibition programme
including Pecha Kucha, Network Forums,
artist talks and visits to local studios.In_flux
is partnering with Limerick City Gallery of
Art (LCGA) and e v+ a to present Double
Act, a series of conversations, screenings
and some reflections on the collaborative
In_flux is an exciting event happening this process with guest appearances by a
May in Limerick City. Occupy Space will be number of interesting artists, curators
hosting an art fair/exhibition that will gather and other creative types. The Double Act
together 10 artist-led project spaces from Programme will happen at Occupy Space
Ireland and Europe. This temporary exhibition from May 26th to 28th. Full details to be
hub will bring over 30 practitioners together announced on the LCGA website
for one weekend of art-presenting, viewing www.gallery.limerick.ie
and networking.
LCGA has also extended the run of How
Occupy Space has invited artist-led spaces Capital Moves a new body or work by
from all over Europe that offer an alternative artist duo Kennedy Browne, to coincide with
framework for art practices, and presenting the In_flux event. Originally commissioned
a community where ‘doing-it-yourself’ and for the Lodz biennale Poland (2010) the
experimentation are key activities. Artist-led work is partly a response to a computer
spaces are vital, energetic elements of the factory relocating to Łódź in Poland from
visual art fabric of many cities. Collectives of Limerick, Ireland.How Capital Moves is
like-minded emergent practitioners working curated by Annette Moloney. Open at
collaboratively toward the aim of platforming Istabraq Hall, Merchant’s Quay, Limerick
interesting exhibitions and contributing to from 9.30 to 5.30 throughout the duration
a larger cultural discourse. This exhibition, of In_flux.
consisting of pop-up galleries from each For more details on this see www.gallery.
artist-led space, makes reference to an non- limerick.ie and www.eva.ie
artist-led art fair

Participating Artist-led Spaces include: The project offers participating spaces the
opportunity to tour a recent or upcoming
exhibition to Limerick; to represent as a
1646 The Hague
gallery in an artist-led art fair; to utilise
Basement Project Space Cork large exhibition area as a pop-up gallery;
Block T Dublin to network with visiting and local artists; to
Catalyst Arts Belfast contribute to a symposium and to network
126 Galway with high-profile international curators.
Monster Truck Dublin
For more information visit
Transmission Glasgow
www.occupy-space.blogspot.com
SOMA Contemporary Waterford Launches Thursday 26 May 7pm
Transition London Occupy Space,Thomas St Centre, Limerick
Wolf Art Rotterdam Art fair runs 27-29 May 10-6
in_flux@Thomas St Centre, Limerick

julie merriman
Measured Fall, Disruption Rowlandwerft IV & V(2010), Installation shot, All photos courtesy of the artist.
Photography by Dermot Lynch and Deirdre Power
curated by annette moloney

measured fall
Julie Merriman lives and works in Dublin. She studied Fine series 2002-2006), I photographed a
Art in Falmouth School of Art and recently completed an MA small picture still attached to a section of
in Visual Arts Practices at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art interior wall; it was an image of a ship in
Design and Technology. She has exhibited in Ireland and full sail. I photographed the sequence of
England, including solo shows at the Pavilion Theatre, Dun the picture falling from the tenth floor and
Laoghaire (2008) and West Cork Arts Centre (2006). Group this formed the beginnings of an idea that
shows include Inscape, Galway Arts Centre (2010); Public lead to an investigations into what might
Gesture, The LAB (2009); 178th Exhibition RHA, and 127th happen to a ship as it sinks, as it goes
Exhibition, RUA (2008); Let’go, Monster Truck (2008); As beneath the surface of the water. In 2009,
Built - Drawings, Wicklow County Council (2008); Eigse, Carlow as part of Carlisle Pier Project (2006-2010)
(2008/ 2006); Eurojet Futures, The Anthology (2005) and I became interested in the area of naval
Eurojet Futures RHA (2004); and EV+A, Limerick (winning an architecture and engineering. The drawings
Open Award in (2003). in Measured Fall, for the most part, derive
from these two sources.
In this exhibition Merriman explored
her interest in naval architecture and The artist was in conversation with curator
engineering through the medium of Annette Moloney on Thursday 11th
drawing. As a new body of work November 2010
Measured Fall was a direct continuation of This event aimed to discuss Measured
previous research and drawing explorations Fall as a new body of work; the artist’s
which investigated harbour architecture and concentration on drawing in her practice;
its relationship with the shifting motion of her broader research interests and previous
the sea. projects including her long-term residency
with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County
At times the surface detail and delicacy of Council which resulted in the Carlisle Pier
Merriman’s drawings belies the range of Project (2006-2010).
complex issues being addressed including
the history of Irish harbours, ports and piers
and their social, political and psychological
links to emigration.
In discussing the starting point for Measured

Fall Merriman recalls:
While watching the demolition of St.

Michael’s Estate, Inchicore in 2004
(Building to be Demolished, drawing
Julie Merriman, Disruption Rowlandwerft IV(2010), Mixed Media
Julie Merriman, Disruption Rowlandwerft VI(2010) and Strengthened for Navigation(2010), Installation
Shot
Julie Merriman,Strengthened for Navigation(2010), Mixed Media
Julie Merriman, Ship X(2010), Installation Shot

sheenagh geoghegan
Sheenagh Geoghegan, Installation Detail(2010)
being political or ‘current’. I recently read

Tell us a bit about your academic an interview with John Banville where
background. he said ‘it’s not the job of the artist to be
political”. I am interested in the small details
sg I graduated in 2003 from Crawford that can display a multitude. I grew up
College of Art and Design, I received a within a community of makers, I spend my
1st class honours degree in Fine Art, BA early years between my two grandparents
(painting). houses as both of my parents had full
time jobs, my earliest memories are of my
Grandmothers who were both highly skilled
What kind of themes and concerns craftspeople, sewing and knitting and my
are explored in your practice? I noticed mother crocheting. The first drawings I saw
a kind of collecting aspect and a sort of were architectural drawings that Dad would
anachronistic style to some of the work with have had strewn across the work-top. I
the patterns and keepsakes, would you have always been surrounded by this really
agree with this? Where does your imagery rich and diverse range of materials and
originate from? Where does the influence of textures, from building materials to textiles
pattern come from? and even food; my grandmother made
her own bread and jam, and was innately
sg Everything and anything really
holistic in everything she applied herself
to....but I can’t remember a time when I
although I’m not particularly interested in
dweller
haven’t been fascinated with the process existing objects and manipulating them so
of making....in this sense my work is more they can dispel a new narrative for each
akin to the nature of sculpture. However, individual viewer. This exhibition allowed
to answer your question, no the work is not me to explore and realize ideas, the
deliberately anachronistic nor do I seek to opportunity to curate the show myself was
show a pattern, if anything I try to unravel, really important because I did not know or
undo or even interrupt the pattern. even plan what way the work should be
hung. I just kept changing the arrangement
until some how like a rubiks cube I finally
What can you tell us about your process discovered a coherent narrative. I had
in general? Is there a collecting process? known I was going to hang the paintings
Give us some insight into how you work. beside the drawings using the diptych/
triptych format but each piece was created
sg The reason I specifically applied for and titled separately. I found it hard at the
a show at Occupy Space was because it opening because of the tentative nature of
provides artists with a wonderful space this approach. Ultimately this exhibition, this
in which to experiment. For me this way of showing works has revealed many
opportunity really tempted the vestigial new ways of seeing my own work and most
in the sense that I had been working with of all a new way of making that combines
three dimensions for a long, long time... figuration with abstraction.
in the sense of rearranging already
Sheenagh Geoghegan, Reception Fatigue(2010), pencil, acrylic and collage on paper, 30cm x 45cm
Sheenagh Geoghegan, Éire 55 cent (2010), ink, corrective fluid and collage, 18cm x 25cm x 2.5cm
Are there any artists out there that you Any upcoming exhibitions? What are
really admire and maybe influence you? your plans for the future?
sg Influence-wise that’s a really big sg I’m off to Montreal on a residency

