Micro Moments – CIACLA

{Img: Social Distancing - Francis Fay}

CIACLA’s Micro Moments are a short series of creative activations by Artists living across Ireland and the USA. These artists were invited to record a short public performance of creative activism: A moment of artistry and inspiration to capture their practice, opinions or creative process, while living through the COVID-19 crisis.

The series features writer & performer Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Multi-disciplinary Artist and Performer Colleen Keough, the composer Emer Kinsella, actor & comedian Emma Pyne, curator & artist Francis Fay, singer & actress Hannah Crowley, musician James Nolan, poet Sheila McMullin, actor & writer Susan Ateh, and artist Thinh Nguyen.

The series will be presented over ten consecutive days in September 2020 and can be viewed across CIACLA’s Facebook. Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and website.

Click below to view videos

‘State of Being: Crossroads’ by Thinh Nguyen

Tennis Strings by Emer Kinsella - Emer Kinsella — ‘Tennis Strings’ by Emer Kinsella

MOLLY BLOOM_EMMA PYNE_CIACLA - Emma Pyne — ‘Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes’ by Emma Pyne

‘Scrolling/ The Fields of Athenry’ – Hannah Crowley

‘Her-Story’ by Susan Ateh

“Her-Story is reclaiming who I am and celebrating my identity in the midst of social unrest and racial reckoning.”

Susan Ateh is an Actor, Breathwork Facilitator and a Creative Performer. She is very passionate about collective healing and expression through breath and the Arts.

www.susanateh.com

Presented as part of CIACLA’s Micro Moments series, running between now and 22 September. Micro Moments are creative activations by 10 Artists living across Ireland and the USA, part of ‘Between Me and You” our 2020-2021 program of exhibitions and events

‘The Stylophone’ by Colleen Keough

“The Stylophone is a battery operated toy-like synthesizer with a built-in speaker. For this improvised performance, I ran a recording of nightingale birds into the aux channel of the Stylophone and tried to mimic some of the bird sounds I was hearing through playing the synth. Of course, experimentation always leads one down multiple rabbit holes, and this recording gives the viewer a glimpse of those twists and turns. There were about twenty people strolling about the park during this recording. A few looked on in amusement while others walked by and deliberately ignored the weird lady making space sounds at the picnic table. It’s the most fun I’ve had all week!”

The performance was recorded on August 26, 2020 at 4:58 PM in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Colleen Keough is a hybrid media artist working in lens and time-based media, performance, installation, creative writing, and digital art. Her integrated media works explore feminist new media themes through the intersection of pop culture, identity, myth and technology. She completed undergraduate studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA, & DePaul University in Chicago, IL, and earned an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University in New York state. Keough is based in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.

www.colleenkeough.com

‘Vows’ by Sheila McMullin

“As we are asked to distance ourselves from those we’d rather keep close, we are also invited to remember the elements that were our first teachers. To feel around us the bounty of the wind, the guidance of water, the support of earth under our feet, and the alchemical transformation of a struck match. Feeling into the lineage of what encompasses us constantly, we can know we are not alone, although renegotiating.”

In this video, poet Sheila McMullin keeps the company of the ocean as witness to her wedding day vows as an unexpected job loss, the grand rising of demand for accountability against state sanctioned violence, and continued upheaval and lives lost due to pandemic, led her and her partner to reimagine their own participation in their daily lives.

Filmed July 20, 2020 at Will Rogers State Beach, California.

Sheila McMullin is the author of daughterrarium (2017), winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize chosen by Daniel Borzutzky. She supports VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and served on the Board of Directors until summer 2017. Sheila also supports Shout Mouse Press, a writing program and publishing house with a mission to amplify unheard and underrepresented voices. With Shout Mouse she co-edited the collections Humans of Ballou and The Day Tajon Got Shot. Sheila holds her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University where she was the 2012-2013 Heritage Fellow and the poetry editor and blog/twitter manager for So to Speak: a journal of language of art. Read more of her work at www.moonspitpoetry.com

‘State of Being: Crossroads’ by Thinh Nguyen

‘State of Being: Crossroads” – performative public intervention by Thinh Nguyen

‘At this intersection a white guy attempted to spit on me while driving by. I went back to cross the street walking backward wearing a t-shirt saying, “my ethnicity is not a virus.”’

#endracism

Thinh Nguyen is an artist, educator, curator, cultural critic, who works to investigate the intersections of cultural values. Utilizing various media, they explore and expose oppressive sociopolitical power structures within those values. Nguyen performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at The Mistake Room, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Contemporary Irish Art Center Los Angeles. Their work has been written about in Artforum, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, Artillery Magazine, and numerous online forums.

www.thinhstudio.com

‘Social Distancing’ by Francis Fay

Location: Victorian People’s Flower Gardens, Phoenix Park, Dublin.

Plinth belonging to the statue of George William Frederick Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle. Viceroy to Ireland.

“This action is part of the ongoing project ‘Queering the Landscape’ in which Fay sets out to reclaim spaces, askew narratives, and unite the body/mind with its surroundings. The title Social Distancing (ironic) has less to do with the current Pandemic and more to do with the gulf that class systems and power structures create in community and society at large.”

