Aerial Blue artist’s information
Dear Islanders
We are mightily excited to have you all on board for this journey. Your participation guarantees that it is going to be a fantastic experience.
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In evolutionary terms, islands are breeding grounds for hyper-differentiation. Fantasy creatures thrive and multiply that would otherwise perish on the mainland. The margin of an island is also analogous to the position of the artist, at once feasting off the glut of influences and opportunities that wash ashore, and at the same time, wilfully standing in opposition to them. In the context of Ireland, a western sea-surrounded outpost of Europe that has recently endured a dramatic economic collapse, the condition of becoming islanded has become symbolic, and a rallying point for action, questioning ‘what is the land beneath our feet?’. The participants of Aerial Blue are asked, through collective experimentation, to construct ‘an island state of mind’ during an invited residency on a deserted island.
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Each of the four days will be structured around a different aspect of islandism.
Day 1- pm Island as escape: as we break away from the mainland
Day 2- am Island as new beginnings: establishing a camp
Day 3- am Island as fiction/ site of difference
Day 4- am Island community- Inter-island exchange: We will be transported to the nearby luxury island of Inish Turk Beg where we will have afternoon tea in the pavilion
- pm Island and its shoreline (the interface with mainland)
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Within this loose structure we would like you to conceive of a contribution that you will make to the proceedings of the school. There is no restriction on what this contribution might be and we encourage you to be as creative as possible in your thinking about it.
This is an opportunity for a collision between your own practice/ thinking, the island and collective experimentation.
Your contribution could take the from of anything from a straight forward reading, a group discussion on a particular topic, a performance, the preparation of a meal, to something more along the lines of collective experimentation such as the orchestration of a group action, a game, swimming classes, the building of forms, making sound, practicing black magic, star gazing, inventing a new narrative…
We are really excited to see what will come out of this. If you would like to send any ideas our way for discussion prior to departure please do so.
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Practical Details
Lay of the land
Dorinish is a small island of 19acres it is one of supposedly 365 islands in Clew Bay. John Gavin, a local farmer, is the current owner of the island and uses the land to graze his sheep. John has kindly given us permission to use the island for the duration of the school and will meet us on our arrival at Rosmoney.
The island has little or no shelter and is very exposed. The climate in this region is very unpredictable even during the summer months. The island has never been developed and is fairly wild and unserviced; needless to say this means that there are no buildings, no electricity, running water, toilets etc.
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Island Library (or suggested reseach list)
Off shore drilling rig’, Circus Philosophicus -Graham Harmon
‘The Atlas of Legendary lands’ -Judyth A. McLeod
‘Atlas of remote islands: 50 islands I have never visited and never will’ -Judith Schalanasky
Cabinet Magazine, Issue 38: Summer 2010- Islands
‘Robinson Crusoe’- Daniel Defoe
‘The Aleph’- Jose Luis Borges
http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html
‘The Neverending story’ – Michael Ende
‘In Watermelon Sugar’- Richard Brautigan
‘The Poetics of Space’-Gaston Bachelard
‘The Big Windows’ -Peadar O’Donnell, The O’Brien Press 1988 (1955)
‘High Rise’- J.G.Ballard
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘Do cultural islands exist?’ in Social Anthropology, no. 1, 1993, online at http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Culturalislands.html
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘Multiculturalism, Individualism and Human rights: Romanticism, the Enlightenment and Lessons from Mauritius’ in Richard A. Wilson (ed.), Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, Pluto Press, London 1997.
DeFilppis, Fisher and Shragge, Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing, Rutgers University Press, London, 2010
John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization, OUP, Oxford, 2010
Film
Heart of Glass- Werner Herzog (some of which was shot on the Skellig Islands of Co. Kerry)