question, there are so many artists I admire, program for March and April. I like these
so instead of giving you the full massive shorter residencies because they allow me
list I’m going to say Matthew Ritchie and to gather and mine new ideas and find
Norbert Schwontkowski but like everything new things for my collage/appropriation/
else, that’s always in flux too. I also have assemblage way of working, I love the word
an amazingly talented bunch of ‘make and drawing because that’s exactly what I do
do-ers’, that are my friends; Brian Harte, with everything, draw information out of--
Patrick Hogan, Sarah O’Brien and Glenn and then draw on to something else.
Fitzgerald.
erica eyres
mary conlon How was the much of the material is inspired by real
experience of exhibiting in Limerick? events/experiences?
ee I often get ideas from something I

erica eyres It was great, everyone see in a film, a book or sometimes real
was very friendly. I arrived the day of the life, maybe a character or a line that I find
opening and everything was already set up really funny. I think a lot of my work has
so all I had to do was show up which was connections to my life that I don’t realise
nice. when I’m making it- I usually realise that it
has some reflection on my personal life
when I stand back and look at it much later.
mc Can you talk about the works you
chose to present at Occupy Space?
mc There is dark humour throughout your
practice; do you want to challenge the
ee The works I showed at Occupy Space notion of ‘political-correctness’?
were The Male Epidemic (back space),
and Cuddle Group (front space). The Male
Epidemic (2009) is a news broadcast that ee I do, but only on issues that I feel I
follows the progress of a fatal disease that have a connection to. I mean, I would never
is wiping out the world’s male population. try and make work about racial issues
The video features interviews with ‘experts’ (although there was a character named
and one of the last living men. Cuddle Tina Mills in the video Commercials, where I
Group (2010) documents the work of put on a lot of fake tan to achieve a darker
Dr. Gerry Winecott, founder of touch- look, and I got a bit nervous about how
based therapy Cuddle Group. The that would be received). I’m not sure that I
revolutionary therapy is used to treat consciously set out to challenge political
catatonics, agoraphobics, and those correctness, it’s not that I have an issue
suffering from fears of intimacy, slowly against political correctness itself. But I am
introducing touch by use of small animals, interested in issues around it, and I think
and eventually Dr. Winecott’s own body. some of the characters in my work display a
The video features footage from one of his degree of ignorance at times.
inspirational seminars, where he offers a
live demonstration on the benefits of Cuddle
Therapy. Cuddle Group also includes mc You tackle some sensitive topics with
interviews with two of his former patients. a comedic lightness; are there any taboos
left?
mc Your video work seems to fit

somewhere between documented ee I find humour to be necessary to
performance and surreal reportage. How hold people’s interest, as if taboos or
difficult subjects are too much to take
compulsory touching
Erica Eyres, The Male Epidemic, video
without comedy. I use humour as a way I had the personality figured out. Then the
to draw people in, maybe even trick script would develop out of that dialogue,
them, then deliver the really disturbing and would evolve from there. Over the past
scenes somewhere along the way. I don’t year I’ve been changing the way I work
consciously try and think of taboos to and involving other people in the videos, so
tackle in my work, but I have always been I’ve had to change things by actually sitting
interested in psychology and I suppose down and writing scripts for the actors. I
mental illness still makes people nervous think I’m still trying to develop a new script-
and may be seen as a kind of taboo. writing process for myself, so that may
involve more research.
mc Your characters’ dialogue always
appears natural, appropriate; how do you mc What are your plans for the future?
research your scripts?
ee I am currently based in Glasgow. At
ee I read a lot and watch a lot of film the moment I’m working on starting new
and television, but so far I don’t especially videos, just in the process of writing the
research the scripts. In the past, I would scripts so I can’t say that much just yet. My
start by building the character, getting website is www.ericaeyres.com
dressed and inhabiting them, then practice
speaking as them in front of a mirror until Via email interview
emmet kierans
mary conlon How did you find 60s with the lifestyle of suburban America
showing Make.Believe, a suburban portrait, in mind. I’ve also collected images from the
in the city centre location of Occupy Space? most commonly named towns in America
such as Centreville, Midway and Lumberton.
By combining these elements a community
emmet kierans In a way I think is created that is both everywhere and
the themes in the show relate to people nowhere, familiar and strange.
regardless of where they live, or their
background. The main premise of the
show is, as the title suggests, that we make mc The fragmented portraits in the show
a reality and then decide to believe in are unnerving, how are they a result of the
it. Although the suburbs were the most homogenous, somewhat innocuous
appropriate setting to explore this, I feel it environment?
relates to all sections of society.
ek I’m not sure if the fragmented
mc “Painting constructs. Photography characters are a result of their environments
discloses.” (Sontag) Why painting? or if the environments are simply not suited
to the fragmented characters that inhabit
them. We accept our surroundings and the
ek I find that when I look at a painting, reality we are presented with as somehow
particularly in the flesh, the type of mark- being a natural progression, the way
making used to build up the painting things are meant to be, rather than the
adds another element to think about implementation of ideology. The characters
when attempting to understand the artist’s I paint are disconnected from this contrived
intention. So there is the image and there is environment, their attempts to accept it as
the process and both aspects are read natural results in a state of constant flux.
simultaneously. It’s this visual complexity
that draws me to painting. I suppose the
Sontag reference is particularly apt for the mc When Ireland adopted the American
process and subject matter of a lot of my model of suburban planning it significantly
paintings, though I would like for the overall changed how we used our cities. In
show to uncover some truths. Limerick, suburban living seems to be
thriving; do you think the city is dying? Or
do you think Limerick city is being reclaimed
mc What/Where is the inspiration for the as a non-commercial centre?
constructed locations in your painting?
ek Limerick city is thriving as a non-
ek The locations are in part inspired by commercial centre, which is great for artists
my home town of Shannon, which was and creatives, but it’s not sustainable. The
designed and built in the late 50s and early city is, if not dying, taking a bit of a beating
recently. It looks like I remember it in the
make.believe.
Emmet Kierans, Emmet Kierans, Glitch

