Garinish Island or Illnacullin

roggernaut | Culture and politics | August 3, 2009

At the turn of the century there wasn’t even a covered road linking Glengarriff to the out-stretched Beara peninsula. Only visitors who took the rough journey over the scoured mountains, or the ‘Star of Beara’, a two storey steam ferry working up and down Bantry Bay, were rewarded with a view of the fissured sandstone peak of Hungry Hill and the ruins of the castle at Dunboy. Now, before passing the Bamboo gardens and strange monkey puzzle trees, living testament to the tropical climate the area is famed for, there is a newish sign: ‘Welcome to Glengarriff, gateway to the Beara penninsula’. At the other end of the town the road forks: to the left is Beara, to the right Killarney. The road runs naturally to the right, remembering the past absence of a route to Beara and the history of a seaside town once popular with legions of English tourists following the Prince-of-Wales tour from Bantry to Killarney, via Glenagarriff. Times have changed and the sign, like a switch in the tracks, now directs the traveller to the left.

Just beyond the Bamboo gardens the road becomes dark as treacle with new asphalt. The road passes Eccles Hotel, a picture of Victoriana, and then straightens, like a runway, bisecting the town. The town itself is like a set, a sensation emphasised by the slow speed limit. On either side shops sell knitwear and woollen rugs. Sandwich boards advertise pullover sales- the joke being that Glengarriff always has a pullover sale. People criss- cross the street with unquestioned authority over passing traffic. There are a couple of cafes and a shop; three hotels; a restaurant and a number of pubs with benches and umbrellas outside for the patchy Irish summers. There are many hanging baskets and shopfronts brightly painted.

Thackeray said ‘if Glengarriff had been found in England it would have been one of the wonders of the world’. There is no doubting its beauty, set between the Caha mountains and Bantry Bay (‘where the mountains meet the sea’, as the guide says). The setting reminds me of a high rise apartment block built in Hong Kong between the mountains and the sea. Unhappiness grew among the locals that the building would block the communion of the gods. The developers compromised by removing a large square- six apartments’ worth- from the centre of the design, allowing the energy to flow unhampered.

There has never been much built in Glengarriff, affirming its status as a gateway, a way-station. Whether to Beara or Killarney most do only stop, to buy knitwear, look at the Bamboo gardens, take tea in Eccles Hotel, continuing their journey home. The only establishment for a long time was the Glengarriff Inn, bought by Thomas Eccles in 1835. In 1890, with the rising numbers of visitors, his son, John, undertook significant reconstruction and renamed it Eccles Hotel. The only other notable construction in and around Glengarriff was the Martello tower, on Garinish Island. Today it remains the only construction visible on the island from the air. It was built in 1805, the first on the south coast. The English were then wise to the potential of an invasion after Wolfe Tone’s mission was foiled by strong easterly winds, and that less than a decade before. The towers were built all along the coasts of Britain and Ireland at the time of the Napoleonic wars. From the sea you can see them, distinctive and unmissable, spouting up from the rough land like chess pieces. They were never used but I have often thought how wonderful it would be to see them all lit up- it was supposed that a fire would be lit when ships were spotted approaching, and as the towers on the Irish coast were in sight of one another more fires would be lit, one after the other, like a baton relay. Ironically the towers built against Napoleon, but never actually used, had their origin in Corsica, the island where Napoleon was born and grew up. In 1793, Pasquale Piero, the quixotic revolutionary who was given control of Corsica after the Revolution, turned against the Parisian government for executing the King. He formed an alliance with Britain, asking for the same mandate as the ‘Kingdom of Ireland’. The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom lasted two years, until the Spanish entered the war on the side of the French. Piero was given a pension in Britain and the British retreated, blowing up the Mortella tower which stood guard on Mortella point, so called for the abundance of myrtle that grew around it. The tower had been employed since the fifteenth century to warn the islanders of approaching pirates from North Africa, and was now taken, with its adulterated name, to scattered outposts of the British Empire.

In 1910, when Annan Bryce, a Scottish MP, bought Garinish island (he had visited for several summers and apparently fell in love with it) the Martello tower was all that stood on the 35 acre island. And the holly (the island’s other name, Illnacullin, means ‘Island of Holly’), grappling over stone, the heather and patches of gorse growing in pockets of spongey loam, cut for fuel by a family who held a small cottage on the eastern end of the island. The day I visited, a warm, blustery day in June and only a few clouds out to sea, far from where they could blot the sun, there was a large coach load of French tourists. They were in pasture: retired and travelling. They met me as I sat on a triangle of perfectly manicured grass at the far end of the Victorian walled garden, beyond the tall stone wall. They were coming down the shallow steps from the Martello tower, delighting in the sunny weather, though still draped in scarves and light, bright, cotton pull-overs. The men wore shorts, revealing stout, brown legs. I could hear them chirruping all the way down, a flock of birds in a crocodile line. Two at a time was all the corridor of steps through the arcing ferns and tall tamarind trees allowed. They emerged in to the sunlit triangle and blinked a while, accustoming themselves, and orientating themselves, to the island – it is said that islands possess a particular geography of their own, one which is difficult to come to terms with unless a considerable amount of time is spent learning the scale and features of the place, and once learnt making a return to the mainland difficult. They didn’t notice me at all, as though I was just another carefully placed feature.

Bryce commissioned Harold Peto, the eminent English architect, to design the gardens and buildings on Garinish in 1913. Bryce had a vision (as a Scot he was nurtured by a long legacy of extravagant engineering projects and was himself the director of the Baroda, Bombay and Central India Railway, at the time unfolding great networks of railways across the girth of the subcontinent) for a spectacular residency in the bay. He must have discussed with his wife, a keen gardener, the possibilities that such a place held- even then the bizarrely temperate climate, caused by the warm wafts of the Gulf stream, was a feature well known by Glengarriff enthusiasts. The two of them knew which plants had prospered in the foothills of the Himalayas, near to Darjeeling, the newly thriving tea plantation of the British, and were no doubt inspired by the 5th Marquess of Landsdowne’s gardens further north on the road to Killarney, planted in the 1870s. Before her enterprise James Hooker, the plant hunter whose writing desk was carried across the mountains, commented at length in his Himalayan Journals on the number of English plants- vervain, fumitory, nasturtium, dock- which grew along the banks of the rivers. “In the woods I heard and saw the wild peacock for the first time. Its voice is not to be distinguished from that of the tame bird in England, a curious instance of the perpetuation of character under widely different circumstances, for the crow of the wild jungle-fowl does not rival that of the farm-yard cock.”

What sound must have rung down the bay with the blowing out of the rocks with dynamite? Did they hear the explosions in Castletown?- and the digging out of clay-earth from miles along the road, transported by horse and cart, or horse and panniers, to the pier, then boat, then, once on the island, by individual wheelbarrow across beams of wood laid out across the rocks to make a level run. The earth was needed for the preliminary task of growing Scots Pine as a wind break, necessary before anything fragile could be settled in. Initial designs had included an elaborate house for Annan Bryce and his family but the project was whittled down over time, after the war. Annan died in 1923, not long after Captain Percival and the Black and Tans had evacuated the Eccles Hotel. Bryce’s widow and son carried on the endeavour, following Peto’s design carefully. Soon a small island combined an Italianate, formal garden, a Greek temple, a walled garden brimming with delphinium, clematis, rose, euphorbia, aster, giant daisies (in highest vigour when the French paraded through- the yellow pollen finding its way onto the nose of a lady who had bent too close to the flower in the course of posing for a photograph) and a lush, river- lulled glen softened by varieties of rhododendron, acacia and Chilean myrtle. Peto named the miniature valley ‘Happy Valley’ after the famous race course which sits in the basin of that then more important island possession, Hong Kong. He wasn’t to know that before becoming a popular race course for colonials it was an army station. Owing to its marshy terrain it became a breeding ground for the anopheles mosquito, the vector of malaria, at the time know only as a terrific and mysterious fever. The disease killed hundreds of soldiers. They were all buried there on the spot, and so the name ‘Happy Valley’, the common euphemism for a cemetery. Today the large lawn on Garinish, its regular mown stripes more at home on a cricket ground than a small, remote island, sinks a little every year with the bog beneath.

