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Semester 1 Mapping - included for context

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Semester 1 Mapping - included for context

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"The Gaia Hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock (1972) suggests that living organisms on the planet interact with their surrounding inorganic environment to form a synergetic and self-regulating system that created, and now maintains, the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible." David E. Reichle, Web: sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/gaia-hypothesis

This audio visual art piece is about an entanglement of humans and nature in the littoral space. Like the dirftwood that was once a tree branch covered in ivy, we are in danger of killing that which we benefit from. By not acknowledging the entanglement that is us as part of nature, we miss the opportunity to work with nature and instead we damage it (and therefore ourselves) by trying to colonise it and control it.

This driftwood washed up on my home shores. I, like so many others here, receive many benefits from living near littoral space. To gather that data I placed notebooks along the shoreline with the question "What does this shoreline mean to you?". I also interviewed people with the same question.

I chose to burn some of these answers into the ivy (not the tree branch), an ironic action that reflects the ironic situation of humans vs Gaia while loving nature instead of humans as part of Gaia. Burning the wood with words of love for nature, for Gaia.

The piece will be laid out on the floor. People will have to bend over and move around the piece to read it and hear it, to inspect it, to bear witness to what has been done to it while reading the words of love of nature, of what it does for us.

We should bend to nature more often - and embrace the entanglement that gives us life - we should listen to Gaia.

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A sense of empathy and irony, a sense of touch, seeing, hearing, feeling - inspiring imagination which is the foundation for being capable of empathy

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Following on from Part I, this semester's work is about sensing. The previous work mapped what the people in Youghal felt about their shoreline, which naturally leant towards a very positive set of thoughts and feelings, onto some driftwood ivy by burning. An ironic action reflecting the irony of our loving nature and destroying it at the same time. In this semester's work, I have delved into the more negative aspects of the human/nature entanglement in littoral space.

I have progressed my research into littoral artworks - many of which are art made in or with littoral elements rather than littoral art in the social engagement sense. They often tap into a sense of empathy. Chris Jordan’s film “Albatross” is an example of this as a story of a remote island, far from human habitation, where our plastic rubbish is washed ashore and eaten by the albatross who are there to breed. Many birds die because of the plastic in their stomachs. My research has also lead me to artworks on care such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance and projects such as the Clean River Project e.V. in Winningen Germany which has an art, environment and education remit and produces art from the plastic rubbish collected during the community cleanups.

My goal this semester was to engage the local and visiting population at the shoreline and elicit a response to my acts of caring for the environment. Can I get the public to put their feet in the shoes of the littoral space for a moment to sense the impact of litter on the non-human? Can the resulting artwork provoke self-reflection as a human thinking about the non-human? Can I get them to sense the danger in not paying attention to what the environment is telling us? Saying "don’t litter the beach" is not the same as being confronted with it visually.

My first step was to engage with the groups in Youghal who regularly clean the beaches here. Youghal Coastal Clean group was my first port of call. This involved meeting up, organising where each person was going to litter pick and going off and doing that for an hour. I gathered my first bag of beach litter as art material and I continued to collect more in the following weeks. While picking this litter I am very conscience of the visual, textural, audial and olfactory qualities of it and how that contrasts to the environment it is found in.

I performed the act of cleaning the beach litter and hanging it up on a rotary line next to me - this did two things, firstly the visual confrontation of beach trash being washed at the shoreline shocked people, and secondly by hanging it on a metal tree I was again performing an ironical action of placing our artificial materials on an artificial tree next to a beautiful shoreline in summer time at a summer holiday location. This performance was filmed.

I provided a flyer explaining the performance for those who were interested.

My forth and last step is to display the video and beach litter sculpture at the Uillinn. The video will be played next to it or projected on to it.

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Influences over the course of the MA have been:

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Influences over the course of the MA have been:

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Research into the littoral space – this is the space between just above and just below the tidal lines on the shoreline. This is the space where land and sea meet one effecting the other, where creatures cling on to life in the turbulence of the waves, where opposing forces meet and clash. This is also why the term has been used to describe a kind of participatory art where opposing views or experiences come together to clash and communicate (BB).

Littoral art has also become a description of artworks that are made with littoral elements or art that is made in littoral space – this is often materialist art or art where the material the art is made from is the most important artistic element in the artwork such as beach litter. This can also be termed environmental art because it makes a statement about the environment in some way. This in turn touches on the topic of empathy and the environmental artist’s goal of eliciting empathy for the environment or non-human.

Philosophers that have come up regarding the above research are:

Bruce Barber’s definition of Littoral Art:

Littoral is that terrestrial zone that is alternately covered by the sea: the intermediate and shifting zones between the sea, lake, river and land, and is used metaphorically to discuss art practices and projects undertaken predominantly outside the conventional contexts of the institutionalized art world… littoral is useful precisely for its shifting and negotiable status for theorizing cultural practices that exist between the inside and outside, under/over and around the art world’s institutions and agencies.

Alfred Gell and Graham Harman on object agency and in particular Jane Bennett’s description of vibrant matter – regarding the agency of the materials used in my artworks.

By “vitality” I mean the capacity of things – edibles, commodities, storms, metals – not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own.

James Lovegood’s idea of Gaia, the systems that give life to the planet Earth.

Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.

Art and artists that I have come across doing my research are as follows:

- Environmental and materialist based art works of Mandy Barker and Soler-Arpa

- The film Albatross by Chris Jordan

- Maintenance by Mierle Laderman Ukeles

- The Clean River Project

See links at: https://padlet.com/niamhnichearbhaill/maae-secondary-research-8crl2g5mk8jyvwwz

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The audio essay comprises of spoken word and sound scapes. The soundscapes will be one of Waterford mornings, Youghal mornings, island and life sounds.

