Please leave a comment about the video and photographic work on the website.
Over the last two years I have spent short periods in Belfast gathering imagery to contest notions of authenticity and authorship in the (re)construction of history. The project is part of a body of work I began in Iran during a residency there in 2005 that responded to the connection between 1981 hunger striker Bobby Sands and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The camera has been used to map out the aftermath absence and reuse of artifacts that have become part of a process of narrativised history making. The photographic and video works are presented through a series of anonymous authors. For instance, in one video work, the memorial records of republican and loyalist ex-hunger strikers have been fictionalized into a hybrid form of political aesthetics. The photography works are part of a mapping process of surfaces and how they, like memory itself, are replaced or fictionalised to accommodate the patina of trauma.
A nice, neat, to the point website, just how I want mine! If you check miriamdeburca.com you’ll see it’s taking the minimalist approach to the extreme right now.. But it will start to take shape soon. Nivce work, I look forward to seeing more!
A masters from Trinity College? Senior lecturer at the Uni of Wales? What are you – one of them ‘feckin’ college boys’?! And a West Brit at that!
I’m only messing with you, mucker. As it happens, I’ve been indulging in a bit of the aul’ higher education myself. You went to Belfast; I went to Derry. Same uni, different campuses. I finished my Ph.D. in 2005. I’m now working on an Irish language research project in Germany (of all places!).
The two of us have come a long way since our days of teaching TEFL at CEE Idiomas in Madrid (1989-91). What’s Michael Doyle up to these days? (last I heard he was in Russia with Liz but that’s a good while ago) I don’t suppose Maurice O’Connell is still teaching TEFL in Spain? Have you worked out who I am yet? Johnmurray’s suggestion in the comment above about changing your contact details makes me wonder if you’re still using the ronnieclose@eircom.net e-mail address. Send me an e-mail to the e-mail address I’ve supplied and give me the scéal.
Ádh mór,
The penny is only after dropping – you’re in Wales so you wouldn’t be using an eircom.net e-mail address anymore. Sorry, Ronnie, for going on so long in the comment above and not mentioning your photography or videos. Some very interesting stuff. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’ll send an e-mail to your Uni of Wales e-mail address.
I would like to thank those few souls who kindly left a comment or two. There were some positive utterings but I would like to point out that this is not an exercise in massaging my ego (its big enough anyway). I would invite comments responses thoughts of any variety that look at the work. Feel free to critically respond and I am interested in your views to the photo and video works. I would like to see the blog as a way to gather and gain input on the art practice and a forum for debate and discussion on issues that you feel are relevant. Thanks for your time and keep the comments coming.
Must be a strange feeling. I suppose you can feel the ghosts of the men who spent years there. Seems I remember seeing a photo of a scales in one of your collections (though I can’t find it now). A rusty old scales. It made of me think of the rusty scales of justice. That the Brits have learnt very little from history. Their colonial view of the Irish changed very little over the centuries. Up until the present day even. The Irish were never understood or treated fairly by them. The scales could also be reminiscent of the hunger strikes. I remember seeing a mural of Bobby Sands that some loyalist (or squaddie?) had defaced with the hastily-painted words ‘Slimmer of the Year’. The scales would make you think of the hunger strikers losing weight and wasting away down to skin and bones. All about self-sacrifice. The scales would normally bring to mind a narcissistic obsession that some women would have in keeping their weight down. The comments in the books from the prison library sre interesting. Those comments written in those books are also part of the history of what happened. They tell a story of their own. The blank billboards I also find interesting. The interfaces are such a no-man’s land that even the billboards try to be neutral and inoffensive (though their shabby neglected state also speaks of the neglect that both nationalist and loyalist working-class areas have suffered).
Haluu there Rono. This post is well overdue and sorry for the delay. As you know, this project interests me on many levels so I’m keen to see in which direction it goes as in a way i feel it is documenting your own past beliefs and you current attitudes towards them. ’nuff of that: what interested me was the conflicting ideas of ideology and someone’s personal story. Archive 2 I think hints towards this when the text reads: “at home we stood footloose, beyond the tribe”. In archive 1 (and I can still picture in my mind the footage from which you took the voice in off) the surviving hunger striker says: “It was nothing to do with politics, it was to do with friends”. But politics and ideology were the directing forces behind these personal stories; and I remember that night with mo’ chara, yerself, meself and Doyler, and he said: “If youse had’ve been living here instead of Dublin at least one of youse would have got involved”. And that was so true. Then archive 1 has the Iranian mullahs at the funeral, and this presence takes the personal story and situates it squarely in an internationalist anti-colonial discourse. And what has Iranian fundamentalism got to do with Irish Republicanism at grassroots level? Well, a common ideology, a story that is told to convince others I hear you say. That’s all clear, but I’m interested from a humanist point of view where this intersects with the person, even a victim of circumstance to use the old cliché. This leads me your photographic work. What really grasped me was the graffiti/etchings on the text books, because it reminded me of when, come September my ma sent me off to look for second hand school books. These books all had similar graffiti, and it was a resistence to the system, the crappy education, the hours of boredom. The self education of IRA political prisioners in the Maze has always been part of the ideology that these people had strong beliefs, that they were not just ordinary inmates, that they believed in something and that their time inside was put to good use to become more aware of themselves and their roles in society. But the graffit to me tells another story, and, without stretching my point too far, it speaks to me of the personal, young lads with little formal education, trapped in a polarised and violent society where choices had to be made. So there you are, inside with a long stretch ahead of you, and the prospect of having to lay down your life for the cause. And there were the books, like at school, but only worse. I saw the hangman score tallies on the pages, the barbed wire drawings, the hearts with the red lines like blood drawn through them. and you wonder how a human being can reconcile belief in a cause with the giivng up his/her own life. Archive 1 talks of the long hours, the boredome, the nothingness. I’m interested to see how you address this, and how you relate it to Islamic Fundamentalism. It’s a dangerous territory; I’m sure you’ll be brave enough to spaek your own mind. Good luck! Mori.