The Bryce’s plans required the genius and careful attention to detail of a man like Harold Peto. He loved objects, collected from many trips abroad, particularly Italy where he re-discovered formalism, a style out of step with his contemporaries who had moved towards more expressive styles of design. Peto was interested in evoking emotion. He was pursued by a desire for home, for an ideal. He was haunted by nostalgia in an era we now consider to be the by-gone era, a period when war was far from people’s minds though just around the corner and Europe floated in hiatus. Every time is a harbinger of lost time. So Peto resurrected the Greek temple, the classical columns, the marble, aberrations in a time which had moved on, which was aspiring to be novel. He was a romantic, out of sink with his generation. But he was not blindly beholden to a world, or worlds, which had fallen out of reach. Peto had visited Japan in 1898. That culture had revealed a sensibility still devoted to detail, etiquette, form and structure, elements so easily shrugged off by the innovators. Peto was never able to re-calibrate himself with the fragmenting world of the West. His visit instilled a desire for unity and coherence, a commitment which finds form in the subtle framing of he Sugar Loaf mountains by the columns of the Greek temple, a design echoing the framing of Mount Fuji in countless Japanese gardens.

The dead more than the living evoke a sense of home. Is this what Harold Peto meant when he wrote in his diary: “old buildings or fragments of masonry carry one’s mind back to the past in a way that a garden entirely of flowers cannot do”. Traces of silvery paint on an old Church fresco, weathered stones, the headless figurine; fragments are what we have. Of the many features on the island- the sixty foot pine trees, the exotic azaleas in full bloom, the very English tea room with coral patterned garden chairs and bouncy lemon madeira cakes- the one I return to most is the Martello tower.

After climbing the dark, narrow spiral staircase the light of the sky is blinding. A hand rested on the pale stone is quickly covered in dust. Leaning on the castellated top, alone, I take in the full panorama: the bay, the tree covered coastline, the rocks where the thick seals bask, and the town of Glengarriff poised between sea and mountain. Nowhere else is the island so well revealed; a piece of land separated from the rest. Looking west there is a rope perimeter and a sign which reads ‘work in progress’.

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Starting up a theatre company

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | August 3, 2009

Why start a theatre company? There’s no money in it and now that people have less disposable income the footfall around venues will continue to decrease. Why then are theatre companies cropping up in Cork?
The path ahead of new theatre companies looks bleak, with funding cuts in the Arts Council and Culture Ireland, it seems there’s never been a worse time to begin a career in theatre. At a recent Theatre Forum meeting last Tuesday in Dublin, there was a heavy atmosphere in the auditorium as people vented their fears and frustrations. The fear of paying bills and surviving, against the impermanent nature of financial support offered by The Arts Council, personalised the discussion. To live and work and pay bills and all the time nothing is certain – even long term funding offers no security of personal value.

Fatigued loomed, people tired and worn out by the constant struggle with the beast. New theatre companies are needed now more than ever, to take up the voice and fight. If we loose the Minister for the Arts, we have no voice. It’s that’s simple. You could be forever looking at what’s wrong and what went wrong but what’s needed is acceptance of where we are. Perhaps funding can be managed so that out traditional repertoire is maintained while our national voice is encouraged on a global stage, but, what is that voice?

The question itself is the bridge between what is established and what’s to come. The good and the new. Emerging artists and established companies have an opportunity to use available resources and experience to cut away the fat and get to the bones of what’s been put up on our stages. The Performance Corporation seem to have a good take this as do the Corn Exchange and Rough Magic, who all have extended resources and support to young companies. The Project Arts Centre too, has such a policy and Bell Table in Limerick is working with the Limerick Theatre Hub.

Do we have this in Cork? Is there a production company, big enough so that it could piggy back a smaller one? Not with financial support, but more in the area of backing the company so that it ups the integrity of smaller company on a bigger stage. It’s about voice, established companies need to keep shouting and need the support of emerging artists. There’s no point on everyone shouting for different things at this point. As a sector we need get organized and shout together. The arts is a huge part of our national recovery. We are not outside it, we there, watching, recording, interpreting and expressing society as it melds and changes. To walk away from theatre now, and try a job in something…else, would be stupid.

There is no safe place in theses times, there is only what know we can do as individuals. If we can row the ship together through these stormy waters, think of the imagination that will be released. To move theatre on in this country and maintain our international reputation depends on new established artists working together to create stimulating work on a global stage.

Jenny Rogers

Co – Artistic Director of The Roundhouse Theatre Company

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Delicious recipes for tomatoes

Giles Clark | Recipes from a mutant kitchen | August 3, 2009

Tomatoes are now, perhaps as familiar to an Irish vegetable shopper as a potato. Their lustful association with the Mediterranean lifestyle, greatly accentuated by the sunshine-nostalgia of Elizabeth David, have created much demand; a demand, which on the whole, sterile, factory-line glass houses of Holland, Israel and the Canary Islands seem to have had a monopoly on. They’ll grow just fine on these shores though, but their season is short, often no longer than six weeks or so. The value in the locally grown varieties are that they need not be picked until they have nearly ripened and naturally on the stalk.
Store them outside the fridge, in a dark, cool cupboard. If you’ve no choice but the picked and sprayed while hard-as-a-marble variety, then take them out of their wrapping and leave on the window sill for a couple of days. You may find though that, especially when eaten raw, they have the taste and texture of something closer to a Maris Piper.

The chutney and the tomatoes with the pork are seedless, skinless and stalkless, but that’s not to say they should be binned. In them lies much of the meaty, saliva inducing goodness of the tomato. Pop them in a pan with some basil stalks a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar and bring to a simmer for a quarter of an hour. Let it cool to room temperature and press through a sieve for a tomato broth that is delicious warm in a mug with a little rapeseed oil or else it can be reduced, frozen and used like tomato paste – to intensify sauces and stews.

Lamb scraps and tomato on toast

The trick to the dish is time and patience by keeping half an eye on the pot and giving it only occasional stirs as the meat begins to brown and stick to the bottom of the pot.

Ask your butcher to hold you back any scraps. The breast and the neck, cheap and underused, would be ideal, as would the shoulder.
Discard any gristle, and if necessary some fat also – so that you are left with about a quarter fat. Chop the lamb to a fairly fine, if a little rough, dice.
Heat olive oil in a medium hot pan and pop in your lamb. Season well with salt and stir. Add to it a big bundle of thyme, a bay leaf and a seedless red chilli.
Summer savoury could be used instead of thyme and a sliver of lemon, orange zest, basil, parsley and mint stalks would all be welcome, though not essential.
The lamb will, at first be quite unappealingly. Start to sweat its juices for which it’s best to keep at a happy heat. Then when its juices have reduced, turn the heat down and the meat will slowly begin to caramelize in its own rendering fat.
Best not to become too attached to watching the pot. If you are happy with the heat (which should be bringing about soft but consistent hisses and pops) engage yourself in a worthy distraction. Once in a while give the pot a stir, scraping up any crust at the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Watching it like a hawk creates a temptation to stir it too often and to persuade oneself it’s ready before it actually is.
Timing will always be different, based largely on the amount of lamb in the pot. If the pot is too full of meat it will never caramelize, too empty and it will likely burn.
Anyhow, when you are happy that the mince is about ready – some bits may be crispy, other bursting with fatty juices – throw in a couple of crushed garlic cloves and prepare your tomatoes. Peel them and cut them in half lengthwise. Cut out the core and squeeze out most of the seeds. Fish out the herbs and chilli and add the tomato halves. The fruit and acid of the fresh tomatoes will make for a happy foil to the rich and fatty lamb. Let the tomato begin to break down and then serve on some thickly sliced toast or with a fresh crusty white bread.

A roasted tomato and little gem salad with horseradish yoghurt and mint
Cut your tomatoes in half down the core and bake them with olive oil, salt and pepper for half an hour in a hot oven. Some of their juice will evaporate, and they’ll become more intense, more tomato-y in flavour.
Once the tomatoes have cooled, make a dressing with any oily juices left in the baking tray, some more oil, grated horseradish, some red wine vinegar, a little minced garlic and salt to taste.
Slice some mint and mix it into some yogurt with a pinch of salt.
Pop a large spoonful of the minted yogurt on the plate and on top of it a pile of the gem leaves and tomatoes mixed carefully (so not to crush the tomatoes) with the dressing.

