Briseann an dúchas ... nature will out.

Lucinda Creighton and Peig Sayers take a stance.  

Creighton was expelled from the Fine Gael parliamentary party in July 2013 when she defied the Fine Gael party whip by voting against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013.

Peig Sayers struck fear into the hearts of generations of second level students who had to study her account of life on the Great Blasket Islands. An exhibition of photographs from the the Great Blasket Island opens in Killarney tomorrow (30.10.2013) and, by chance, Peig's portrait has pride of place. It gets the usual reaction. People recall the long shadow she cast over their teenage years and they stress the fact that Peig's Ireland was another country, the perceived miserablism of her account making the distance even greater.

It's tempting to regard both as representing a particular sense of 'Irishness,' socially conservative and regressive, the Ireland of long ago. Peig maybe off the syllabus but her spirit lives on in the stance adopted by Creighton. Briseann and dúchas trí shúilabh an chait or, in English, the cats real character breaks out through its eyes. The English translation doesn't quite work as well but Aesop put it more succinctly when he said that the cat's "Nature will out." 

El Keegan took the photo. She is a  freelance photographer who covers lifestyle and fashion for a range of press titles. Was she thinking of Peig when she composed the photo? Is this a case of projection...  a deeply ingrained idea of what conservative Ireland looks like?  A case of Briseann and dúchas trí shúilabh an chait?

Fairscin Inise / An Island Portrait

Grianghrafanna den Bhlascaod Mhór / Photographs of The Great Blasket Island 1892 -2010

Roinn Ealaíon, Oidhreachta agus Gaeltachta / Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

Cill Áirne / Killarney

Opening 30.10.2013 @ 6.30pm

Info / Eolas

Ballyheige in 1959

Pandaemonium: Is the idea of surveillance by camera or CCTV as old as the idea of photography itself?

Ideas from the  Christmas book pile no. 1:
Is the idea of surveillance by camera or CCTV  as old as the idea of photography itself?

'everything would then take place under the eye of the Police'

Use of the Camera Obscura, 

The Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine, No. XXXII , August 7,1824

The following article is contained Humphrey Jennings' Pandaemonium 1660 - 1886:

An occurrence originated in a Camera Obscura exhibited here during the Fair week, which shows the important use to which this amusing optical apparatus may be applied. A person happened to be examining, with great interest, the various lively and ever shifting figures which were pourtrayed (sic) upon the white tablet during the exhibition, when he beheld, with amazement, the appearance of one man picking another man's pocket. Perfectly aware of the reality of this appearance, he opened the door, and recognising the culprit at a short distance, ran up and seized him in the very act of depredation. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that he was immediately handed over to the Police. From this circumstance, the utility of placing such apparatus in all places of public amusement and exhibitions, must be obvious.

One on every corner: Alfred Werner's camera of 1893 gives an idea of the scale of the camera obscura used in 1824 (photo: Eddie Chandler).

Whether it might be proper to erect it in the streets of a populous city like this, and to place it under the inspection of an officer for the detection of mischief and crime, is a matter worthy of the consideration of the local authorities. Would it not be an eligible plan, indeed to employ the Camera Obscura of the Observatory, (which is not otherwise in use) to take a view of what is passing in the streets in town, and communicate the result, if necessary, to the Police Office, or the Jail, by means of a telegraph? If the Observatory be considered too far off, the apparatus could be fixed up near the top of the Tron or Cross Steeple.  By this  means, the necessity of sending out emissaries to reconnoitre the conduct of the lieges could be superseded, since every thing would then take place, as it were, under the eye of the Police; and, if any impropriety or misconduct were observed, it would only be necessary to send a posse to te particular spot where it happened.

Humphrey Jennings was a British documentary film-maker who died in 1950 when, at the age of just forty-three. He fell from a cliff in Greece when scouting film locations. Jennings was a socialist, a champion of surrealism and one of the founders of Mass Observation. He was also a pioneer of neo-realism, coaxing extraordinary performances from non-professional actors in several of his works. His best known films are Fires Were Started, The Silent Village and A Diary for Timothy.  Lindsay Anderson described Jennings as ‘the only real poet that British cinema has produced’.

Jennings first started the Pandaemonium project in 1938, initially as a series of talks for miners in South Wales when filming The Silent Village. But the anthology was not completed until nearly forty years after his death, in a collaboration between his daughter, Mary-Lou Jennings, and his former Mass Observation colleague, Charles Madge.

