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Mission: The Centre for Contemporary Art creates opportunities for audiences to experience ambitious, experimental and engaging art, and for emerging artists to develop successful careers. We welcome artists and projects with a connection to our region and collaborate with others to strengthen the arts, locally, nationally and internationally.

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Dreamers - an audio listening experience to draw with. Walking coastlines for the last year, this audio combines little moments of interactions with three locations 

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Dreamers - an audio listening experience to draw with. Walking coastlines for the last year, this audio combines little moments of interactions with three locations 

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The poster for this residency is a close-up image of my furry collaborator Olive (a two-year-old Golden Retriever). Olive and I spend a lot of time exploring coastlines. Being in a more research stage of my practice, I’ve had time to observe how she maps her surroundings. Her quest for the perfect rock fascinated me, it had to be the right shape to fit securely within the pocket of her mouth. She would carry it for ages until another catch her eye. 

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The poster for this residency is a close-up image of my furry collaborator Olive (a two-year-old Golden Retriever). Olive and I spend a lot of time exploring coastlines. Being in a more research stage of my practice, I’ve had time to observe how she maps her surroundings. Her quest for the perfect rock fascinated me, it had to be the right shape to fit securely within the pocket of her mouth. She would carry it for ages until another catch her eye. 

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Float Mapping - following the coastline 

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Float Mapping - following the coastline 

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I spent my first week discussing and gathering potential floating spots to explore. I am 'trying' to develop floating as a methodology. The concept of floating is basically going into bodies of water and floating. You try to keep your body flat, allowing your head to rest on the water's surface, slowly (if you need to) move your hands and feet to maintain buoyancy. I have floated in rivers, lakes, streams, and a few oceans. Karen Barad explores touching in the essay "On Touching - The Inhuman That Therefore I Am."

"The idea is to do collaborative research, to be in touch, in ways that enable response-ability"

Floating is touching water, it is a collaboration, by floating I hope to better understand the bodies relationship to water. There is an extremely supportive nature to floating, a real sensation of the body being held. Barad continues to discuss the non-human,

"...being in touch with the other, of feeling the exchange of e-motion in the binding obligations of entanglements"

Being in touch with the non-human is something that has slowly found its way into my float routine. Someone asked me recently who I think my audience is and I stumbled abit and didn't formalise an answer. But of course thinking about it later, I realised Olive has seen and experienced more floats than any human being. When previously exploring Co Lough's coastline I came across seals on numerous occasions. So again, thinking about the non-human and how this can potentially interact with the floating development is interesting. Back to the poster and the title of my residency/exhibition Idle Sweats the title references Astrida Neimanis publication 'Bodies of Water Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology' Neimanis discussions how "a watery body sloshes and leaks and excretes and perspires". This line made me contemplate what water I carried with me to the residency. Within the first chapter of the publication Neimanis situates embodying water;

"Did your eyes water upon finding that old letter folded in the pages of a book, long forgotten? The saliva that floods your mouth when your teeth pop the peel of a juicy kumquat; the sweat slowly dampening the fabric in your armpit, or at the small of your back as you sit on this bus, on this day, in this too-hot town...All of these waters are about a specifically situated you"

This paragraph links Donna Haraway's "situated knowledge" and how it challenges the idea of objective, universal knowledge and emphasises the importance of diverse perspectives and experiences of understanding the world. Next up will be to visit the floating spots and start mapping the initial research.

Mentioned reads ~

* https://monoskop.org/images/9/90/Neimanis_Astrida_Bodies_of_Water_Posthuman_Feminist_Phenomenology_2017.pdf

* https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066

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I spent my first week discussing and gathering potential floating spots to explore. I am 'trying' to develop floating as ...

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Driving past Lough Foyle regularly, I positioned this text thinking about the politics around this body of water. Lough Foyle lies between Derry and Donegal. I started thinking about lines, paths, and how water is in constant flux. How can we write about slippery things, can textual investigations hold onto something, are we all not just leaky bodies in constant flux?

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Driving past Lough Foyle regularly, I positioned this text thinking about the politics around this body of water. Lough Foyle lies between Derry and Donegal. I started thinking about lines, paths, and how water is in constant flux. How can we write about slippery things, can textual investigations hold onto something, are we all not just leaky bodies in constant flux?

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Taking the bend, I pause every time at Kinnagoe Bay, because the landscape is truly spectacular. Driving around the twisty turn, daydreaming about what mood the sea will greet me with today. Unfortunately, I have not been able to float at Kinnagoe Bay (yet) because the waves are extremely intimidating. A few days ago, swimsuit and all on, I walked (with determination) towards the waves. The sand beneath my feet was pulling me out, feeling the strength of the waves I receded to the shore. Standing back and feeling very very small, I thought about the ocean as a touching body. Feeling the spray of the waves smash against my own skin I reflected on an essay I read this week: 'A wet world: Rethinking Place, Territory, and Time by Kimberley Peters and Philip Steinberg. The essay basically asks us to think not from the sea but with the sea and how can we do this. Standing on the beach, shivering in my dry swimsuit I thought about one question asked within this essay,

"How one can write about so 'slippery' a subject. How can one describe the ocean as an object without obliterating the reformative dynamism that makes it such a powerful trope? And how can one write about the ocean as something to think not only with but from without reducing it to a metaphor?'