It should make a joyful evolving eating experience – starting of with mouthfuls of crisp gem and tomato halves and finishing with crushed tomatoes and their juices mixed with minty yogurt all mopped up with bread.

Lamb’s tongue with a tomato chutney and herb salad

Best to use tomatoes that are fairly firm to give them a chance of retaining some of their structural integrity. The chutney can be jarred and kept in the fridge where it will slowly harmonise, but after a couple of months it will likely become quite funky. It need not be left for so long. It’s an especially fine accomplice to the finally abundant mackerel, lamb hash (left over lamb roast fried on a high heat with potatoes and onions), and general picnic-y food.

For the chutney, dunk the tomatoes in boiling water and shock them in cold water. Then off with the peel and out with the core and seeds and chop into a large dice.
In a hot pan roast some star anise, mustard seeds and a little dried chilli, when the seeds begin to pop add white wine vinegar (a couple of tablespoons for every half cup of diced tomatoes) and a bay leaf and take off the heat.
While it’s cooling and infusing, stir in a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar to dissolve. In another pan sweat some minced onion with a couple of thymes stalks, another bay leaf and some pounded mustard seeds and a good swig of oil. When the onion is translucent and tender, stir in the tomatoes and raise the heat a little and season with salt.
Add the strained vinegar (and maybe a little reduced tomato stock if you’ve made some from the trimmings) and stir it as it simmers quite quickly. When the juices have mostly reduced, then taste it for seasoning – it should taste a little too salty, too sweet, too acidic so that the flavours can come through when it is served cold – make sure the balance is to your taste and then let it cool a little before jarring it.

Simmer your tongues in water with some herbs and vegetables to help them along. An hour or so should do it, but make sure it is a slow and steady simmer as they can easily become tough. Let them cool in the liquor and then peel the outer skin, sometimes the peeling can be a bit of a struggle – best to do it before they’ve completely cooled and with a spoon to assist.
Then cut the tongue in three, lengthwise, roll it in flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, egg, and bread crumbs. Fry, until golden, in butter and serve with the chutney and lightly dressed (oil, salt and lemon juice) parsley leaves or coriander, basil and mint leaves.

Giles Clark
[Image by Fiona Hallinan]

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The travelling State of mind

Ronan Goggin | Life in a cultural petri dish | August 3, 2009

Travelling in Columbia is an essay from on of our skills exchange members currently working as a volunteer in South America

No matter how much you travel it is one of the enduring truths that you can never predict how someone will emerge on the other side. One man’s epiphany is the next man’s implosion; for each formative flirtation somebody somewhere will surely cave in on themselves. Rather than encourage a new perspective, travel will inspire some merely to defer to their base prejudices.

I remember pounding through Havana’s shabby and inspiring streets four years ago in the company of a New Zealand backpacker whose every thought wanted me to chuck her into Fidel Castro’s pit of crocodiles – which she was inclined to believe existed beneath every decaying building in Cuba. She was of the right, me of the left (at the time) and this country, the ultimate ideological battlefield, brought all our gripes and allegiances to the surface. Horribly.

She was a self-made business woman who wouldn’t accept that efforts as noble as hers could still end up in poverty and hopelessness. People were dealt a cruel hand because usually, that is what they deserved. The Cubans among us didn’t have as much as her because they hadn’t invested as much as her, they hadn’t slogged like her, but if there was one thing they were good for it was fleecing her for all she was worth.

I argued of course that unfortunately, the world was not a level playing field, and so it was not so straightforward to apply such an absolutist model to society. We argued, and we argued, on and on. But it was over the way in which her world view informed her behaviour that we really came to blows.

She would dismiss the most innocent gesture of friendship as a threat to her personal security. We all knew that foreigners were largely beyond the reach of petty crime in Cuba, with such an overbearing military presence on the streets, yet she made no attempt at any point to communicate with locals – lest they molest her.

At one outdoor ice-cream parlour she was told her change would be delivered to her table in a couple of minutes, because Cuba being Cuba, they were short and needed to run and get some. But she rooted herself to the spot, refusing to move away from the cashier until she got her 50 cent change – lest they make off with it and who knows, melt it down and turn it into a bullet.

Worst of all, she tried to avoid paying the lady of the house we were staying at money for water we had consumed during our few days’ stay. In Cuba, where two currencies circulate, it is critical for people to earn the more valuable peso convertible. That water money meant a lot to Melady, who eventually had to ask me to ask her for the money, as she was walking out the door. A woman as mindful of her pennies would never let such detail slip. I knew it was no oversight.

The point is, in all these scenarios she upset the locals to varying degrees, and ultimately, she ended up being the thief.

I was mulling over that experience as I strolled through Cartagena’s wondrous colonial streets last week. Now what of our niggling biases could be uprooted here? Nope, this place could only ever invite a universal glow of approval.

The cradle of Colombian civilisation, archaeologists say the first ancient human communities sprang up near here around 7000 BC. The oldest ceramic objects in all of the Americas have been discovered here, the regions inhabitants apparently owing their comfortable lifestyle to the mild coastal climate and an abundant wildlife.

Founded by the Spanish and coveted by the French, Cartagena soon became a jewel of the Caribbean. Pirates made multiple attempts to breach its defences, and Sir Francis Drake notoriously destroyed nearly one quarter of the city. Thereafter the Spanish poured millions upon millions into its protection.

It has a naval, pirate and slave history to make you gasp in awe. Today, a UNESCO world heritage site, it presents a brilliant contrast of the old and the new.

The preserved walled city has a mesmerising fairytale quality to it, outstanding colonial architecture with grand balconies upon which you swear you can still see the old black fishing couple, he sipping rum and her sewing garments. The thick warm air too is a constant. Back then with no motorised ventilation I suppose they would take turns to employ the manual version, and pray a wind would whisk in from the bay to do the job for them.

The humidity makes Cartagena one of the most oppressively hot places on earth, but up on those city walls you can perch yourself in the evening to chase the sun over the horizon, and receive the bliss of a beautiful Caribbean breeze, the pirates and all their stories blowing in with it.

All around the people carry themselves with the laziness and colour that Caribbean folk do, as animated as the heat will allow, imploring you to buy their food, or their glasses, or their creams, or their clothes. You usually need to decline the persistence more than once, but thank god, you think, for the warmth and the charisma.

In my modest hotel the female owner was so deliriously nice in greeting me as in went in and out each day I decided that the air conditioning was making her high. But it turns out she was just being nice. This is the colour of the place, and it is reflected in everything. Where we might choose to paint a door or a ceiling in conjunction with the wall colour – to ‘go’ with it – in Cartagena they will paint a deep blue alongside a bright yellow or green. It is a shameless embrace of the manic, bold and extroverted, so awful that it is completely loveable.

But as you sip away the evening, it is across the bay that the rush of darkness illuminates Cartagena’s most dazzling aspect. The modern downtown of Bocagrande, jutting out on a slither of a peninsula, with beaches on both sides, which observed from the sea looks exactly how I imagine Hong Kong to be. Upwards of 100 skyscrapers all erected in the last 10 years, around a dozen of which are under construction. As a foil to the antique old city, it is a stunning sight.

I suffered the heat, gladly, and wandered about for a week. You couldn’t but be impressed. The only thing, however, was that Cartagena didn’t overflow with things to do after dark, so one night I went to consult the tripadviser.com blog for ideas.

The thread I came across was a compare and contrast with other cities debate, and one of the entries went as follows:

‘It could be wayyy better this old town. Getting rid of the locals hanging around every corner and sticking them inside restaurants, bars and hotels. If i was a European or Gringo Id be intimidated by all the locals in these streets. There isnt enough tourism for you to feel that you are completly safe. If I ever got a job as a waiter or bartender in cartagena id die of hunger… You only see the tourists in patches here and there.. not in bunches. The government needs to do something with the locals. Cartagena needs a major change.’