Gardening (2010), oil on (2010), oil on canvas,
canvas, 163x159cm 60x73cm
80s with large parts of the centre boarded how there is a mentality that goes with a
up and falling into disrepair. The type of place, there are modes of behaviour and
living that is thriving is also unsustainable, conventions associated with suburban
everyone living in oversized houses with living that I found interesting to examine, in
an over reliance of driving everywhere particular the act of gardening. I wanted to
they need to go. I do feel that things will make the notion of keeping lawns tidy and
swing back in favour of the city centre in the tending and arranging plants seem absurd
coming years. rather than ordinary.
mc How much do you think suburban mc You clearly find these constructed
planning is a form of social control? realities a negative phenomenon; what are
the alternatives?
ek I feel that suburban planning often
reinforces hierarchical structures within ek It’s not that I think they are completely
societies. Even if it is not the government negative but they do seem to foster
trying to directly exert control over the repression and conformity. I don’t really
population, our surroundings undoubtedly have an alternative to propose, my intention
affect our behaviour. I’m interested in is to question the implications of our
environment. I do think that acknowledging mc What are your plans for the future?
the psychology and nature of people should
be considered when designing communities.
By that I mean to take into account the ek I’m making some sculptural work at the
volatile, animalistic side of humanity as well moment, I’m getting more interested in the
as the logical and controlled. notion of perception and reality, which is
leading me towards philosophers like Daniel
Dennett and huge questions about what
mc I am interested in how you correlate consciousness is. I never really know where
your paintings with a virtual reality; can you my ideas are going so I just take it one step
talk a bit more about this? at a time and see where my inquiry leads.
I’ll be showing new work at the Watertower
ek The estates in my paintings exist Art Festival in Sofia in June. Details about
somewhere between the proposed project upcoming projects will be posted on my
and the reality of the completed estate. I website.
like the virtual mock-ups that are made to www.emmetkierans.com.
give an impression of how the place will
operate when it’s lived in. Usually these Via email interview
consist of young families walking their dogs
and having picnics on beautiful sunny days,
which is not how life in suburbia is in reality.
I tried to incorporate some of that CG style
in the palette used and in the application of
paint. I was thinking of the other meaning
of the word virtual, in the non-computerised
sense, as a dreamlike place, an illusion.
mc You rarely find artists’ studios,

exhibition spaces or arts organisations
located in the suburbs of a city; why do you
think that is?
ek The suburbs have a pretence that they

are a place for families, as if there were a
separation between people with children
and those without. There is also a notion
that a suitable place for children to grow up
consists of nothing more than houses and
a park. They definitely aren’t places that
inspire creativity and divergent thinking.
Parenting these days seems to be about
sheltering children from new and potentially
frightening imagery and ideas, so I don’t
imagine you would be very warmly
welcomed.
Emmet Kierans, Day

Dreams(2010), oil on
canvas, 135x148cm
Emmet Kierans,Aspiration Lane (2010), oil on canvas, 100x135cm

six memos
projects on the go at any one time. While
writing the Harvard lectures, he was also
working on a series of texts on the senses.
Having difficulty with the sense of ‘sight’, he
realised that he had been writing about
‘visibility’ his whole life. Of his creative
process he said: “I start with a small, single
image and then I enlarge it.”2 The visual
image always came first.
In the context of Occupy Paper, feedback

is a crucial ‘insertion’ into the gallery’s
programme. As the compound structure
suggests, written responses literally feed
back into the exhibitions, talks and events
that take place at Occupy Space, in
Limerick but also into the wider context
of current art practices in Ireland. The art
event does not finish with the end date but
Dana Gentile, Tree House (2004), lingers in the mind to be recalled, revised,
C-Print, 20”x20” reconsidered; As Calvino says:
“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not

a combinatoria of experiences, information,
feedback books we have read, things imagined?
Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an
In remembrance of Italo Calvino, his translator inventory of objects, a series of styles, and
William Weaver recalled conversations with the everything can be constantly shuffled and
writer during their 20-year working relationship: reordered in every conceivable way.”3
“With the Mr. Palomar translation he I would like to thank Aoife Flynn, editor of
developed a crush on the word feedback. Occupy Paper, for agreeing to my request
He kept inserting it in the text and I kept to submit not one, but three texts for the
tactfully removing it. I couldn’t make it clear current issue. In keeping with the spirit of
to him that, like charisma and input and Calvino’s lecture and the curatorial premise,
bottomline, feedback, however beautiful we are presented here with multiple
it may sound to the Italian ear, was not responses to the exhibition, “Trompe
appropriate in an English-language literary Le Monde”: the work, the ideas, the
work.”1 experience. I would like to thank Dr. David
Calvino had a life-long love affair with Brancaleone for agreeing to publish his
language and words. He often had many review here and, of course, to James
trompe le monde
Merrigan and Helen Horgan, who I put in
a most awkward position: to write about an
exhibition in which they had participated.
Developed independently, the texts, to my
mind, are in conversation.
1.http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/calvino/
calweaver.html
2.From a video-interview directed by Damien
Pettigrew and Gaspard di Caro, later
purchased and published by The Paris Review to
appear in Italo Calvino, the Art of Fiction, N.130
3 Italo Calvino, Multiplicity, Six Memos of the Next
Millennium (1988), Harvard University Press
Mary Conlon, Limerick, april 2011.
James Merrigan, Before the Cut (2008), Night-time video projection, 2.6 seconds, looped
james merrigan
James Merrigan is a video/ installation artist and art writer. Calvino’s sudden death in 1985. Calvino’s
He is the creator of +BILLION-, a bi-weekly online art journal. “Six Memos,” like the art object, is a
Future art projects include ‘So Long Roger Fenton...’ at Monster meditation on “Potential” and the ‘figuring
Truck, curated by Claire Feeley, ‘Futures 11’ at the RHA, and a out’ of the objective arbitrary rules that the
solo show at the LAB in 2012. He is the recipient of the 2010/11 writer sets for him- herself in the process of
Irish Residential Studios Award at the Red Stables. writing and thinking.
Shinnors Scholar Mary Conlon is a curator

The following text needed to be conducted based at Limerick City Gallery of Art.
in an orderly fashion. The reasoning behind Calvino’s existing ‘Five Memos’ underpin
this effort to create ‘order’ will become her curatorial project so far, which were
clear when you discover, through reading published in 1988. Trompe Le Monde,
the following text––the predicament of an translated as ‘Fool the World’, is the title
artist writing on a group show that he is also of Conlon’s third installment of her “Six
a part of... Memos” project, and was played out at
James Merrigan 1 Occupy Space, Limerick, in 2011. The group
show included five artists: Juan Fontanive,
This talk is refusing to be led in the direction Dana Gentile, Helen Horgan, Michael
I set myself. Murphy and myself or ‘I’; the subjective
Italo Calvino 2 personal pronoun that Gadda would rather
have ‘deleted’ from existence.
I, I!...the filthiest of all the pronouns!...
The Pronouns! They are the lice of thought. ‘I’ with Two Apostrophes
When a thought has lice it scratches, like The irony of this text is that it is near to
everyone with lice...and in your fingernails, impossible to avoid the ‘I’––that subjective
then...you find pronouns: the personal self, ego, id, thinking substance, that gets in
pronouns. the way of our view of the world, especially
Carlo Emilio Gadda 3 in the case of my participation as an artist
in Trompe Le Monde. Paradoxically, what
An ‘orderly’ preface makes Gadda’s prose so compulsive is
Italo Calvino diagnoses Gadda’s irritation his effort to get rid of ‘himself’. Using
with his own ‘self’ in the above quotation Calvino as a point of entrance rather than
when he writes: “The passion for departure, ‘I’ will start with four of the five
knowledge therefore carries Gadda from artist that made up Trompe Le Monde, and
the objectivity of the world to his own see what I can do with ‘I’.
irritated subjectivity.”4 Taken from Calvino’s
proposed lectures for Harvard University To grasp this concept of ‘I’ with both
in 1985 under the optimistic banner of SIX hands let’s start with ‘identity’ in the
MEMOS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM––to context of Dana Gentile’s art practice
cut a short story even shorter, the lectures and photography in general. Because
never took place and the sixth chapter on photography can exist outside the tight
“consistency” was never finished due to parameters of the art world, there is a
apostrophes everywhere
James Merrigan, My Mother is a Fish (2010), 1min 38sec audio, 2 chairs, William Faulkner’s novel ‘As I Lay
Dying’, plywood, corrugated plastic, Gorilla Tape, led lights
fundamental split between its position in art writes: ‘Il n’y a pas de rapport sexual’
and popular culture. In an article for Frieze implies, among other things, that balanced
Magazine titled “Snap Shot”, Christy Lange co-ordination is missing, that nature, within
writes how Isabelle Graw’s 2009 book, the realm of human existence, is anything
High Price: Art Between the Market and but a harmonious and whole ‘One––All’.
Celebrity Culture, claims the commercial As Lacan expresses it...nature does not
success of Andreas Gursky’s photographs ‘copulate’ in order to generate the fictitious,
has been “confused with artistic perfected unity of a spherical totality.
achievement.”5 There is also the case of Lacan is great on anything to do with the
the narcissistic discourse that has been ‘fractured self’. His analysis of identity is
triggered by Jeff Wall’s photography, which further split with Žižek’s usual tinkering with
has prevented any other artist who utilises the paradoxical. ‘Fracturing’ is an important
photography solely, or as part of their art aspect of postmodernism and contemporary
practice, to be separated from his godlike art. Although this is nothing new, the image
presence. Identity as Slavoj Žižek describes has been fractured since Cubism, but what
via Jacques Lacan is a complex issue; he makes art today more difficult to piece
TITLE(basenine)
Dana Gentile,Birdbath (2005), C-Print, 20”x20”, Scarf Head (2006), C-Print, 20”x20”
Tree House (2004), C-Print, 20”x20”
together is the teaming of the fractured