My journey back and forth between Islands, West Cork, Youghal and Waterford feels very much like an island hopping of my life. A tidal flow of time, back and forth, back and forth, packing things to take with me, unpacking them again. It is a littoral life, a littoral flow of actions. The script reflects this with a tidal flow of words that are then used to create a dissonant soundscape, a dystopian warning. Everywhere I go, there is plastic and a tendency to take nature for granted - roads intersect nature brutally, our plastic is in every hedgerow, every shoreline, it's all around us, it's embedded in our lives and it's becoming embedded in nature.

The sculptural piece is a large box, painted on the outside with the impression of roadside nature flashing past, with a hole for your arm to go into on the front - your sense of touch will follow a deconstructed cat7 cable (coated in plastic and representing technology and online communication networks across the globe) to various objects inside the box - a tactile journey. The audio essay soundscape will be played on loop from a plastic speaker below the box. The combination of work/technical/online/ life objects will contrast with natural objects – a reflection of technical networks and natural systems entangled. The box will be attached to a stand.

In answer to the brief, the work shows the difference between mapping and sensing while doing both – a map is a computer-generated voice spouting directions or a flat digital or paper object that communicates recorded facts – senses are more alive, more ongoing, ever-changing sets of incoming data. The people experiencing this artwork will use their senses to follow the map, but this map is different, it will evoke thoughts and memories and curiosities far more than following a map normally would. It will also activate the imagination. The first step to building empathy is activating the imagination.

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The script is as follows:

(Tidal flow – )

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, work, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, study, art, work, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, college, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, work, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, work

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, work, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, study, art, work, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, college, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, work, housework,

walk the dog, packing, driving, unpacking, art, work

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Hacking curiosity, empathy, and irony to activate personal investigation - Using the memories of being on vacation as a juxtaposition to the reality of pollution and erosion along our shorelines.

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Littoral Drift (AKA Listening to Gaia Part III)

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Littoral Drift (AKA Listening to Gaia Part III)

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Artist Statement for Meshworks:

Littoral Drift

My name is Niamh Ni Chearbhaill. I am a mixed media visual artist who works with found objects, sculpture, drawing, painting, social practice, video, photography, audio recordings, and whatever works for the concept I’m working on. For this MA in Arts and Environment, my concept involves the tension between the nostalgia of the beautiful beach holiday and the ugly reality of pollution and erosion evident in the same littoral space. My installation invites you to investigate by listening and looking. The research that has inspired this work has included: the geologic phenomenon of sand pedestal formation by wind; Jane Bennett’s vibrancy of matter; James Lovegood’s idea of Gaia, the systems that give life to the planet Earth; the shocking environmental artworks of Mandy Barker and Alvaro Soler-Arpa; and the ironic act of care in Maintenance by Mierle Laderman Ukeles. My goal for this semester and this exhibition was to hack curiosity and irony to activate personal investigation and empathy - Using the feeling of being on vacation rock-pooling as a juxtaposition to the reality of pollution and erosion at the beach and across the planet. In making these pieces for the exhibition, I used newspapers with current climate change news and other current world news, which kept both human and non-human welfare in my mind. The act of wrapping these artworks, representing the non-human, with first newspaper, then plaster of paris bandages, and then a hard rough texture of sand is my act of care, my act of maintenance, and my wishful thinking.

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Following on from the first and second semester, this semester's work is about hacking. Semester 1 mapped what the people in Youghal felt about their shoreline, which naturally leant towards a very positive set of thoughts and feelings, onto some driftwood ivy by burning. An ironic action reflecting the irony of our loving nature and destroying it at the same time. Semester 2 was a performance at the beach, an act of ironically washing the beach pollution and hanging it up to dry in front of beach goers (the video of this performance ended up being a part of the final work). The second work was a sensory box where people were in encouraged to place their hands into the box to activate their imagination, the foundation of empathy, by trying to guess what they were “seeing” with their hands. The box contained beach objects, both natural and plastic. There was a soundtrack that also inspired curiosity and imagination for those trying to make out what was being said. The message was a warning - nature will mend itself, we won't be so lucky, we will go extinct by our own actions causing climate change.

In this semester's work, I have concentrated on advancing the idea of making use of people's day-at-the-beach nostalgia and natural curiosity to encourage them to investigate on their own. The forms of my final works are inspired by sand pedestals, a fleeting phenomena caused by sand, salt, waves and wind erosion. One is a speaker, broadcasting the sounds of summer at the beach. Another is a small cave containing a performance called “Washing our Dirty Laundry”, an interactive performance conducted in littoral space, bringing littoral art back into the littoral space. These shapes are inspired also by my walks with my dog along Youghal shoreline where many boulders, rocks and stones are gathered together, slowly rubbing ions of eons off each other with every tide.  We humans are a speck in time, we are temporary sand pedestals, compared to these rocks that care nothing for us. To them, we are but a fleeting whisper.

Some of the research that has inspired this work has included: the geologic phenomenon of sand pedestal formation; Jane Bennett’s vibrancy of matter; James Lovegood’s idea of Gaia, the systems that give life to the planet Earth; the shocking environmental artworks of Mandy Barker and Alvaro Soler-Arpa; and the ironic act of care in Maintenance by Mierle Laderman Ukeles.

In making these pieces for the exhibition, I used newspapers with current climate change news and other current world news, which kept both human and non-human welfare in my mind. The act of wrapping these artworks, representing the difference in longevity of human versus non-human, with first newspaper, then plaster of paris bandages, and then a hard rough texture of sand is my act of care, my act of maintenance, and my wishful thinking.

These shapes are islands of care and of warning.