Like I was saying, with some people you just never know.

Ronan Goggin

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Am Schotter Weg Heim

Ambrasia Kurtz | Culture and politics | August 3, 2009

This month our South African skills exchange member writes about South African Culture and Education

He heads for the streets of his childhood with his double bass. When he returns to her he has such a story to tell, that she just has to begin typing it in while he’s talking. This is what he had to say:

. . . “I found a parking space in the parking lot facing the road that the supermarket is in so I was right there. I noticed that most of that side had a roof on it – I was concerned about the sun on the double bass. I went, ‘well here goes’. I left the double bass in the car and I sat down on the curb and said ‘hello mamma’ to the street vendor, ‘can I come and play here?’. She couldn’t speak two words of English so she got some youngster along to interpret. They thought I was wanting to sell music. ‘No’, I said, ‘play’. They said ja cool, sharp.
I went back to the car and fetched the double bass. Crossing the street I already started getting some curious glances. I unpacked and tuned up and I started. I just started playing. I was very – conscious – at first. First of all there was just so much noise, cars, the chick sitting there shouting ‘Tomatoes’. She eventually started shouting, ‘Jazz’. Within her language the word jazz came up!
So I used the bow, which I didn’t really want to do – the avant garde sort of noise making first. People were looking at me as they walked past and then I sort of submerged. I went somewhere else. It seemed that there weren’t any people there anymore. I thought maybe the people were going round the block the other way to avoid going past me. But it didn’t really hassle me because I was somewhere else.
Um. For a long time nothing happened. I, actually – I think I played through my repertoire three times. I must have played for over an hour. And then, slowly but surely, as people rushed past, somebody would, like, drop 20 cents in. A black chap walked past and pressed into my hand a supermarket till slip, upon which the hawker mamma shouted at him. A family made quite a meal of scratching through their coins and putting them into the case. It was just 20 cents here and 20 cents there, as much from blacks and coloureds, as from whites. The hawker lady gave me two bucks! Which brought my grand total up to seven Rand.

Once or twice somebody darted out of the photo shop to see what was going on, but, generally speaking, the impression I got was, ‘who’re you, get out of my way’.
Generally, older whites put a little bit in. There were about 5 or so black people who were hanging around watching. A young kid – I don’t know what happened much around me, partly concentration and partly trying to make a safe space – the young kid walked past the first time and said ‘you’re wasting your time’. The second time I recognised the voice and he / she said, ’you’re making a fool of yourself’. And the people with him had a good laugh about it. A little boy couldn’t get over what a big thing ‘the guitar’ was. A family friend from those days rushed across the street, in tears. She asked me, was I all right, were my children OK; I tried to explain to her, I was playing there because it needed to be done, but she couldn’t separate the idea of street busking from poverty stigma. She retreated from ‘the shame’ without dropping anything into the case.

What was interesting was this clapped out guy, black, sandals and he’s got this smile on his face and he gives me 20 cents. But my understanding is that the indigenous population here doesn’t like music maybe:
- because nobody’s doing it;
- because they kind of think that kind of stuff comes from somewhere else;
- because nobody ever comes to perform here.

I don’t know what these people are thinking. The schools teach music, the university teaches music students to become music teachers so that they can go back to more schools to teach more music, yet, the reality of it for me is that the value of my education is the sum total of seven Rand, after blisters and ridicule. Freak show. This is really important.
I submerged. I can’t really tell you what happened. I had to play. It doesn’t matter whether you like the tune, whether I play it well or not. Whether you recognise it, or anything. The point is that I am there playing, for everybody that walks past, whether they choose to receive it or not.
I now realise how the dole system propagates art in the UK. A muso can go into the street and get paid by the people walking past, it might also add up to seven bucks a day, but he knows that at the end of the month the social security system feeds his family. He can do for his community and society what he’s got to do and what’s important, without fearing for his family.
I was immensely disapproving of the dole system and I rue the day that I was, because, from a well-being-of-art point of view . . .? It is almost that one would go back to the days of Hayden and Mozart patronage, for the survival of art. For survival.
When I was a kid growing up around here, the coastal road wasn’t tarred; people walked up and down here, guys, grown men, singing. There was a guy who made a violin out of a 5 litre oil tin. He used to walk up and down playing it. I am sure there is a photo of him. One day he walked past with a dead snake. There was something going on here. There was a music sense. I sat underneath my bedroom window playing acoustic guitar, the three chords I knew, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and there were some kids, drawn here. It wasn’t a problem.
The realness of the value of what I did there, what I imparted this morning, I have to sus it out. Because I am teaching people music. I have to know why I am doing it.”

The interesting thing is that the publication of the street busking tale, in an eminent quarterly, earned him five hundred Rand. And he continues to ponder illusive answers to the questions that emerged all those 12 years back. For her, there is always the memory of reading “The Celestine Prophecies” – the tremendous opening that that text was, for its time; the imperative work of the musician to ‘lilt up the vibes’ – this was impressed upon her indelibly. After reading it, she could never walk past a musician in service without putting something into the case, cap or hat, always freshly amazed at how the strains of sound filtering through the air do change space. And she came to a place of having to know deep gratitude when other passers by would bestow the grace of inflow upon the hat of her own musical hero.
* “The Celestine Prophecies” – James Redfield

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Rory Grubb

roggernaut | Everything about music | August 3, 2009

a profile of Irish musician Rory Grubb, an Irish musician and mutantspace arts skills exchange member

Hello. I’m Rory Grubb. I was going to write this in the 3rd person – but I thought I’d save us both the hassle.

Right. I have just released my second album on CD. It’s called ‘Sketches From The Big Sleep’. It’ll be released digitally later this month.
When working I build songs from paradoxical language, and music that I play. I have been playing music since I was a young scut. My dad used to bring me for tin whistle lessons with our neighbour. After that I learned to play the concertina at a local trad workshop, until I quit when a woman terrorised me for not playing the way you’re supposed to. I had an old Beatles tape that I found somewhere. That was all I listened to for a few years.
Then at about 13 I got a guitar for my birthday. I kept playing it and people told me that I was alright. I wrote my first song around that time and I will never play it again. Ever.

The songs I write are political with a small p. They are about people I have met, events or stuff that happens in dreams. I find it very difficult to write about anything else because I don’t have the same level of experience in other areas – like for example world politics, or eight hundred years of oppression. I love pop songs, because they just deal with everyday stuff; and that’s why I write songs. I think our recession is causing a lot of good new music to happen in Ireland.

I am interested in musical complexity. I play many instruments without really knowing how to play them. ‘Sketches From The Big Sleep’ is as much an experiment in production as a set of songs. Many of the songs on the album are moments in time rather than crowd-pleasing anthems. They have been built experimentally. Often the music was captured as it happened, rather than laboured over. This would make some of them akin to sketches or possibly weird short films; and I think this shows when you listen to it.

[Photograph courtesy of KDamo]

I have lived and performed in Dublin, London, Clare, Cork and Palma. I like to think of a stage as a workshop. If a song is a good song then it can be done in many ways. Last year I was using homemade instruments, and the sounds of a bike wheel to produce my songs live. This year I have formed a band called ‘Glowing Pears’, also known as ‘The Honeybadgers’ click here to see a honeybadger, and we’re playing some of the same songs but in a completely different form. I think it’s an exciting way to work, because the only real joy is found in going to a new place, rather than churning out something pre-made over and over. We did a mini-tour last month to launch the album and it went well.I am already working on a new record which I hope to have out early in 2010.

Thanks for reading this – ‘Sketches From The Big Sleep’ CD is available to buy online here.
If you’re a myspacer please drop by and say hi @ www.myspace.com/rorygrubb

Next Gig: 11th of August in The Bridgebrook Arms, Thomastown (Kilkenny Arts Festival) w/ Red Eskimo.

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Watching Reaction

hilary williams | Life in a cultural petri dish | August 2, 2009

As part of the Back Loft Experimental Theatre, Summer Shows (Le Cat Salon) run by La Catedral Studios Dublin. I was accepted with a proposal of experimental, Interactive Live /Performance Video to be held in June.