Francis Fay is an Irish artist active on the domestic scene since 2012, and whose performance and curatorial projects have been presented nationwide at galleries, theatres, libraries and public spaces. Fay’s work Queering The Landscape is an ongoing project with a focus on power structures, reclamation and ownership of space. Fay looks at the development of multiple identities and the opportunity to be the star in one’s own ‘movie’. The artist explores appearance, veneers, masks and the investment by individuals and society in utopias.

www.francisfay.com

‘Tennis Strings’ by Emer Kinsella

‘Tennis Strings’ by Emer Kinsella .

“’Tennis Strings’ came about due to the fact that I’ve kept myself active by playing the socially distanced sport of tennis with friends over the last months and wanted to see what could be created by combining the sounds of a tennis match with musical improvisation. The speed and content of the music had an influence on the players’ performance and their performance influenced my reactions and choices as a performer and composer. The interaction of musical sounds with sounds in the environment resulted in the music composition.”

With thanks to Megan Hayes and Remi Wung.

Irish composer and violinist Emer Kinsella is known for her original film and media scores, her violin recordings on films and shows on Netflix, Amazon and Freeform as well as for her work in creating immersive concerts and pop-up performances in unconventional spaces. From site-specific concerts at the top of nature trails to playing out of windows of abandoned buildings, Emer looks for new ways of creating dynamic and transformative experiences through music. Her creative activation projects involve experimenting with the placement of musicians and audience in non-traditional settings and exploring the symbiotic influence of music on the space as well as the environment’s influence on the music. This also has an impact on her musical instincts when writing film scores. Emer was recently part of a pop-up performance at a Los Angeles grocery store that went viral online with over 12 million views out of solidarity with out of work musicians at the start of the Coronavirus crisis. Emer is based in LA.

www.emerkinsella.com

‘Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes’ by Emma Pyne

“This is one of my favorite pieces ever written. It’s hard to top James Joyce. In the very last part of Ulysses, Molly Bloom reminisces about her husband Leopold and the day he proposed to her 16 years ago. But a lot has happened since. Molly represents every woman whose marriage hasn’t quite worked out the way she thought it would.”

“Quarantine has been very good for me creatively. We spend a lot of time driving in LA so without that I’ve had more time to be creative. I wrote a one-woman show which will be coming to a theatre as soon as we are allowed. I’m quarantined with my fiancé and he acts as my sounding board, collaborator and solo audience member. After six months in quarantine we still want to get married, so I think quarantine should be compulsory before marriage from now on. We make each other laugh every day and that’s really helped us through this. He’s Jewish, I’m Irish so we like to laugh in times of crisis. It’s the one thing no one or nothing can take from you. When all else is lost, crack a joke. I’ve also started painting again, so check my insta feed for some ‘masterpieces’ coming soon! And I’ve become a great cook. The secret is just add parmesan and black pepper. I swear it can make even cardboard taste great. I did cook a pizza once with the cardboard still on the bottom and we tried to eat it. Yeah, steep learning curve for my cooking skills, this quarantine!”

www.emmapyne.com

‘Drag the Anchor’ by James Nolan

James Nolan is an Irish Composer and Production Sound Mixer living in Los Angeles. His debut album, “Drag The Anchor”, is a collection of solo guitar tracks written about several themes including mental health and Irish history.

Recently, he released an electronic/pop single called “Statis” (featuring the incredible Coco Columbia on vocals). It’s a reflection on what the pandemic has done to artists. The double-edged sword of both taking away work, yet giving more time to create. The video, made to mimic an online video call, features paintings and drawings created by various artists since the beginning of the pandemic. Nolan is currently focusing on more collaborations featuring other artists.

‘Scrolling/ The Fields of Athenry’ – Hannah Crowley

Watch Hannah Crowley perform her debut single ‘Scrolling’ and the Irish folk song ‘The Fields of Athenry’ live for CIACLA’s micro moments.

Hannah is a singer/songwriter from Dublin, Ireland who is currently based in Los Angeles. From studying classical and jazz music, she now melds the sounds of yesterday and today to make a timeless mix of pop music that lives long on the memory. Her Irish roots are never far behind her, as she invites you to come and escape the mundane.

www.hannahcrowleymusic.com

‘Stains II’ by Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi

The poem ‘STAINS II’ was commissioned by IMMA and written in response to Stains (2000) a video animation by Nalini Malani which formed part of the IMMA Collection exhibition ‘A Fiction Close to Reality’ (15 Feb-14 Oct 2019).

https://imma.ie/magazine/poet-chiamaka-enyi-amadi-responds-to-imma-collection-exhibition/

Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi is a poet, writer, editor, and performer. Her poetry has been published in Poetry International 25, Poetry Ireland Review 129, RTÉ Poetry Programme, IMMA Magazine, Architecture Ireland and The Irish Times. In 2019, Enyi-Amadi co-edited a volume of poetry with Pat Boran, Writing Home: The New Irish Poets, which featured poems from poets who have emigrated to Ireland.

Her work is forthcoming in Winter Papers 6 (edited by Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith, November 2020), the Irish University Review 50:2 (edited by Emilie Pine, November 2020), and The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories (edited by Sinead Gleeson, October 2020).

She is the co-founder and curator of Black Girl At Ease, a new online wellness space exploring what it looks like for Black women to embody emotional ease and intimacy. The platform is co-run with her sister Ihunanya Enyi-Amadi, trainee lawyer and photographer. The Igbo-Irish duo share poetry, prose and photography to encourage healing, rest and hope.

www.chiamakaenyiamadi.com/