Hi Ronnie,
I am a member of the staff of Cinemadamare. Afer whatching your video, we would like to invite you to come to our festival, enring our free competittion and benefiting of all our offers (free accommodation, flight expenses refund up to 125 euros if you come from an EU country).
We advise you to have a look at the website and, if you are intrigued by the situation, book a place to come, or simply send us our film. All to gain and nothing to lose.
Best wishes for your work.
Regards,
Cinemadamare Staff
Want to start your private office arms race right now?
I just got my own USB rocket launcher Awsome thing.
Plug into your computer and you got a remote controlled office missile launcher with 360 degrees horizontal and 45 degree vertival rotation with a range of more than 6 meters – which gives you a coverage of 113 square meters round your workplace.
You can get the gadget here: http://tinyurl.com/2qul3c
Don’t you mean north of Ireland not Northern Ireland. Things haven’t changed that much, have they? have They? Ronnie. Have they? Please say they haven’t.
January 18, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Please leave a comment about the video and photographic work on the website.
Over the last two years I have spent short periods in Belfast gathering imagery to contest notions of authenticity and authorship in the (re)construction of history. The project is part of a body of work I began in Iran during a residency there in 2005 that responded to the connection between 1981 hunger striker Bobby Sands and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The camera has been used to map out the aftermath absence and reuse of artifacts that have become part of a process of narrativised history making. The photographic and video works are presented through a series of anonymous authors. For instance, in one video work, the memorial records of republican and loyalist ex-hunger strikers have been fictionalized into a hybrid form of political aesthetics. The photography works are part of a mapping process of surfaces and how they, like memory itself, are replaced or fictionalised to accommodate the patina of trauma.
January 22, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Hi Ronnie,
Hows life treating you?? The new web looks good…wishing I was back in Eire…..
all the best, Maryfitz x
January 23, 2007 at 11:35 am
good stuff, well done. you should change the contact details, though.
January 25, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Hey Ron,
A nice, neat, to the point website, just how I want mine! If you check miriamdeburca.com you’ll see it’s taking the minimalist approach to the extreme right now.. But it will start to take shape soon. Nivce work, I look forward to seeing more!
Miriam x
January 25, 2007 at 6:47 pm
A masters from Trinity College? Senior lecturer at the Uni of Wales? What are you – one of them ‘feckin’ college boys’?! And a West Brit at that!
I’m only messing with you, mucker. As it happens, I’ve been indulging in a bit of the aul’ higher education myself. You went to Belfast; I went to Derry. Same uni, different campuses. I finished my Ph.D. in 2005. I’m now working on an Irish language research project in Germany (of all places!).
The two of us have come a long way since our days of teaching TEFL at CEE Idiomas in Madrid (1989-91). What’s Michael Doyle up to these days? (last I heard he was in Russia with Liz but that’s a good while ago) I don’t suppose Maurice O’Connell is still teaching TEFL in Spain? Have you worked out who I am yet?
Johnmurray’s suggestion in the comment above about changing your contact details makes me wonder if you’re still using the ronnieclose@eircom.net e-mail address. Send me an e-mail to the e-mail address I’ve supplied and give me the scéal.
Ádh mór,
January 25, 2007 at 7:33 pm
The penny is only after dropping – you’re in Wales so you wouldn’t be using an eircom.net e-mail address anymore. Sorry, Ronnie, for going on so long in the comment above and not mentioning your photography or videos. Some very interesting stuff. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’ll send an e-mail to your Uni of Wales e-mail address.
