"Je suis Synge, pas Singe" is how John Milington Synge introduced himself to a fellow Irishman on Rue D'Assas in Paris. Last Thursday the sun came out and I got singed in Aran. It was a glorious day, summer had happened all of a sudden and I was caught out with lots of rain gear but no sun block.
The scene on Cill Mhuirbhigh beach reminded me of the photograph, taken by Synge, of horses being landed on Inis Oírr, the sharp sunlight glistening on the waves and giving enough exposure to catch the movement of a horse as it came ashore through the surf. Here is how Synge described it:
The horses have been coming back for the last few days from their summer's grazing in Connemara. They are landed at the sandy beach where the cattle were shipped last year, and I went down early this morning to watch their arrival through the waves. the hooker was anchored at some distance from the shore, but I could see a horse standing at the gunnel surrounded by men shouting and flipping at it with of rope. In a moment it jumped over into the sea, and some men, who were waiting for it in a curagh, caught it by the halter and towed it to within twenty yards of the surf. Then the curagh turned back to the hooker, and the horse was left to make its own way to the land.
Dublin City Centre: heading south on the Luas (tram) from O'Connell St. past the Custom House, the IFSC and the nice square with the National College of Ireland on it to a gap where the streetscape opens unto a series of abandoned building sites sites dominated, on the right, by the skeleton of Anglo Irish Bank's would be headquarters - and everything changes, utterly.
Hope, ambition and the aggressive re-modeling of the Dublin docklands dissipates in a wasteland of unfinished, unwanted building projects that were going re-define innercity living. The 'plaza' that was to the heart of the Point Village is little more than a series of holes with service pipes sticking out of them, the glass covered elevator leading underground to Harry's Bar emphasises the extent of the catastrophe that blitzed the place. This is a ghost town full of zombie 'retail units,' the whiff of popcorn from the Odeon adding a surreal element to a space that is neither alive nor dead.
Welcome to NAMA Land.
In the middle of all of this a gallery has popped up like a weed but, like all weeds, it's hardly been noticed despite its bold dash of colour. The inaugural Pop Up Dublin Biennale 2012 has been pitched by Director / Curator Maggie Magee as a as a bundle of visually arresting 'triggers' that might lead us, as global citizens, to reclaim society and a 'space' that needs 're-addressing.' Featuring 55 artists from 20 countries it has "occupied' a 10,000 sq. foot space generously donated by Point Village Property.
The obvious ambition withers as the arts establishment, with the exception of Dublin City Council, stays away and the bulk of the attendance is made up of artists and their friends. The biennale itself is underwhelming. Despite the scale of the space, the art is crammed into the 'galleries' and work that looks well in the catalogue suffers badly in reality. Less work, more selectivity (a little bit of weeding maybe?) and better attention to the basics would have made for a better show.
Ellen Rothenberg (USA), installation with picket signs, "Ecstasy on Arrest," 2008.
Pop ups, I think, aspire to an energising improvisational quality that has a built in challenge to the stuffiness and institutionalisation of establishment events, like the Biennale's alter ego or rival in Dublin Contemporary perhaps. This should not be confused with lack of organisation or professionalism. Ellen Rothenberg (USA) admires the energy of the event -typically Irish - but was frustrated with the lack of run in time and rehearsal that led to a performance of her piece being abandoned. The "girls" who were to carry the pickets in a faux demonstration just kept on smiling. Not the sort of thing the piece needed.
It could have been interesting. But would anyone, apart from he staff of the Odeon, have noticed? Does anyone hear you scream in NAMA Land?
Another performance was 'Unravel' which www.curator.ie filmed in its development phase in Aras Éanna on Inis Oírr in the Aran Islands. At some point in the big bang that gave us NAMA Land, someone described Ireland Inc as the "green thread that would unravel the Euro." Olwen Fouere's performance consisted of unravelling a ball of wool, wrapping its slender and deceptively fragile looking strand around trees and lamp posts in the blitzed Point Villageplaza before slowly rolling it up again.
It was a slow, mesmerising and engrossed performance that was the perfect fit for Nama Land, a kinetic keening that carried within it the hopelessness of binding a wound that won't be bound, the relentless round of rescue deals and market rebuttals and the thin strand of individual hope or dogged perserverence that maintains some sense that this is a process that might, possibly, maybe lead us out of NAMA Land.
It's a funny place, NAMA Land. It takes a while to notice the strange beauty that is a weed.