Driving past Lough Foyle regularly, I positioned this text thinking about the politics around this body of water. Lough Foyle lies between Derry and Donegal. I started thinking about lines, paths, and how water is in constant flux. How would you write about slippery things, can textual investigations hold onto something, are we all not just leaky bodies in constant flux?

Remembering I found a trace of a path the day before, I got dressed and started to walk. Most of these paths are only accessible at low tide (or if you are ok to climb over some rocks). A desire path is an unplanned normally small trial created due to mechanical erosion caused by humans or our non-human friends. I started paying attention to these desire paths because of Olive (my golden retriever). I guess it could be the smell of other animals, but she would trace these little routes and most times I just slowly followed behind her. Wondering if I would run into another four-legged friend I rested on a rock. Lying flat, attempting to reference the floating routine I followed the clouds and listened to the waves smash against the rocks. In this moment I briefly thought about walking back to the car to get my sound recorder to document or hold onto this sound. But I stopped myself and just listened. Reflecting on ephemeral acts I continued to trace the Inishowen Peninsula.

~ mentioned reads ~

* https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/a-wet-world-rethinking-place-territory-and-time

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Taking the bend, I pause every time at Kinnagoe Bay, because the landscape is truly spectacular. Driving around the twisty ...

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Solo kayaking ~ listening ~ thinking with water.  I live within a 20 minute walk from Camlough Lake. (Camloch, meaning 'crooked lake') I purchased a kayak earlier this year to spend more time on water. I have been slowly making my way around this crooked lake. thinking about the shape of the lake ~ been thinking about naming parts, places, or points I stop at along the sides. 

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Solo kayaking ~ listening ~ thinking with water.  I live within a 20 minute walk from Camlough Lake. (Camloch, meaning 'crooked lake') I purchased a kayak earlier this year to spend more time on water. I have been slowly making my way around this crooked lake. thinking about the shape of the lake ~ been thinking about naming parts, places, or points I stop at along the sides. 

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spending long periods of time on Camlough Lake has slowly developed my thinking with water. How is our mind like a watery system? (open water) kayaking has provided my practice with the opportunity to collaborate with water. In terms of sensing, it has steered the glossary of language around floating to think more in-depth about somatic language. How does floating affect the BODY. PERHAPS ~ the language around floating can be experienced through AUDIO ? 

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spending long periods of time on Camlough Lake has slowly developed my thinking with water. How is our mind like a watery system? (open water) kayaking has provided my practice with the opportunity to collaborate with water. In terms of sensing, it has steered the glossary of language around floating to think more in-depth about somatic language. How does floating affect the BODY. PERHAPS ~ the language around floating can be experienced through AUDIO ? 

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sensing the movement of the body floating by following clouds 

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sensing the movement of the body floating by following clouds 

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Riso printing in itself is a highly energy efficient and sustainable printing method, making for an ethical product, unmatched by other printing methods.

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Riso printing in itself is a highly energy efficient and sustainable printing method, making for an ethical product, unmatched by other printing methods.

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The cold process consumes little energy, and the riso prints with soy based (non-toxic) inks, and stencils made from plant fibres. Unlike litho printing, it only takes a single print for the stencil to be fully inked and ready to print. It uses little electricity and eliminates the need for up to 100,000 litres of water and 10,000 litres of alcohol (per year) consumed by a typical mid-size printer.

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Whilst on residency in Derry, I worked with Derry Print Workshop to develop a two sided A3 print based on my research around walking coastlines, collaborating with my dog, desire lines and floating

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things I bring to float - thinking about them as rituals ? 

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things I bring to float - thinking about them as rituals ? 

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Companion Planting: workshop on collaborative practice 

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Companion Planting: workshop on collaborative practice 

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15:30 - 17:00 | The Byre: Conference Room | Free

Cecelia Graham and Niamh Seana Meehan lead a discussion

and workshop that seeks to build strategies of support and examines ‘care’ within artistic working practices.

In collaboration with Cúirt International Festival

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participants created their own response to Le Guin's carry bag theory 

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participants created their own response to Le Guin's carry bag theory 

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practicing slow travel Belfast - St Andrews 

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practicing slow travel Belfast - St Andrews 

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As part of our workshop we decided to practice slow travel. It was something we both felt strongly about and spoke to the directors of the festival to see if it would be possible to organise. It meant we spent more time traveling and had little time to engage with the other activities happening within the festival. However, it was rewarding to have conversations around slow traveling and working in a slower environment.

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looking at how hands sense floating and comparing it to how seals move, float, sway 

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looking at how hands sense floating and comparing it to how seals move, float, sway 

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research statement