image with the fractured identity; combining During a conversation with Gentile, the artist
to create a perpetually fracturing narrative described that the three colour photographs
that is always missing a piece of the jigsaw. that inhabited the first room of Occupy
Artists who use photography as one aspect Space were “humourous” efforts to control
of their art practice, such as Shannon Ebner, the environment. Birdbath, 2005, shows
are particularly good at revealing both an Gentile standing in her family’s upstate
identity and hiding behind some signifier New York home, dressed in a bathing suit
that spells out FRACTURE. Dana Gentile, an with a glass bowl full of water in hand. Her
artist based in Brooklyn, New York, is also pose is expectant. Her eyes look toward a
one of those artists. hanging bird-house ‘feeder’. All the lines
drag your eye to the hole in the feeder. The
In an earlier work, Plate Tectonics, 2008, hole is also placed where the traditional nail
Gentile literalised this idea of ‘fracture’ for hanging ‘framed’ photographs is found
or ‘shift’ in the display of found porcelain on the back. The composition is all about
plates that were ‘repaired’ with inserts of balance and expectation.
maple. This specific work sets up a premise A view from back to front, or the “potential”
for Gentile’s photographic images at for expanding beyond the frame of
Occupy Space. Personally, the photographs representation, or one point of view is
offer much more because of the artist’s also offered in Tree House, 2004. A tree
consistent control and deliberate articulation is positioned awkwardly before a timber
of the formal construction of the image, house in either a failed attempt at elegant
against the shattered narratives of the landscaping, a “humorous” effort to
broken landscape and the staged human “control the environment,” or just laziness
elements within the image. on the part of the house owners. The
Colorado sun flattens all the objects before and floating islands that look like brain
the artist’s lens. Although, from Gentile’s matter, are straddled by model boats
camera view the tree blocks our full view with stilt-legged lanterns and motorised
of the house, the sun sneaks through easily rotating lights. But like Gentile’s semiotic
to light up the wooden gable of the house. opening in the decorative substructure
The tree is a failed sunshade. Again, like of the road, Horgan’s giant fabricated
Bird Bath, we can imagine Gentile waiting ‘apostrophe’ punctuated the contained
for the sun to reveal some failure, and sculpture to offer ‘potential’. Calvino
then point and shoot. A chance element writes “We waste precious time on
within the picture frame is a glimpse of a absurd clues and pass by the truth without
concrete rim of a road that cuts the picture suspecting it.”6 Horgan’s sculpture for
diagonally in half. The rim reads as a series Trompe Le Monde was both diaristic and
of dashes, semiotic openings that offer the encyclopedic. Calvino also discusses how
viewer an escape from the frame; in the the encyclopedia “etymologically implies
sense of talking or writing oneself out of a an attempt to exhaust knowledge of the
closed space. world by enclosing it in a circle.”7 Horgan’s
work literally illustrated this point, but it
Helen Horgan’s The Horse’s Mouths is the “diaristic” form of her art practice
(2011) is like a big brain; a contained that torments the ordering of her centrally
and protected island of absurdity. A focused structures. But, from someone who
perspex triangular ‘bath’ filled with water experienced Horgan installing her own
Helen Horgan, The Horse’s Mouths (2009-2011), mixed media installation, dimensions variable
Michael Murphy: We still have the Taste of Dancing on our Tongues (2011), Mixed media sculpture,
2.5m x 2m x 30cm
work, she is an artist who has her own ‘potential’ dance floor structure. Before the
rule book, nothing is arbitrary––just like opening night, the installation of the work
Georg Perec, who Calvino describes as was partnered by a conversation about
creating his own arbitrary rules to produce whether to leave the ‘I’ out, or leave it in?
“inexhaustible freedom.”8 Gadda is also The ‘I’ in Murphy’s case was a stack of
in Horgan’s sculpture, but he , as was Shoot football magazines that he collected
mentioned above, didn’t realise the ‘I’ was as a young lad. The strong formalism of
a ‘rupture’ rather than a prison. the artist’s work at Occupy Space also
referenced the past, but not Murphy’s past:
Why is it that the ‘art-object’ can always the art of the past in the minimalist purity
get away with being unfinished, and if of Donald Judd’s sculpture. Judd himself
questioned about this fact the ‘critic’ is defined this mode of art object as a “simple
rebuked with the philosophical objection–– expression of complex thought.” Would
nothing is ever finished. If the art object is the addition of the Shoot Magazines have
framed properly and the context is right, acted as an ‘apostrophe’ in the same way
whether that context is shaped by looking as Horgan’s? The title of Murphy’s work––
backward for some precursor in the history We still have the Taste of Dancing on our
of the art object, or indulging in the hubris Tongues, offered (to my mind), a more
of looking forward for something new or rewarding ‘apostrophe’.
original, the art work in essence has to
appear unfinished or unresolved to offer Juan Fontanive’s kinetic wall work seemed
potential for expanded narratives. These modest at first glance. My immediate
considerations came to the fore during presumption that a rectangular white box
the installation of Michael Murphy’s large housed a moving image was soon enough
Juan Fontanive:
Illuminated (2011),
Mixed media sculpture,
32h x 26w cm
debunked as ‘I’ moved closer to the object. And finally my own work, but in keeping with
Instead of a LED screen, a series of motors Calvino’s unfinished ‘Five’ of ‘Six Memos’, an
acted like pulleys, threading a ‘dashed’ ‘apostrophe’ will do.
’
black and white cord up and down in an
aesthetically pleasing but also workman-like
movement (echoing the concrete road rim
of Gentile’s Tree house). This is what Bridget
Reilly would make if she could work motors.
The title of the work, Illuminated, also pointed
back to an Op art fascination with the shifting
light. But what saved this work from being
overly indulgent in optics and aesthetics was
the profile of a head that framed the moving 1. James Merrigan, ‘Apostophes Everywhere’, April 2011
cords. You can imagine Fontanive’s object 2. Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
Modern Classics, 1998, p.51
as something that a psychoanalyst would 3. Ibid., Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
have as a desk ornament in their Manhattan p.108
office, like the clichéd ‘Newton’s Cradle’. 4. Ibid., Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
p.108
Fontanive’s art object seemed to be enacting 5. Christy Lange, ‘Snap shot’, Frieze Magazine, Issue 131,
a thread that connected all the works under May 2010
Calvino’s view of the world as a “system of 6. Ibid., Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
p.111
systems.”9 One question that ‘I’ am left with 7. Ibid., Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
relating to the New York artist’s work (but p.116
which is best left unanswered), was the profile 8. Ibid., Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
p.122
of the head that framed the shifting cords the 9. Ibid., Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium,
artist’s own profile? p.105-6
helen horgan
Helen Horgan is an artist and writer based in Dublin.
She is currently enrolled in a Masters in Contemporary
European Philosophy at UCD researching form and
meaning in the work of Derrida and Wittgenstein. She is
a member of The Writing Workshop and is co-founder of
The Legs Foundation for the Translation of Things (LFTT)
with writer and artist Danyel M. Ferrari (NY).
Helen Horgan, The