February 4, 2007 at 10:53 pm
I would like to thank those few souls who kindly left a comment or two. There were some positive utterings but I would like to point out that this is not an exercise in massaging my ego (its big enough anyway). I would invite comments responses thoughts of any variety that look at the work. Feel free to critically respond and I am interested in your views to the photo and video works. I would like to see the blog as a way to gather and gain input on the art practice and a forum for debate and discussion on issues that you feel are relevant. Thanks for your time and keep the comments coming.
February 14, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Must be a strange feeling. I suppose you can feel the ghosts of the men who spent years there. Seems I remember seeing a photo of a scales in one of your collections (though I can’t find it now). A rusty old scales. It made of me think of the rusty scales of justice. That the Brits have learnt very little from history. Their colonial view of the Irish changed very little over the centuries. Up until the present day even. The Irish were never understood or treated fairly by them. The scales could also be reminiscent of the hunger strikes. I remember seeing a mural of Bobby Sands that some loyalist (or squaddie?) had defaced with the hastily-painted words ‘Slimmer of the Year’. The scales would make you think of the hunger strikers losing weight and wasting away down to skin and bones. All about self-sacrifice. The scales would normally bring to mind a narcissistic obsession that some women would have in keeping their weight down. The comments in the books from the prison library sre interesting. Those comments written in those books are also part of the history of what happened. They tell a story of their own. The blank billboards I also find interesting. The interfaces are such a no-man’s land that even the billboards try to be neutral and inoffensive (though their shabby neglected state also speaks of the neglect that both nationalist and loyalist working-class areas have suffered).
March 27, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Haluu there Rono. This post is well overdue and sorry for the delay. As you know, this project interests me on many levels so I’m keen to see in which direction it goes as in a way i feel it is documenting your own past beliefs and you current attitudes towards them. ’nuff of that: what interested me was the conflicting ideas of ideology and someone’s personal story. Archive 2 I think hints towards this when the text reads: “at home we stood footloose, beyond the tribe”. In archive 1 (and I can still picture in my mind the footage from which you took the voice in off) the surviving hunger striker says: “It was nothing to do with politics, it was to do with friends”. But politics and ideology were the directing forces behind these personal stories; and I remember that night with mo’ chara, yerself, meself and Doyler, and he said: “If youse had’ve been living here instead of Dublin at least one of youse would have got involved”. And that was so true. Then archive 1 has the Iranian mullahs at the funeral, and this presence takes the personal story and situates it squarely in an internationalist anti-colonial discourse. And what has Iranian fundamentalism got to do with Irish Republicanism at grassroots level? Well, a common ideology, a story that is told to convince others I hear you say. That’s all clear, but I’m interested from a humanist point of view where this intersects with the person, even a victim of circumstance to use the old cliché. This leads me your photographic work. What really grasped me was the graffiti/etchings on the text books, because it reminded me of when, come September my ma sent me off to look for second hand school books. These books all had similar graffiti, and it was a resistence to the system, the crappy education, the hours of boredom. The self education of IRA political prisioners in the Maze has always been part of the ideology that these people had strong beliefs, that they were not just ordinary inmates, that they believed in something and that their time inside was put to good use to become more aware of themselves and their roles in society. But the graffit to me tells another story, and, without stretching my point too far, it speaks to me of the personal, young lads with little formal education, trapped in a polarised and violent society where choices had to be made. So there you are, inside with a long stretch ahead of you, and the prospect of having to lay down your life for the cause. And there were the books, like at school, but only worse. I saw the hangman score tallies on the pages, the barbed wire drawings, the hearts with the red lines like blood drawn through them. and you wonder how a human being can reconcile belief in a cause with the giivng up his/her own life. Archive 1 talks of the long hours, the boredome, the nothingness. I’m interested to see how you address this, and how you relate it to Islamic Fundamentalism. It’s a dangerous territory; I’m sure you’ll be brave enough to spaek your own mind. Good luck! Mori.
March 30, 2007 at 10:41 am
Hello
G’night
April 4, 2007 at 9:26 am
Hi Ronnie,
I am a member of the staff of Cinemadamare. Afer whatching your video, we would like to invite you to come to our festival, enring our free competittion and benefiting of all our offers (free accommodation, flight expenses refund up to 125 euros if you come from an EU country).
We advise you to have a look at the website and, if you are intrigued by the situation, book a place to come, or simply send us our film. All to gain and nothing to lose.
Best wishes for your work.
Regards,
Cinemadamare Staff
October 2, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Want to start your private office arms race right now?
I just got my own USB rocket launcher
Awsome thing.
Plug into your computer and you got a remote controlled office missile launcher with 360 degrees horizontal and 45 degree vertival rotation with a range of more than 6 meters – which gives you a coverage of 113 square meters round your workplace.
You can get the gadget here: http://tinyurl.com/2qul3c
Check out the video they have on the page.
Cheers
Marko Fando
April 30, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Don’t you mean north of Ireland not Northern Ireland. Things haven’t changed that much, have they? have They? Ronnie. Have they? Please say they haven’t.
Yours
with lots of love the medical doctor.