Once your work is sent in proposal form and accepted, whether the work is still only “A work in Progress”, a finished piece or still a complete conceptual piece, “ Still only in me head” one has to radically change gear. You write the date in your diary and you’re committed…
This is both a good and a difficult place to be. You find yourself writing notes on paper at five in the morning as ideas flood in. You research it back and forward through the time line of Performance. Which is very long.

My work has been circulating around BREATH for a while; the basics of life, using the body physically exerting an o2 breath debt. I utilise this material in different scenarios. At times I am in a white forensic suit as one who views the body dead but maybe it’s the live/ dead body simultaneously? A fast glance at our always present fragile existence. I was curious to test myself one step further with my work. I had made Performance art, done Video Performance and had done Live art. This was to be the mixture of all three.

I played with this in our back garden, getting my husband to fire balls at me as I was blindfolded. I did further work on getting audience reaction sounds, made a serious of close ups where I confronted someone with a serious of questions and comments which I then choreographed and made as a video piece on dvd. This was set up on a 15-foot screen in front of a live-seated audience of about 70 people. I could not rehearse it live but had a clear idea of what I wanted to do by practicing in front of the monitor at home.

I am interested in the work of Vito Acconci – a renowned performance artist whose work in the 1970s focused on the body. He used the camera lens from both sides instigating a dialogue between the camera and the body and then again with the audience and the body live. This piece I made was called “Watching Reaction”. I suppose it was a re – enactment of Acconci`s piece “Blind Catching” I was amused at the interest of watching myself fail, with other pieces of performance interspersed with the full face interactive dialogue. It allowed for really interesting interactive possibilities.

On the night of the performance I set up my own camera to document the whole event - so I could potentially make another piece - but my battery ran out. It was shown with other pieces of video art and another piece of interactive video art, all of which were really excellent works. I was near the end of the programme but once my piece was ON I was up on stage and interacting Live.

It was a complete buzz, the bits I had rehearsed went well but it was also really odd to find myself so engrossed in dialogue with the persona (me) on the screen that the me on stage was an animated (Other).
The big face on screen asks me “why am I watching?” I reply “I don’t Know, I find you interesting?” Then the eyes track me as I move around stage left and right, again she asks “why?” It is a FACE Off? as to who is manipulating whom?
It concludes with the screen persona playing the mouth organ. She asks me to play with her so we both play together, It is not musical playing just the sound of breath in and out, shared by both. The harmonica is the recording of the same lungs breathing on screen and lives.

The feedback was good at the end, I am always a bit self conscious about my lack of IT editing skills, but these days I defend it as a certain need of roughness is always needed to portray the fragility the uncertainness and the possibility of failure.
This roughness puts a frisson on my work, which I think, makes it totally unique among the slickness of the art of today.

Working alone and with no funding or assistance I make do. Maybe it’s unacceptable in certain areas to have a camera sound whirring because it’s not a high 3chip wizard, or collecting sound from the camera and showing it as sound on a black screen!! But the end result leaves some resonance with an audience.
I get a thrill if sometimes I meet someone who says I got this or that from that work, I also can take the “I hate your work it is too, sad, badly made, theatrical, romantic, etc”. I will continue to make and do STUFF, We are all performance artists, in that we all have stories and incidents, dreams and nightmares we need to show, explore test, show off a bit or unload. Some of us choose to use it and show it as art. It is only me passing through and leaving a few marks and remarks behind.
Hilary Williams 12.36 pm Wednesday 22nd July 2009.

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creativecareers.ie

roggernaut | All about mutantspace | August 1, 2009

This month one of our skills exchange members talks about setting up their website.

The idea to set up CreativeCareers.ie came to me fairly easily… I was looking for a job in the arts. That sounds a bit odd… looking for a job in ‘the arts’, (you can’t get more general than that) but I always had a nagging voice in my head telling me to “chose an interesting job, you’ll be doing it for the next forty years”.

I had studied English Literature and Philosophy and was deeply interested in it. At the same time I was aware that an Arts degree wasn’t really a qualification for anything in particular… What’s my dream job I thought. And what am I actually qualified to do. Read! Wouldn’t it be great to read for a living? The closest thing to this is publishing so I started volunteering for a literary journal ‘The Stinging Fly’. Reading. Ok now how to get paid for this.

My initial jobs searches for work in this, or any related field, were not very fruitful. There seemed to be few arts admin jobs about and no one website that advertised all arts jobs in all fields. Only various resource sites for individual art forms advertising the odd job in a single field . Surely there was a gap in the market for a site like this…an idea sparked, gestating in the very back of my mind.

In the meantime I studied the MA in Arts Policy & Practice (Arts Management & Admin) in Galway. During the course we were asked to develop an business plan for an arts event, festiva or organisation. The idea for a jobs and opportunities website came back to me and I went with it. As soon as I finished the course I went about setting up the site. Luckily my brother is a web designer! The ability to get something for nothing, or almost nothing, is invaluable in the arts. Now I’m able to offer the service for nothing, but make a little something of advertising. Hopefully I’ll be able to re-invest that some every now and then to keep improving and expanding the service. Good will and word of mouth have gone a long way to making the site a success. The website doesn’t bring in a full wage, but thankfully my long hard road to a full-time job in publishing brings in something close.

Creative Careers is Ireland’s leading jobs and opportunities website for the Arts/Creative Sector, www.creativecareers.ie, It recently redeveloped and relaunched with an improved and extended service.
CreativeCareers.ie covers a diverse range of creative practices, including Theatre, Music, Performance, Film, Television, Literature, Arts Management, Visual Arts and Design/Digital Media. The site initially launched in May 2008 and received over 50,000 unique visitors over a twelve-month period.

Due to its success, the site was able to reinvest earnings to add to, and improve the site so that the service is more user-friendly. Other new features include: a Careers Chat Forum, Classifieds and an RSS feed for the latest jobs and opportunities. The site is now fully automated so users can place adverts and see them online in a matter of seconds. Jobs and opportunities will also go directly into the site’s new RSS feed.
Log on to www.creativecareers.ie to see the latest jobs, competitions, residencies, commissions, internships, exhibition opportunities, seminars and training opportunities.

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The Retreat

roggernaut | Short fiction and poetry | August 1, 2009

Here is some new Irish poetry by one of our skills exchange writers

As I try to Speak these words aloud,
you know there’s no reason to wait behind,
you know I’ve tried and failed again a thousand other times
I’m shackled in this dusty cave,
I’ve become too blind to light
I’m holding up my head too long,
I’m tired day and night
You sang from the stands of time,
and drove the crowds to the streets,
when I was just a slave to another’s life,
when death and I danced cheek to cheek
A view of beauty a second too long is a view of destruction taking hold
I heard you whisper musical poems as aging came to unfold
But cracks and crevices don’t show a sign of defeat,
they’re just soft ways of telling you there’s no one left to deny and to meet
but you look fine on top of this, you never did give in
whilst me, I’m just a broken string, too cheap, too old, too thin
I didn’t have to lie to bring you here, but I chose to anyway
I could have used a thousand other lines, but something told me it had to be this way

Mark Kelleher

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Books on Craft, Technology, Events and Cage

roggernaut | Book reviews and writers | August 1, 2009

The Craftsman by Richard Sennett

Why do people work hard, and take pride in what they do? This book, a philosophically-minded enquiry into practical activity of many different kinds past and present, is about what happens when people try to do a good job. It asks us to think about the true meaning of skill in the ‘skills society’ and argues that pure competition is a poor way to achieve quality work. Sennett suggests, instead, that there is a craftsman in every human being, which can sometimes be enormously motivating and inspiring – and can also in other circumstances make individuals obsessive and frustrated. The Craftsman shows how history has drawn fault-lines between craftsman and artist, maker and user, technique and expression, practice and theory, and that individuals’ pride in their work, as well as modern society in general, suffers from these historical divisions. But the past lives of crafts and craftsmen show us ways of working (using tools, acquiring skills, thinking about materials) which provide rewarding alternative ways for people to utilise their talents. We need to recognise this if motivations are to be understood and lives made as fulfilling as possible.