Horse’s Mouths (2009-
2011), mixed media
installation, dimensions
variable
The founder of phenomenology ‘eidos’ meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form’.

Edmund Husserl believed our individual Eidetic imagery however, although
perceptions of things could be having on some level congruence with
broken down in a way that revealed the things of the world, for Husserl is
something simple and universal. As a product of consciousness. It is the
part of his phenomenological project mind’s direct intuition of something
of stripping away the veil of our universal emanating from an instance
‘natural attitude’ he required our of perception2. Because eidetic
intuitions to take a marked change in imagery is a product of our intuition
focus, away from the vagaries of the perceiving something universal, that
subjectively perceived instance and is, performing some sort of categorial
towards “the essence that the instance analysis, it is taken by Husserl to be
exemplifies1”. This is what he termed evidence of the reliable workings of
a process of ‘eidetic reduction’. The consciousness reducing the complexities
word ‘eidetic’ at its etymological basis of experience to an ‘ultimate simple.’
relates on equal terms to both images Since phenomenology is a science of
and ideas, stemming from the Greek ‘phenomena’ and not ‘things’ it brings
“From ‘I’ to ‘You’”

to light the debate regarding the relation is the notion of carrying samples of colour
between our perceptions and ‘reality’, around in our pockets to be able to point
and to what extent our mind might be to what ‘red’ is.) We have moved from
constructing a vision of the world for itself. pointing things out in the room to recalling
The question could be posed whether these what that is in our mind. What ‘that’ is,
perceived universals are merely a matter once it is removed from its originally learnt
of things ‘fitting in’ with our capacities for context is a tricky thing to ultimately define,
experience, or whether they are (as Husserl and it is something that philosophers
believes) a cognitive capability for receiving sometimes spend their lives toiling over.
phenomena which emanate from the ‘things What famously divides various schools of
themselves’. A problem we are here made philosophy is their subsequent alignment
aware of is that there is forever a work with either one of two branches of thinking;
of translation occurring between the mind those that believe that all ‘words’ can be
and the world. We are moved to suspect said to point to something singular and
(although we often don’t reflect upon it) that universal, and those that believe a word
our perceptions and ideas are of a wholly will always mean more than one thing, that
other substance to the matter of existence. is the ‘objects’ it refers to are irreducibly
The founding role of any language is to multiple and complex.
perform this work of translation and help
bridge the gap between ‘thoughts’ and In Italo Calvino’s lecture series Six Memos
‘things’. for the New Millenium3 he suggests that a
penchant for one way of thinking over
When as children we first begin to learn our the other might be a matter of personal
language we start by pointing at the objects disposition. The subject of the fifth lecture,
that surround us, and are subsequently Multiplicity, concerns writers who possess
supplied with a corresponding name; such an ‘encyclopedic’ nature; those that
as ‘ball’, ‘cup’, ‘spoon’ etc...but also ‘hot!’, have a desire to systematize the world
‘hug’ and ‘bedtime’. In this way we start by through language, to understand and pay
perceiving singular instances and build up homage to the subtleties of our everyday
over time a memory bank of correlations experiences. He introduces us to the writer
between words and objects (objects in Carlo Emilio Gadda who, he says wished
this sense also understood to be concepts, “to represent the world as a knot”; to
material qualities, or reoccurring events). represent it without reducing its complexity.4
Thus we can learn to expect the word An engineer with an undisclosed love of
‘bedtime’ to regularly refer to an event philosophy he developed a style to affirm
involving ‘going-to-bed.’ At the same time his elaborate style of thinking. Calvino tells
with the help of the work of translation that us that Gadda’s writing was “determined by
language performs we don’t further require [a] tension between rational exactitude and
having the object to hand (such as a ball) to frenetic distortion as [being the] basic
understand the meaning of the word ‘ball’. components of every cognitive process”
(One of Wittgenstein’s curious examples At the same time another writer of technical-
TITLE(basenine)
James Merrigan, GOTH-HEAD (in 2 parts) (2011) 2 part film, Part 1: 3mins 7secs, Part 2: 3mins, video,
audio, subtitled text in Collegiate Font
scientific training, Robert Musil, was also Gadda knew that: “to know is to insert
caught between these two polarities, something into what is real, and hence to
although employed a markedly different distort reality. From this arises
aesthetic approach. For him beauty lay in his invariably distorting way of representing
the mathematical world of harmony which things, and the tension he always
he felt was frequently distorted by the establishes between himself and the thing
“imprecision of human affairs.” Writing for represented”5.
Musil was a process of depositing all his
thoughts into an ever expanding volume; his Husserl’s method of analyzing the
aim was ultimate order and classification, conflation between consciousness and
although the demands of his project were reality may have helped to highlight the
forever expanding beyond his reach. Both link between thoughts and things but
writers were made aware of the move his phenomenological method curiously
between thinking and representing and the abstracted the first-person pronoun “I”; the
extent to which their deliberation could be pronoun for which Gadda “explodes into
causing a distortion. Whereas “the passion a furious invective“I, I!...the filthiest of all
for knowledge carries Gadda from the pronouns!...The pronouns! They are the
objectivity of the world to his own irritated lice of thought. When a thought has lice it
subjectivity” Musil manages to “give scratches, like everyone with lice...and in
the impression of always understanding your fingernails, then...you find pronouns:
everything in (its) multiplicity without ever the personal pronouns” Descartes ‘Cogito
allowing himself to become involved.” ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am) in the
hands of Husserl became ‘I think therefore of our thoughts desire could be arranged
there is thought’. In an analogous way within ease of reach. The greater the scope
Heidegger’s ‘da-sein’ as ‘there-being’ is in circumnavigation the more we feel the
a move to find a way of standing beyond embrace of its all-encompassing enclosure.
the first person pronoun: to translate a
discourse born from personal experience into In our quest to adequately capture our every
something more open and universal. But the experience and find a way of bridging the
doubling relationship between the singular gap between ‘words’ and ‘things’ maybe
and the multiple means that any move to the most daring adventurer would be one
