Language in Live Contexts, Acts of Public Memory

Curated by writer and curator Fran Painter-Fleming in response to the exhibition Manifesto for Sustainable Experimentation, this reading group series draws on Beaconsfield Contemporary’s 30 years of production. Each session is anchored by a particular exhibition or performance, with each signalling different strategies for thinking otherwise. Working with film, performance and installation, each of the selected archival projects use these artistic mediums to challenge the often-hostile environments we find ourselves within, and to cultivate more compassionate ways of existing in the contemporary moment.

Part Two: Language in Live Contexts, Acts of Public Memory Saturday 5th July 2:30-4:30pm.

This second session draws on two large-scale works from Beaconsfield’s history, the late Monica Ross’s performance rightsrepeated (2005) which developed into the ongoing project Acts of Memory (2008-) and Shane Cullen’s The Agreement (2002). Both works pull at the threads of language, resituating quite lengthy, dense texts into performative, embodied, and sculptural contexts. For both projects language becomes a palpable, sculptural matter, to be shared collectively to oppose abuses of power. The selected texts for this session draw on the porous relationships between language, art, collective experience and memory, analysing how creatives concoct these elements together to create solid pathways for tackling the present moment.

For Ross, the repositioned text was The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) which was originally recited in its entirety by the artist as part of 'rights repeated' (2005) in the Beaconsfield exhibition Chronic Epoch, 14 September-20 November 2005, and went on to be collectively recited by different groups, across multiple languages 60 times as part ofActs of Memory (2008-) before the artist’s death in 2013.

Commissioned by Beaconsfield in 2000: 'The Agreement' is a sculptural work by Dublin- based artist Shane Cullen, conceived to commemorate the signing of the Anglo-Irish Peace Agreement of 1998. The work presents the full text of the document known as the ‘Good Friday’ or ‘Belfast’ Agreement, in a clear and comprehensible manner: 11,500 words digitally routed into 55 HDU panels, each panel 3.5m x 1.22m, total length 67m. Beaconsfield. 2002. The Agreement. [Press Release].

Archival materials from rightsrepeated (2005) and The Agreement (2002) will be on display for participants to sift through and return to after collectively reading the texts.

TEXTS:

Extract from 'Introduction' Liedeke Plate, and Anneke Smelik. Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 2013.

Yve Lomax '"Vocation" in Monica Ross'. Ethical Actions : A Critical Fine Art Practice. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.

Selected passages from Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s ‘In Defence of Performance’, in Gómez-Peña, G. Ethno-Techno : Writings on Performance, Activism and Pedagogy. New York ; London: Routledge, 2005.

*For those who want to read in advance, the selected extracts for each session will be made available to attendees ahead of each session. We will read the texts out loud together however, so no reading ahead is not compulsory.

Background

In opposition to dominant, capitalist or colonial constructions of time, each of these reading groups posits more elastic readings of time, bringing in scholars and artists who unpick how landscape, memory, language and gender each leave their own temporal markings. Bringing together archival materials from the selected projects with critical texts, this series fosters dialogue between the recent history and the now, encouraging participants to continue to weld tools of rebellion against dogma or oppression.

This series has been conceived by Fran Painter-Fleming, a curator, writer and researcher based in London. Her curatorial research hinges on social memory, geopolitics, translation and myth, working primarily with live art and moving image. Her curatorial practice is grounded in slower methods of curating, working with artists or fields of research over extended periods of time.

BANNER IMAGE CREDITS

Monica Ross, 'rightsrepeated', 2005. Performed in Hayley Newman's 'WOODSHED' as part of Chronic Epoch, Beaconsfield, 2005.

Shane Cullen, The Agreement, 2002. Exhibition tour with live, political seminars and talks 2002-2004 in Dublin, Londonderry, Belfast, London, Portadown, Kilkenny.

Beaconsfield Archive box, Monica Ross: rightsrepeated, 2005, Anniversary: an act of memory, 2009 and 2011.