‘Richard Sennett is a prime observer of society … one of his great strengths, the thing that makes his narrative so gripping, is the sheer range of his thinking and his brilliance in relating the past to the present’
Fiona MacCarthy, The Guardian

‘A lifetime’s learning has gone into this book … Sennett writes beautifully’
Roger Scruton, Sunday Times

Avant-garde Performance: Live Events and Electronic Technologies by Gunter Berghaus

How did the concept of the avant-garde come into existence? How did it stimulate developments in the performing arts? Written in a clear, engaging style, and supported by text boxes throughout, this volume presents some of the general characteristics of postwar avant-garde performance and gives detailed coverage to some of the most influential artists. Berghaus also explores hot topics such as multi-media and body art performances, making this text ideal for students of theatre studies and performance.

‘An extremely valuable introduction to the history and development of avant-garde performance.’
Nick Kaye, University of Exeter

Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy by Spieker and Sven

The typewriter, the card index, and the filing cabinet: these are technologies and modalities of the archive. To the bureaucrat, archives contain little more than garbage, paperwork no longer needed; to the historian, on the other hand, the archive’s content stands as a quasi-objective correlative of the “living” past. Twentieth-century art made use of the archive in a variety of ways – from what Spieker calls Marcel Duchamp’s “anemic archive” of readymades and E1 Lissitzky’s “Demonstration Rooms” to the compilations of photographs made by such postwar artists as Susan Hiller and Gerhard Richter. In “The Big Archive”, Sven Spieker investigates the archive – as both bureaucratic institution and index of evolving attitudes toward contingent time in science and art – and finds it to be a crucible of twentieth-century modernism.

Dadaists, constructivists, and Surrealists favored discontinuous, nonlinear archives that resisted hermeneutic reading and ordered presentation. Spieker argues that the use of archives by such contemporary artists as Hiller, Richter, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Walid Raad, and Boris Mikhailov responds to and continues this attack on the nineteenth-century archive and its objectification of the historical process.

Spieker considers archivally driven art in relation to changing media technologies – the typewriter, the telephone, the telegraph, film. And he connects the archive to a particularly modern visuality, showing that the avant-garde used the archive as something of a laboratory for experimental inquiries into the nature of vision and its relation to time.”The Big Archive” offers us the first critical monograph on an overarching motif in twentieth-century art.

“The Big Archive” features an impressive cast of characters: Sigmund Freud, Marcel Duchamp, Alexandr Rodchenko, Andy Warhol, Sophie Calle–all masterfully catalogued and filed into Sven Spieker’s meta-archival project. This original and carefully crafted book reveals the extent to which modernity produced and was produced by archival technologies ranging from Wunderblocks to typewriters, from “boites-en-valise” to filing cabinets. Required reading for scholars working in the fields of psychoanalysis, media theory, and conceptual art.”
Ruben Gallo, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, Princeton University

Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage by Branden W. Joseph

“Branden W. Joseph’s new book “Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage” is a necessary and timely one. In sum, Joseph has succeeded in substantially altering our notion of the so-called expanded field of art and film. With its meticulous research and precise mode of argumentation, “Beyond the Dream Syndicate” sets an important standard for future scholars…”

“Texte zur Kunst”"

“Beyond the Dream Syndicate is Branden W. Joseph’s admirable step outside
the art historian’s typically crisp disciplinary boundaries. This is a highly original, rewarding book, and one that will catch people by surprise. I imagine that this is a book for which many people have unconsciously been waiting.”
David Grubbs, Drag City recording artist

The Fundamentals of Sonic Art & Sound Design by Tony Gibbs

This book introduces a subject that will be new to many: sonic arts. The application of sound to other media (such as film or video) is well known and the idea of sound as a medium in its own right (such as radio) is also widely accepted. However, the idea that sound could also be a distinct art form by itself is less well established and often misunderstood. The Fundamentals of Sonic Arts & Sound Design introduces, describes and begins the process of defining this new subject and to provide a starting point for anyone who has an interest in the creative uses of sound. The book explores the worlds of sonic arts and sound design through their history and development, and looks at the present state of these extraordinarily diverse genres through the works and words of established artists and through an examination of the wide range of practices that currently come under the heading of âsonic artsâ. The technologies that are used and the impact that they have upon the work are also discussed. Additionally, The Fundamentals of Sonic Arts & Sound Design considers new and radical approaches to sound recording, performance, installation works and exhibitions and visits the worlds of the sonic artist and the sound designer.

Tony Gibbs is presently leader of the BA Sonic Arts programme at Middlesex University. Launched in 1995, this unique programme is one of the first interdisciplinary degree courses in sonic art. In addition to programme leadership and teaching, Tony has been responsible for the development of the technical resources of the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University’s innovative research centre, where he is currently involved in a range of activities including the development of an interactive 3D audiovisual system for use by composers, performers and other artists.

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Omey Island Calling

The Art Hand | Life in a cultural petri dish | August 1, 2009

Omey is a tidal Island in Connemara off the coast of Galway in the west of Ireland. From the mainland at Claddaghduff the island is inconspicuous and almost hidden. In fact you could drive along the coast road and not even realise the island exists in the panoramic view below you.

Sweeney’s bar of Claddaghduff will be your first port of call. There’s a nice shop there and a post office, beer, wine, petrol, diesel, gas and briquettes. From there you can check the tides and take in the view. Omey will come alive before your eyes. The size of the strand will become apparent if the tide is open. Be careful with the tide though, it can close with remarkable speed. Cross the strand by car or foot to enter Omey Island.

When the sea surrounds the island the atmosphere changes as if everything is at peace and in harmony. Poets, philosophers, writers and artists have been inspired by this sensation. Omey is as much a part of the spirit of the community as the people are. This is a place of joy and sorrow, of life and death. Don’t be fooled into thinking that time stands still here. Everything is constantly moving and changing with shifting sands, water, rocks and skies. This is a magical and mysterious place.

Omey Creatures

The first time my wife and I stayed on Omey we camped by the lake. We had come across the island by pure accident on a tour of Ireland in 2003. Our intention was to do the whole west coast but as soon as we found Omey that was it, we were hooked. An eventful few weeks, pottering around the island by day and lounging by a campfire at night.

It was a very peaceful holiday until something very strange happened one night. We were asleep in our tent when we heard a strange noise coming from the direction of the lake about 20 metres away. We listened for a while but curiosity got the better of us. I strapped on my little head torch and we crept out in the pitch black. Close to the shore I turned on the torch.

What a shock! A vicious snarl right below us, like a loud hiss, followed immediately by a huge splash. We were both nearly knocked over with the fright but I tried my best to keep my head steady to see what it was. It swam the width of the lake from west to east in what seemed like a matter of seconds. It moved quietly but left a fairly big wake.

When it got to the other side it clambered up onto a boulder at the waters edge. It turned around, stood up on its hind legs (that appeared to be orange) and gave the most haunting screech. My wife account of the incident is give or takes the same as mine. Its body was dark, and I’d say it was about the size of a large Labrador, and about five foot tall when standing. It turned and disappeared into the darkness of the area I call the Heart.

We scrambled back to our tent, completely stunned. This was something very strange, it wasn’t a swan or an otter or a badger. The next day we went across to Sweeney’s bar. Malachy served us and there were a few lads at the counter. I casually explained about the creature and there was nervous chuckling.

A man at the bar looked down into his pint of Guinness and said “There’s strange things over there on that island”. That was the first time we encountered the infamous Pascal Whelan, for nearly ten years he’s been the only full-time resident of the island. A character we have come to know and love. He was born on the island but left at an early age and had a colourful life and career around the world. A professional wrestler, a stuntman in the movies, he lived the life, returned to Omey and became a fisherman.

We now have two kids. Our three year old girl Matilda had a magical and no doubt memorable two weeks there with us recently. I asked her what her favourite thing about Omey was and she simply said “Running”. The limitless freedom that the commons offers is a rare spectacle these days. No walls or boundaries just open grassland with sandunes and boulders. It creates a surreal other world landscape. Little Alfie enjoyed the fresh air and humps and bumps from the comfort of his buggy. We were joined this time by my brother in law David and two of his kids Hugo and Abigail who have also become frequent visitors.