encompass a totality is also a move towards that follows the apostrophe in pointing to
self-annihilating abstraction. the land that lies beyond words, the space
of silence, where the work of translation is
Calvino tells us how Flaubert declared in a forced to confront its impenetrable limit. Or
letter to Louise Colet in 1852 “What I’d like maybe what in reality we would be doing in
to do is a book about nothing”, and then this instance is sending the words on ahead,
went on to devote the last ten years of his life beyond cognition, beyond adequation and
to the most encyclopedic novel ever written.”6 beyond our desire to hold our own thoughts
Bouvard and Pécuchet, a novel about an in our minds. As Barthes tells us;
epic voyage across “the seas of universal
knowledge” in a quest to collate and “In this mythology of seafaring, there is only
catalogue everything, finally ends where they one means to exorcise the possessive nature
find themselves at the limits of translation, of the man on the ship; it is to eliminate the
with an endless inventory of visions of worlds man and to leave the ship on its own...The
so contradictory that all hope of objective object that is the true opposite of Verne’s
clarity is lost. Instead they resolve to end Nautilus is Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat, the boat
their days as scriveners copying out the which says ‘I’ and, freed from its concavity,
words of all the books in the universal library. can make man proceed from a psycho-
“Should we conclude that in the experience analysis of the cave to a genuine poetics of
of Bouvard and Pécuchet “encyclopedia” exploration.”9
and “nothingness” fuse together?”7 It
certainly seems to suggest that the further our
conceptions open to multiplication the more
we erase the possibilities of arriving at a
cohesive singular perspective.
The famous explorer Jules Verne, Roland 1 The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy,
Barthes tells us, over the course of his travels Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu, Wiley Blackwell, West
Sussex, UK 2009, pg 201
constructed for himself a “kind of self- 2 Husserl makes a marked distinction between the
sufficient cosmogony, which [had] its own terms ‘perception’ and ‘intuition’ but for the sake of
categories, its own time, space, fulfillment ease of demonstration I have here conflated both
and even existential principle.” Barthes terms.
describes Verne’s inclination towards ships 3 Italo Calvino, Six Memos for The Next Millenium
(Vintage Classics London 1996)
and adventure as revealing a “common 4 Ibid p106
delight in the finite, which one also finds 5 Ibid p108
in children’s passion for huts and tents: to 6 Ibid p113
enclose oneself and to settle, such is the 7 Ibid p114
existential dream of childhood and of Verne.” 8 Roland Barthes, The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat
in Mythologies (The Noonday Press, New York, 1972)
8 The image of ship here is that of a perfectly pg 65
mobile finite space, where all the objects 9 Ibid pg 67
trompe le monde
David Brancaleone is a lecturer in art history and theory, LIT. not on show, but one fits the medieval
He has researched and published work on the philosophy and notion of Ramon Llull’s combinatory logic, in
aesthetics of Alain Badiou, of Jean-Luc Godard as well as on the its sets of twirling cards spinning on wheels.
commodification of education. David is currently working on a Llull used wheels too in his manuscripts, with
book on Dialectical Aesthetics. letters signifying concepts, to help you prove
God really does exist and is a Christian. I
Trompe le Monde begs the question: can worry that the photograph of Illuminated
there be an image of the world? What will look stock still and fail to convey the
would it look like? The stakes are high: incessant movement I see before me and its
the power of understanding through the blur. But no, that’s not a problem.
imagination and, beyond that, an urge for
something more; perhaps an aspiration, The Horse’s Mouths is a quirky installation
a gesture towards the truth. The curator by Helen Horgan which features the inside
seeks a model of practice based on values of her mind as she explores personal
and Shinnors Scholar Mary Conlon finds it associations along the way and manifests
in ‘Multiplicity’, a lecture by Italo Calvino. them into three-dimensional symbols of a
The show is part of a bigger project which sort I don’t understand, unless… but there is
adopts all Calvino’s 1985 Harvard lectures a story somewhere, associations, maybe, as
later collected in Six Memos of the Next intricate as the combination of light, water,
Millenium (1993). Conlon has asked five model ships floating, while a huge comma
artists to interpret ‘Multiplicity’ their way. hangs on the nearby wall, a trace of the
The titles framing the other five Memos and text that populates her other work.
the focus of more exhibitions are equally
vast: ‘Lightness’, Quickness’, ‘Exactitude’, More than just a humorous footnote,
‘Visibility’, ‘Consistency’. James Merrigan’s short film Goth-Head
features the customary double-take of the
But let me try to be a purist first. I have banal: a suspended tripod hanging in the
reached the gallery, Occupy Space; I middle of the frame in a garden backdrop,
recognise the curator. Caught unawares, punctuated by a zombie voice in synch with
she is a good sport and agrees to show me its subtitles (of the words cheerleaders utter
round her world of multiplicity, a curator’s in countries where they live). My Mother is
interpretation, and what five artists make a Fish is also tongue-in-cheek: a coffin size
of it. Illuminated, Juan Fontanive’s kinetic box stands on its head with the title in caps
sculpture, catches my eye. Dotted lines running down the corrugated lid; two chairs
cross the empty cut-out of a head against a and a minute’s audio of William Faulkner’s
dark background inside a box frame. The novel As I lay Dying which, truth be told, I
workings of the mind, the synapses that have forgotten. All I can remember is that
click when we understand? I can’t say, but Faulkner was fierce, almost physical, with
I like that fact that I am not looking at a language.
dematerialized form. His other works are
also intriguing sculpture machines; they’re
dr. david brancaleone
Michael Murphy’s The Taste

of Dancing on our Tongues is
a small-scale dance floor. “It’s
minimalist,” says Conlon. I
agree. But I can only taste the
right angles with my eyes, not
the exhilaration of movement,
and why should I?
Dana Gentile is based in

Brooklyn some of the time.
More than to the larger-format
colour ones, I am drawn to
her row of black-and-white
photographs printed on silver
gelatin paper. Maybe because
nowadays, for some reason,
most artists print big, so it
is nice that these are small
icons of a lost age of half-
forgotten details, time stilled
in recollection, some square
Rolleiflex format, maybe taken
with a Rolleiflex camera.
What I find fascinating about

the exhibition is not the single
work, it is the text and that
writing is at its inception.
People often say that the work
must speak for itself. I have
just tried to do that. Here it
speaks back to the text in
some kind of visual form.
Calvino champions the