The title is taken from Milton's Paradise Lost:

There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top

Belch’d fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire

Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign

That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,

The work of Sulphur. Thither wing’d with speed

A numerous Brigad hasten’d. As when Bands

Of Pioners with Spade and Pickax arm’d

Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,

Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on,

Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell

From heav’n, for ev’n in heav’n his looks and thoughts

Were always downward bent, admiring more

The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold,

Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d

In vision beatific: by him first

Men also, and by his suggestion taught,

Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands

Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth

For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew

Op’nd into the Hill a spacious wound

And dig’d out ribs of Gold. Let none admire

That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best

Deserve the precious bane. And here let those

Who boast in mortal things, and wond’ring tell

Of Babel, and the works of Memphian Kings

Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame,

And Strength and Art are easily out-done

By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour

What in an age they with incessant toyle

And hands innumerable scarce perform. 

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, 1667

Synged In Aran

"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.


This is my version.

Unravelling In Nama-land

Unravelling In Nama-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 Village  plaza 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.

If I were a book what would I be?

The 41st Listowel Writers' Week kicked off with the usual mix of the international and local that defies the challenging times that are in it according to Festival Chairman Sean lyons. Highlights include Patrick deWitt, Germaine Greer, Peter Taylor, Simon Armitage, John Lanchester, Helen Dunmore, Julian Gough, Aifric Campbell, Maureen Gaffney, Mary Kenny, Paul Durcan, Macdara Woods and Terry Lynch amongst others.

The festival has a programme of art exhibitions that complement the literary focus of its main events. Headlining the programme is a project by a group of North Kerry artists called 'Colourful Spirits' that promised 'exciting collaborative and cross disciplinary exhibition will see the artists exploring the links between literature and art." Sadly, this is precisesly what is lacking from a line up that includes Geraldine O’Sullivan, Liam O’Neill, Maurice Quillinan and Maurice Pierse. The emphasis seems to be on accessibility and locality. The ambition that  drives the international end  of literary programme is nowhere in evidence.

In hard times one has to prioritise but the lack of excitement in visual arts terms is not entirely about budgets. A little bit of imagination and curatorial dexterity could easily have delivered a programme that would complement and enhance a festival that is devoted to international literature and yet remains loyal to local traditions. Unfortunately the programme of art exhibitions, as a showcase of contemporary visual arts, comes nowhere near the quality of the literary programme at any level. 

It begs the question the question, if it were a book, what would  it be? 

Lets start with Mills and Boon …

A caveat. 

Maurice Pierse's illustration and graphic novel work offers a little glimpse of what could have been.

A Headhunting We Will Go ...

Brendan Smyth is led from the Four Courts, Dublin after being convicted in 1997 of sexual offences against children.

A Headhunting We Will Go ...

Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Brendan Smyth, paedophile and priest, was dragged up from the depths in a weekend that was all about taking heads. The BAI published its report on 'Mission to Prey' at the same time that another documentary placed an Irish cardinal in the crosshairs.

It was the perfect storm in terms of the media and the church and the danse macabre that is Brady's insistence that he does not have a case to answer in respect of the abuse of children by Smyth, taking cover behind procedure and the implicit belief that it this is all part of a media witch hunt that is only interested in seeing the head of an Irish cardinal roll. 

The media - RTE - had shot itself in the foot with poor standards and a rush to judgement. The only heads to roll were those in Donnybrook. Smyth, back from the dead, cast a long shadow but the the cardinal remains in place.

The nature of his defense, that he was only a notary following procedures, has a certain resonance but it  is all the more shocking in that it was enough save him - unlike the children that his action condemned to further abuse by Brendan Smyth.

Image; Helen McGonigle held a photo of herself as a child around the time she was abused by Brendan Smyth in East Greenwich, R.I. (Bill Greene/ Boston Globe Staff)

 And there's more.

Colm O'Gorman has said Cardinal Brady rose through the ranks in the 

Catholic Church while Smyth continued to rape and abuse children. On the other side of the line we learned that Tom Savage, Chairman of the BAI, had left the priesthood after becoming disillusioned in his role as chief apologist for the church. 

Like Brady he had encountered abuse when he was a priest  - an abusing priest reported by him to his bishop had been moved to a parish in England. He was not happy but did he report it to he Gardaí? 

It seems that the head of the Broadcasting Authority in Ireland and the head of the Catholic Church have come around a circle from opposite directions. Both have had to deal with 'A Mission To Prey' and both have to deal with the consequences of paedophile priests who had been given permission to prey on children, tacitly or otherwise.

As for Mary Kenny; yes Mary, lets be unequivocal about the sexual exploitation, serial rape and buggery of children who had been entrusted to these priest paedophiles. The leniency of sentences handed down to priests who 'interefered' with children is a scandal. Smyth's 12 year sentence was, sadly, the exception.