There is an abundance of rabbits, birds and flowers and a virtually wild herd of cows roams freely. A bit closer to captivation a 26 year old donkey called Snowy patiently grazes a little field with an occasional carrot from his admirers. From Pascal’s home I witnessed (and photographed) a black back gull devouring a whole rabbit in one swallow much to the annoyance of two grey hooded crows. During our stay a beautiful black calf was born and the lives of two horses were enlivened by the arrival of their foal.

On the morning of our departure the corncrake announced its arrival onto Omey. Some years back we spent an entire night with the piercing soundtrack of the birds call. A bit like a hoarse duck continuously calling creak creak rather than quack quack. Despite this the Corncrake is a much loved guest that also brings financial reward to land owners who delay the hay harvest to maintain the endangered birds’ habitat.

Things to do

Walking, swimming, snorkelling, fishing, bring a boat or canoe? You’ll amaze yourself at how much entertainment you can squeeze out of one little sandy island. We always bring our dogs, they love it, they can run for miles. Before long you’ll find yourself collecting yellow shells or white quartz stones. When was the last time you caught a crab? Explore the shore and rock pools at low tide. Boulder hopping, how’s your balance? Watch the sun set or the tide close or the moon rise. Simple things that we often overlook.

Make sure to get to the two rock mounds on the highest point, the eye as I call it is mesmerising. Above the lake see if you can identify Love Heart Rock not far from the poet Richard Murphy’s Octagonal Retreat. Bring a kite to catch the wind or some golf balls and clubs to meander to the head. Hire a bike or there’s pony trekking locally.

The landscape is ever changing; no two photographs will be the same. There is some visible history including the Sunken Church, the Holy well and ancient middens. There’s not much in the way of broadband, telephone reception or TV signal so prepare yourself for DIY entertainment. I’m currently reading Tim Robinson’s new book, Connemara, the last pool of darkness which is very enlightening and the fruit of over 20 years work.

The Star of the Sea Church is a stones throw from the island and there’s also a Community Hall. There’s often music on in Sweeney’s bar so make sure to catch up with your neighbours for a sing song! Once a year the strand plays host to the Omey Races, an amazing spectacle. Horses, jockeys, bookies, punters and spectators come from far and wide to the temporary racetrack in the sand.

If you want to spread your wings a little bit further, Cleggan is only around the corner where you can take a ferry to Inis Boffin. If you fancy someone cooking a good meal for you then head to Letterfrack which is also a good place to plan a mountain hike from. Take a day trip to Clifden, a bustling little country town about 10 miles away.

Omey Island from Sean Corcoran on Vimeo.

Places to stay

There are two houses currently available for rent on Omey Island. This time we stayed in John and Marion Mc Donagh’s comfortable and well equipped 4 bedroom bungalow. It’s the house with the horseshoe garage door overlooking the lake. It can be rented through www.shamrockcottages.co.uk

Next door is Anne Mc Loughlin’s original 1950’s cottage complete with simple open fire and white washed walls. Back to basics with a little kitchen and 3 bedrooms. Phone Anne on 00 353 (0)95 44779.

Alternatively plenty of visitors park up for a day or two in their camper vans or its ideal for camping. There are also many other houses available on the mainland if you want a handier base to explore Connemara. July, August and September are the busiest months for bookings but Omey is every bit as dramatic in the winter.

Local Interest

Photographer Kevin Griffin: www.kevingriffinphoto.com
Cleggan Beach Riding Centre: 00 353 (0)95 44746 or www.clegganridingcentre.com
Inishbofin House Hotel and Marine Spa: 00 353 (0)95 45809 or www.dayshotel.ie
Connemara National Park: 00 353 (0)95 41054 or www.connemaranationalpark.ie
Kylemore Abbey: 00 353 (0)95 41146: www.kylemoreabbey.com
Ireland’s Official Tourism site: www.discoverireland.ie
Connemara Heritage and History centre: 095 21808 or www.connemaraheritage.com

Books from Clifden Bookshop: 095 22020 or www.clifdenbookshop.com

Connemara, the last pool of Darkness by Tim Robinson
Connemara Wild Flowers, Introductory Guide by Dieter and Jane Stark
The Shores of Connemara by Seamus Mac An Iomaire
Connemara, Land of Contrasts published by Clifden Bookshop
Birds of Inishbofin by Tim Gordon
Collins Complete Irish Wildlife Introduction by Derek Mooney
Playing Dead. Outbreak. Malpractice by Rory Mc Cormac

Omey Island Map+Guide+Dvd available from;

Sweeney’s Bar (proceeds to Community Hall): 00 353 (0)95 44345
Community Council: proceeds to Claddaghduff Community Hall
Clifden Bookshop: 00 353 (0)95 22020 www.clifdenbookshop.com
Or phone me: 00 353 (0)87 2524657
Or my website: www.seancorcoranart.com

Special thanks to: Pascal Whelan, Malachy and Mary King, John Mc Donagh, Terry Minogue, Kieran Kelly. David and Jacqui, Hugo and Abigail, James, Miranda, Matilda, Alfie, Dermot Walsh, RTE Nationwide.

Please note that the placenames shown on the map are not the commonly used names. Scale is approximate. The contents and information are based on my studies of the island between 2003 and 2009. All rights Reserved. © Sean Corcoran 2009. The DVD Video contains over 370 photographs with a soundtrack by Moby, courtesy of www.mobygratis.com. Duration 17 minutes 44 seconds. It is best viewed with a 4:3 screen and uses PAL System. This format will not work in some countries or on all equipment, any difficulties please view the film in it’s entirety on my website www.seancorcoranart.com.

Thank You.

Sean Corcoran. 2009

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Also a Salad

Joseph x | Recipes from a mutant kitchen | August 1, 2009

Early in my working life, I was fortunate enough to secure employment in the South Seas, in the New Hebrides, now called Vanuatu. My work there took me around the outer islands and in my early years to the Torres Group. There is a food experience that I shall always associate with that place.

The Torres Islands – seven in all – were the northernmost islands of the Northern District of the New Hebrides and lie about 100kms north of Espiritu Santo on which the District Headquarters was situated. With a population then of about 300, these islands, even in Pacific terms, were extremely remote. To reach them on the small district ship, involved steaming for about 16 hours to Ureparapara in the northern Banks Group, anchoring overnight and then sailing at dawn for a further three or four hours to Hiu, the northernmost island of the Torres Group. Only the islands of Hiu, Loh and Toga were inhabited then and a few hours were spent in each of the three centres of population, before the ship again headed south for Ureparapara. We were always under pressure of time as the Fijian captain was anxious to be off well before nightfall; there was no safe anchorage in the Torres Group. However, on occasion there were a few hours to spare for R and R and these were put to good use.

The seas in this corner of the Pacific are alive with fish and lines were frequently thrown off the stern. Within moments it seemed, large sword fish or tuna were flopping around the deck. This was the first step towards the eating of Tahitian Salad, New Hebrides-style. I add the New Hebrides bit because, although this dish is served throughout the Pacific, it does have local variations. Once the fish was caught, the Captain gave instructions for the ship to steam to Tegua, one of the Torres islands that was then uninhabited.
The launch was lowered into the water and two sailors went ashore armed with a machete. Out beyond the reef, one could see one of them shinning up a coconut tree while the other went foraging in a lime grove. Back on board the ship, they handed over their bag of coconuts and limes to the young Melanesian cook, Philip, and he started to prepare our feast under the watchful eye of the Captain. The process was somewhat tedious. A few coconuts were first husked and their white flesh pulped with a large stone and thrown into a bucket partially filled with water. This concoction was stirred and then put aside. Next, the fish was gutted, skinned, cut into big bite sizes and placed in another bucket. The limes were squeezed and the juice was poured over the raw fish. That too was left to marinate in a shady spot on deck. Meanwhile, we had weighed anchor and the ship was heading southwards for Espiritu Santo and home.