multiplicity of the author.
Helen Horgan, The Horse’s Mouths (2009-2011), mixed media installation, There’s traffic in that head,
dimensions variable Fontanive. To borrow a
concept from twelfth-century
Platonism, his attention sweeps
TITLE(basenine)
Dana Gentile, Ladders, Orange, CT (2009), Silver Gelatin Fiber Print, 4"x4"
across from the microcosm of the word, including Robbe-Grillet’s rambling novels
the sentence, its infinite associations, to and Cage’s music.
the macrocosm of the novel. Multiplicity
can take the form of multiple selves, of an All right, so there’s a dichotomy between
instability of being, of how memory and chaos and order, between logic and
time can collapse or expand, as in one imagination, and Calvino tries to recompose
writer Calvino chooses not to mention, it into a unity of sorts where mathematics
though his work is central to this idea. I provides precision applied to the
am thinking of Umberto Eco’s Open Work imagination. His ideal writer wanders across
written years and years earlier, in which Eco an imaginary space exploring inner worlds.
applies complexity theory to works of art, Peering into the unknown of now, Calvino’s
paradigm, his matrix of writing or of art, faceted and it is a revisited concept of the
is a combination of precision, structure, encyclopedia, however complex, not Eco’s
method and language, so that each text Open Work, that serves as a model. And
could contain a model of a universe there’s no relativism in Calvino, there are
or, in philosophical terms, a Kantian still values.
transcendental, in other words, an ordering
principle of reality, yes, call it ‘a world’. Does Trompe le Monde cohere? Do these
voices form a pattern? Is that what a group
Calvino’s own writing is also (after a show is, a pattern? Time was, when shows
postwar phase of literary neorealism) were full of clever text to make a point.
filtered by logical leaps of fancy that take But here the text (over twenty pages of a
the reader into the unknown, unmapped lecture on multiplicity) is absent or at least
territory or the ten beginnings of his novel invisible. But is it? Am I going to argue that
If on a Winter’s Night, or its alternative there are multiple exhibitions and that if
endings. By then, his neighbours in Paris, Calvino’s text is a spectral presence, not
the French philosophers Calvino does not an absence, then it has a say in what is on
care to mention, had already published display? Calvino was a brilliant short-story
most of their work or were dead (Foucault). writer and an editor for most of his life. OK.
Deleuze had already attacked the One Once he made one big mistake: he wrote
in the name of the Many (of multiplicity); back to Primo Levi to say, sorry, I am going
Derrida had challenged logocentrism in to turn down your manuscript (If This is a
everything he ever wrote (except Spectres Man). Levi survived his guilt for surviving
of Marx); Foucault likewise, for whom the Shoah, got the book published in the
the idea of power as One Bad Thing was end and went on to write the magisterial
nonsense, because power is everywhere. The Damned and the Saved. So words, and
Here’s the very beginning of Deleuze and the spectral presence of the text I had not
Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1969): read yet (which lives in a large folder on
“The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together, the table by the door of Occupy Space)
since each of us was several, there was and indeed I have never seen before, are
quite a crowd”. These people were all fed inevitably part of this visit and can easily
up with structuralism and dazzled by chaos spiral out of control. The show is a multiple
theory, by the mathematics of problematics response to Calvino’s idea of multiplicity.
which Porphyry’s hierarchical tree structure Once you have read this text, I would argue
(for organising concepts) and mathematical that you slowly begin to see his spectral
axioms simplify more than they explain. show and his spectral writers.
They are the spectre’s spectres and haunt
Calvino’s multiplicity.
Despite his heroes, Gadda, Musil, Mann,

or Perec, and the (apparently) formless
authorless text, however incomplete,
Calvino’s paradigm of writing is all-
encompassing in its reach and forms a
unity. In his matrix, there is no postmodern
multiplicity, because ultimately Calvino
recomposes the complexity of the world into
the work. Language and logic are assigned
the task of weaving together the great
branches of learning into a vision of the
world, no matter how complex, how multi-
videogram limerick
Tell us a bit about your backgrounds.

What have the Videogram nights been
like? What is the format for the nights and
jh I’m currently studying for an MA in Art. who are your particpants?
I work mostly in video and photography
and have always had a love of video art jh The call for submissions is open, people
and film making. may send in any type of film or video work,
documentary, experimental, art house, etc.
ao’k Well my background is one Of the three Videograms so far we’ve had
of mostly being an admirer of film and two nights of discussion with the invited
visual arts. I’m a musician at heart and filmmakers, Peter Delaney, Mellissa Doran
I’m studying to be a photographer/photo and Nicky Larkin. We have also seen an
journalist at the moment but I love film and increase in numbers at each Videogram
especially the process of script writing. I Limerick screening.
guess as a songwriter it really appeals to
me. ao’k There has been an amazing
reaction to the film nights. The attendance
has been super too. Really big numbers
Where did the idea for Videogram are coming along to catch whatever is on.
come from, do you both have a strong The format is pretty straight forward. We
interest in film and filmmaking? screen in Occupy space and Faber Studios.
Its really informal and relaxed too. We
jh There was a lack of city centre film have coffee, tea and snacks for everyone
screenings and film forums in Limerick and at the end we have a Q&A, where
City Centre. With the increase in artist led we like to give everyone a chance to ask
spaces, there was the opportunity to set any questions they might have had. So far
up free, not-for-profit film screening nights we’ve had short films, animated shorts,
in these spaces, borrowing equipment of documentaries and at the last one we had
other art institutions in the city. Videogram a documentary style film called ‘Pyjama
Limerick gives people the chance to Girls’ which went down great with the
see new films for free, to talk about the audience. The participants have been great
films afterwards, and to meet with other too. We’ve had students to professional
filmmakers and artists. filmmakers come along and talk about their
work.
ao’k I had always enjoyed going to film
nights anytime they were on and I thought
to myself that I could do this, after seeing What are the plans for the future of
how other nights were being run. From Videogram?
talking to my friends and various others, I
could tell that there was an audience there jh Videogram Limerick is an experimental
if we ever got around to setting up our operation in itself. We have screened in
own film nights. Myself and Jo both love various locations so far in Limerick city, and
film and of the art of filmmaking and we we do not have any set agenda or criteria
always try to have the filmmakers there to for showing works, albeit that they are
talk about their work and help the audience engaging, interesting films and videos. We
understand the process behind it all. are open to new ideas and suggestions,
alan o’keeffe and joanna hopkins
Videogram screening, Faber Studios
and people are welcome to contact us and taken seriously too, because we know
with works they have or suggestions for how hard it can be to get into bigger
screenings. cinemas and reach a wider audience. That’s
it really. Who knows maybe some day we
ao’k I think we just want to keep it as could branch out and have a Videogram
informal as possible and have everyone Dublin, Videogram Galway, Videogram
who comes along to feel like they’re part Ireland and then we could try to take over
of something special, a real communal feel. the world! Mwahahaha ;)
We just want to be a platform and give
filmmakers the opportunity to be screened
state of the union

The State of the Union brought together
work by MFA Students from Burren College
of Art, Crawford College of Art, Limerick
School of Art, National College of Art and
University of Ulster.
The work was selected by Basement Project

Space Cork, Exchange Dublin, Platform
Arts Belfast and Occupy Space Limerick.
The exhibition was collaborative curatorial
project between four artist-led spaces.
The State of the Union aimed to present a

moment in Irish visual art culture in which Beka Peralta, Burren College of Art, Selected by
artist-led spaces are helping to shape Occupy Space
the dialogue of current practice. The ten
emergent artists selected present a diverse
range of works representative of their
specific research practices.
Burren College of Art: Simon Bayliss, Emily
The exhibition title The State of the Union Kaelin, Beka Peralta: Occupy Space
refers both to a state of evaluation and
the awareness of critical context within Crawford College of Art: Mary Galvin,
a national forum. The premise of the Jenna Whelan: Basement Project Space
exhibition was to address not only the Cork
discourse created by artist-led spaces but
to simultaneously recognise the importance Limerick School of Art and Design: Nuala
of research in developing critically aware O’Sullivan: Occupy Space
visual art communities.
National College of Art and Design: Joseph
Young practitioners are pivotal in shaping Noonan-Ganley, Francis Wasser: Exchange
the condition of current and future visual Dublin
culture nationally and internationally. This
project sought to acknowledge the potential University of Ulster: Becky Coffey, Laura
inherent in this collaborative energy. O’Connor: Platform Arts Belfast
Mary Galvin, Crawford College of Art, Selected by Basement Project Space
State of the Union, Installation Shot

millepide
Millepide was a performance night curated by Jessica Kelly that

took place on 1 april in Occupy Space. Participating artists included
Anastasia Artemeva, Deviant,Helena Doyle, Joan Healy, Sophie
Iremonger, Claire Keating, James Leahy, Isabella Oberlander, Nora
O’Murchú and Hilary Williams.
TITLE(basenine)
Photos courtesy of Robin Parmar(2011)

luke fowler
Almost all of Luke Fowler’s work to date his framing of the group. The footage that
has sought to dust off and re-examine a is culled from Hanne Boenisch’s 1971 film
fringe figure, someone obscured by the Journey to the North Pole, while intended
passage of time or the unsympathetic perhaps as a gloss, ultimately grounds
mechanics of culture at large. Filling his Fowler’s deliberately jerky narrative.
roster are the psychiatric innovator R.D.
Laing and schizophrenic preservationist The erratic cuts and overlaps between
Bogman Palmjaguar, as well as avant- current verbal exposition and archival audio
garde musicians like Cornelius Cardew, are stylistically engaging, but would wander
founder of the Scratch Orchestra and without the source documentary’s recurring
subject of Fowler’s 2006 film, Pilgrimage assertions of a visceral context. The
from Scattered Points. Fowler is consistently footage, along with the reminiscences of
shrewd in his choice of material, and, Cardew’s old cohort, recalls an era that was
whether in chaos or communion, the Scratch furrowed by rampant polarization, and in
Orchestra is an effectively telegenic subject. effect became characterized by a desperate
Structurally, Fowler stands on terra firma in and myopic pursuit of collective identity.
Image courtesy of retitle.com

pilgrimage from scattered points
In the U.S., this was the time of the Black The arrangement of re-purposed
Panthers, Watergate, Mai Lai. While the photographs in the main gallery space
U.K. was still processing its post-colonial are probably intended to fill what would
trauma, it was becoming clear that earlier otherwise be an awkward void in the
British division of the Middle East had generously sized Temple Bar Gallery,
spoiled any hope for peace. The Scratch but in contextualizing a single confined
Orchestra was operating in a society that piece they do momentarily cloud the issue
considered itself irrevocably riven, and the of who’s work exactly the exhibition is
external tensions that had at first tempered presenting. All the same, the reprints of
its resolve eventually crept in to widen the photographs originally taken by Alec
cracks in its idealistic foundation. Hill are helpful in contemplating the
As we see younger versions of the film’s somewhat muddled anarcho-Confucian-
interview subjects reclining on the grass of hippie vibe of the Scratch Orchestra, and,
a North- East England pasture and shots when it is concretely historicized like this,
of Cardew performing his own anarchic understanding why it fractured. Fowler’s
version of conducting, prosaic realizations own take on Cardew seems to be one
of a rusted aesthetic idealism and the of reserved admiration and respect for
inevitable dissolution of small-scale utopias the composer’s role in the history of the
arise. The dose of fading optimism sours avant-garde. (Sounding almost envious
what might have otherwise been a charming of Cardew’s indulgence in metaphysics,
reminiscence, and undoes any threat of Fowler wrote in Frieze, “[Cardew] was at
sentimentality without really lapsing into this juncture too busy with Confucius to be
cynicism. bothered with Mao”.)1
The disappointment is in the self-evident lack There is an element of wry masochism in

of sustainability of such ventures, as attested splicing a counter-culture’s documented
to throughout by the aged members of hopes with the gritty evidence of their
Scratch. The unavoidable political baggage having fallen short. Fowler administers
prevents Pilgrimage from Scattered Points this bitter pill as kindly as he can, and we
from shirking all of the residual zeal and end up complying with the film-maker’s
agitation of its source material. So perhaps melancholy salute.
it is not so curious that, in spite of his side-
lining of sequential clarity and occasional Luke fowler
painterly expressive outbursts, Fowler has The Bittersweet Melody, Pilgrimage from
still made what is very much a documentary. Scattered Points at Temple Bar Gallery and
The film-maker knows how much slack to Studios
allow his own creative liberties before they 18 feb -26 mar 2011
might impede the understanding of the by Curt Riegelnegg
fascinating events within the frame, and you
do tend to walk away thinking less about 1.Luke Fowler. “Life in Film: Luke Fowler.” Frieze
Fowler than Cardew and his orchestra. Magazine May 2007. Web.
occupy.space
Disclaimer: Occupy Paper is free and makes n
found therein. Occupy Paper is a publication
not be liable for any offense taken by any ind
therein. All images in Occupy Paper are the s
stated. No image in the magazine or the mag
permission of the copyright holder.
Submissions: All works submitted to Occupy P
contributor(s), have the appropriate model re
publication or company’s publishing rights.
Occupy Paper is edited by Aoife Flynn, Occup
Co-edited by Mary Conlon, Shinnors Scholar,
e@gmail.com
no profit from the publication of any materials
for the dissemination of artistic ideas and will
dividual(s) resulting from any material contained
sole property of their creators unless otherwise
gazine logo may be used in any way without
Paper must be the sole, original property of the

eleases, and cannot interfere with any other
py Space, Limerick, Ireland.

, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick, Ireland.

Occupy Issue 6

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Occupy Issue 6

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nov-apr 2010/2011

OCCUPY PAPER ISSUE 6 A

Occupy Space located on Thomas Street,

six memos: trompe le monde

luke fowler pilgrimage from scattered points

In_flux aims to encourage collaboration

In_flux will be launched on Thursday 26th

artist-led art fair

in_flux@Thomas St Centre, Limerick

curated by annette moloney

In discussing the starting point for Measured

While watching the demolition of St.

Julie Merriman, Disruption Rowlandwerft IV(2010), Mixed Media

Julie Merriman,Strengthened for Navigation(2010), Mixed Media

Julie Merriman, Ship X(2010), Installation Shot

Sheenagh Geoghegan, Installation Detail(2010)

being political or ‘current’. I recently read

sg Influence-wise that’s a really big sg I’m off to Montreal on a residency

ee I often get ideas from something I

mc Your video work seems to fit

Erica Eyres, The Male Epidemic, video

Emmet Kierans, Emmet Kierans, Glitch

mc You rarely find artists’ studios,

ek The suburbs have a pretence that they

Emmet Kierans, Day

Emmet Kierans,Aspiration Lane (2010), oil on canvas, 100x135cm

In the context of Occupy Paper, feedback

“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not

Mary Conlon, Limerick, april 2011.

Shinnors Scholar Mary Conlon is a curator

together is the teaming of the fractured

Helen Horgan, The

The founder of phenomenology ‘eidos’ meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form’.

“From ‘I’ to ‘You’”

dr. david brancaleone

Michael Murphy’s The Taste

Dana Gentile is based in

What I find fascinating about

Calvino champions the

Despite his heroes, Gadda, Musil, Mann,

Tell us a bit about your backgrounds.

alan o’keeffe and joanna hopkins

Videogram screening, Faber Studios

state of the union

The work was selected by Basement Project

The State of the Union aimed to present a

Mary Galvin, Crawford College of Art, Selected by Basement Project Space

State of the Union, Installation Shot

Millepide was a performance night curated by Jessica Kelly that

Photos courtesy of Robin Parmar(2011)

Image courtesy of retitle.com

pilgrimage from scattered points

The disappointment is in the self-evident lack There is an element of wry masochism in

Paper must be the sole, original property of the

py Space, Limerick, Ireland.

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