After a few hours, Philip inspected his buckets and, following a nod from the ever-present Captain, he proceeded with the final steps in preparing our Tahitian Salad. Assisted by one of his mates, he poured the pulped coconut and water through a hessian sack into a bucket and then with great vigour squeezed the sack to extract every last drop of liquid. The end result was a white, milky substance, which was added to the fish. A quick stir, a shake of salt and our feast was ready. The crew and passengers, never numbering more than about 12 persons in all, gathered and Philip ladled out the Tahitian Salad into bowls. Words fail to describe the food experience that then followed. Think of tropical heat tempered by sea breezes, the blue of the vast ocean and the sky, the retreating Torres islands against the skyline, the smiling black faces of the Melanesian crew crouching on their hunkers as they joyfully eat their food and for me, the culinary magic of that mix of fish, coconut and lime.
Joseph X

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argmyface.com

roggernaut | All about mutantspace | August 1, 2009

www.argmyface.com is the website of Leo Boyd, skills exchange member, a Dublin based artist, illustrator and a founding member of the Argist movement, a loose international conglomerate of weirdos who share a love of art and twisted humour.
Here you will find some of his paintings and illustrations as well as links to other Argist sites.
Come, look around, enjoy yourself and if you like the work (maybe even if you didn’t) email him at leoboyd_inc@yahoo.co.uk

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Workshop

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | August 1, 2009

In my never ending quest to seek out opportunities for writers, I stumbled upon an ad in one of Marcus Bale’s really useful email bulletins earlier this year, calling for ideas to be submitted to a new theatre initiative. If your idea was chosen, you would benefit from free workshop space and a budget of €750 to develop the idea. Not being one to miss an opportunity, I submitted five of my finest ideas and was pleased when I received an email a few months later confirming that all five had been chosen. As well as this, I had been paired up with a well known director. Good times.

However, I had never workshopped anything before and although excited to try it out, I had an inkling that it wouldn’t prove the most beneficial way of teasing out an idea for me. Like many, I became a writer because I found life difficult and more importantly, because I found people difficult. In my head, the word ‘workshop’ in the artistic sense conjured up scenes in which long legging-clad limbs frolicked around a studio improvising the internal turmoil of turnips and lemurs, while a self-important moustachioed director barked officious sounding orders through a megaphone. Unfortunately, this was but a dream and in reality there were no leggings or megaphone – all’s the pity.

Having been lucky enough to recruit three professional actors who were interested enough in the idea to partake in the workshops for a pittance and having decided to concentrate on one idea rather than five, I awoke on the morning of the first workshop in terror. I was about to enter unknown territory without so much as a mini-monologue written. The director had asked me to show up with a few ideas that could be improvised but the idea of entering those workshops without a script was too much for me. What in God’s name would I hide behind when I realised how pitiful my idea was?! In a panic, I conjured up two scenes in the space of an hour and legged it over to the theatre, where the real panic began when I found myself having to answer in-depth questions about the back-story of four characters I had created an hour before. As the director sat there critiquing the finer points of the fledgling script, I must have lost about three pounds alone from shaking and by the time the first workshop was over, I had promised myself that I would never ever ever ever ever workshop anything again…ever!

And then the time came for the second workshop and this time, following the advice of the actors, I turned up without a shield…I mean, script so that the actors could improvise instead, and that would have been fine except for the fact that instead of letting the actors do their thang, the director, nursing a manic hangover, seemed keen instead on letting us all in on the world according to him. When his performance ended and theirs began, he instantly switched off, but not before sniggering at an actor’s improvised line. He then managed to upstage the actors by providing the most theatrical performance of the day when flushed-face he stormed out of the theatre half-way through the workshop, muttering something angrily under his breath about money. Embarrassed, I uttered swift apologies to the ashen-faced actors and called it a day. I couldn’t believe that a professional director had behaved in this manner and although I was advised to keep him on board because he was, as I mentioned earlier, very well-known and was at the helm of a hefty annual arts council grant so large that it made other theatre company directors publicly froth at the mouth, I didn’t see the point in continuing to work with someone who made the process so uncomfortable, and so another director was hired and the workshops continued.
Over the space of a month, the three actors, the new director and myself met regularly and we managed to develop five scenes that really worked. And when it came time for us to put on an open rehearsal for a scant audience (there were two audience members at the second show, one of whom had given birth to one of the actors), I felt that we had achieved something. However, I’m still not sure if that something was substantial enough to warrant all those hours spent workshopping a play that has yet to be completed; hours that might have been better spent alone in a dark room writing about moustachioed directors with megaphones and long legging-clad limbs invoking the internal turmoil of turnips and lemurs.

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A Nation without a notion

roggernaut | Life in a cultural petri dish | August 1, 2009

The time of festivals is upon us. There are over 70 festivals a month – of various sizes – in Ireland during the summer season. It’s now big industry and according to the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, will play an important role in the ensuing scramble out of our recessionary hole. How ironic. We have, on the one hand, a government agency, Failte Ireland, waxing lyrically about the cultural wealth of our nation while at the same time destroying the very fabric of our culture through a concerted effort to gentrify everything by bundling it up into a neat package and selling it off at the cheapest price. And on the other, the Government intent on slashing state funding to the Arts Council while mouthing off about our rich heritage, artists, writers, performers and musicians.

And yet we plod on….plod, plod, plod. Not for much longer though. One day we’ll all wake up and find there’s nothing left but corporate sponsored State festivals run by companies more interested in the bottom line than the idea, the content, the celebration, the joy and the expression. We will be a nation without a notion.

This bottom line now has a name. It’s bandied about as if it’s an elixir, a tonic that once drunk will economically fortify us. We. Will. Be. Saved. Only problem is it’s a snake oil salesmans pitch. Gulping down cultural tourism will actually make us sick. Yes, yes. C-U-L-T-U-R-A-L T-O-U-R-I-S-M. What does it mean? What is it? And what of these festivals? Are they important? What do they now offer us?

In the last 10 – 15 years – during the wild years of rabid consumption and extravagant expenditure – the cultural worth of festivals has diminished as they have become increasingly commercialised. Driven by market forces the objectives of our larger festivals have changed. They are now predominantly used as sponsorship vehicles for large corporate brands and government agencies with many festivals becoming subservient to their corporate paymasters.
These days festival programmes are often devised around available funding streams through local authorities, central government, European and international agencies and large corporate brands (such as Heineken, Guinness, AIB, Bulmers, HKSB, etc). Success is based on bottom line.
This structure, built on foundations of state and business has now left major festivals in a no win situation. Without business and state they can’t function because they’ve forgotten why they exist.
They have lost their sense of place, space and thus are at the mercy of economic forces and political expediency.

It wasn’t too long ago when festivals were an occasion of celebration. An occasion of community, place, history, tradition. There was a sense that you were part of it, had an active role to play – festival time gave the community the opportunity to assert themselves, to say we are, we exist, let’s play, sing. Celebrate.
Etymologically the word derives from the middle English word fest, and the Latin word festivus. It was generally used in reference to the celebration of a church holiday. It has always – until now that is – been a term for feast and celebration. No longer. There isn’t much room for celebration and feasting in todays festival climate. It’s all about the hard sell; tickets, hotel rooms, festival programmes, tv and radio spots, advertising, marketing and PR. The community has become consumer. The target market is king. Cultural expression a mere by - product. The celebration of collective identity is now merely an anachronistic by – product of days gone by. Romantic notions of times past are seen as old fashioned, antiquated, narrow minded, ignorant of reality, impossible. Festivals, once a vehicle for community celebration, have now become engines to facilitate employment, market product and generate tourism expenditure.

This railing against the market forces that are turning our individual festivals into generic product generally means being tarnished a naive romantic at best, an ignorant unsophisticate at worst.
So be it. I put up my hand. I admit it. I am an ignorant unsophisticate. I’d rather work with and for sustaining the collective right of communities to celebrate their place and space. Communities, not just in the physical sense, such as; village, town or city but in the cultural and sociological sense too. I want to hold on and fight for the right for all communities from gay to straight, Christian to Muslim, black to white, young to old to celebrate. We must encourage the celebration of difference not create a sense of sameness. Difference makes us who we are, diversity is one of the cornerstones of knowledge, learning and wisdom. We must find these small spaces handed down to us by our families, community, history and strengthen them.

I’m tired of going to the same thing in different places. What’s the point.

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