Sara Greavu And Your Feet Unable To Find The Ground:

Crisis, Reenactment and Wolfe Tone at Fort Dunree

The problem of what an artist’s residency can realize is equally a question for both artist and art institution to engage with. Artlink, in its 2013 residency programme, wishes to create a dialogue about how contemporary art can work in a historic, military, rural setting such as Fort Dunree by commissioning artists to develop new work which they consider will engage with the ‘locational aesthetics’ of the site. That awkward term locational aesthetics is intended to imply the creation of a debate as to how contemporary artwork can fit into a precise matrix of geographical, social, historical and political context. The original Irish name for Fort Dunree, Dun Fhraoigh, means “Fort of the Heather”, indicating that this site has been an important military site down through history, and that this military context is set into stark contrast by the stunning natural beauty and abundant wildlife of the site, on a headland in Inishowen, the most northern peninsula on the island of Ireland. Artlink wishes to commission new work that resonates with the specific site and setting of Fort Dunree. The art may not ‘speak’ directly about the context of this specific military fort or of rural Donegal landscapes. But the artist is selected in order to start new conversations on issues relevant to the site and setting of the Fort Dunree galleries i.e. histories, locations, people, traditions.

Above all then, for the residency proposal offered by Artlink to artist Sara Greavu, there is a matrix of themes of resistance and rebellion prompted by the military context of this unique site. The artist was invited to respond specifically to the fact that Wolfe Tone was brought ashore at Dunree in 1798 after capture, and to this event having been subsequently re-enacted in 1948 in the nearest small town, Buncrana. The artist was selected for her interest in ‘post-conflict’ temporalities, border identities and the formal artistic strategies of masquerade and collage with an eye to how these interests might be brought to bear on the located history of Dunree and Inishowen. The work developed in her Fort Dunree residency And your feet unable to find the ground is an astute and provocative development of other strands recognisable across her practice within the context of the themes prompted by the Fort Dunree site – participatory performance and an nuanced engagement with contemporary political activism. This artist’s residency has realized significant development both in an artist’s practice and in refining and defining Artlink’s institutional identity.

Declan Sheehan, Curator for Artlink Fort Dunree Residencies

This work considers Wolfe Tone and the revolutionary moment of 1798, reading it through the current economic climate of Europe, Ireland and Inishowen and the revolutionary possibilities of today.

Three strands of research - into reenactment techniques, Wolfe Tone’s diaries and revolutionary writings, and contemporary strategies of protest and dissent - formed the basis of the work. A collaboration with Moville Clothing Company to produce the uniforms for a ‘reenactment’ performance provided an opportunity to link these concerns with broader questions of austerity and economic crisis in the region. One of the few remaining garment factories in the area, Moville Clothing Company mainly produces uniforms for the beauty industry, clergy and the legal profession.

The culminating performance staged at Fort Dunree referenced tactics of reenactment, embracing and exaggerating the substitutions, distortions, displacements and inaccuracies inherent in the process. A collage version of Wolfe Tone’s authorial voice was then further estranged through the use of ‘the people’s microphone’. This method of ‘amplification’ was employed in Occupy Wall Street, where electrical amplification

Artist’s statement

equipment was prohibited. In this practice, audience members gather around a speaker and repeat his or her speech, which is delivered in short phrases. At the limit of earshot each phrase is repeated again and radiates out through the crowd in waves of repetition.

The fragmented, intentionally inaccurate version of history performed in And your feet unable to find the ground explores questions around repetition, reproduction and the imposition of the present and imagined future upon the past that is intrinsic to the process of reenactment.

Sara Greavu

This page and opposite:Fort Dunree Military Museum

Re-enactment of the 1798 Battle of Vinegar Hill, staged by the 1798 National Rebellion Centre in Enniscorthy

Villa Amalias, Athens

This page and opposite:Statue of W

olfe Tone on St. Stephens Green in Dublin destroyed by explosion, 1971. ©

Irish Photo Archive

Previous pages:digital collage, found data

WolfE tonE REdactEd Mic check...mic check...

What will the learned world say to my paradoxes? To those who look beyond the surface it is an interesting spectacle, and pregnant with material consequences.

Having considered the resources of this country and satisfied that she was too weak to assert her liberty by her own proper means, I sought assistance where I thought assistance was to be found.

The citizens of this place must raise their heads from the abyss, and...look the situation of their country steadily in the face... profiting of the past errors of this oppressed, insulted and plundered nation. The investigation of past errors, if it cannot recall lost opportunity, may at least prevent their repetition in similar circumstances, should such ever recur again.

They imposed an act for the suppression of tumultuous assemblies. These bills are now the law of the land. In times like the present it is not safe to descant on their merits; they will be appreciated by the fair and impartial judgement of posterity.

As to law, I knew know exactly as much about it as I did do of necromancy.

They said to me that Ireland was so circumstanced that she had no alternative but unconditional submission , or a revolution with a chance of all the concomitant suffering ...that the tactics of every nation ought to be adapted to the national character. As to ‘taking to the tented field,’ such language was not to be held out to an unarmed people, pursuing their just rights, and using, and desiring to use, no other weapons than a sulky, unaccommodating, complaining, constitutional loyalty.

But here in this meeting of malcontents...it is wonderful with what zeal, spirit, activity and secrecy all things were are conducted. I never knew what enthusiasm was before, and what heightened it beyond all conception was, that the men I saw see before me were are not hirelings, acting a part; they were are what they seemed, citizens flying to arms, to rescue their country from slavery.

I am more and more satisfied of the powerful effect of public spectacles, properly directed, in the course of a revolution. I am no artist, but it requires no previous instruction to be struck with the numberless beauties of this most enchanting picture, a

band of females, who, I can venture to say, were not selected for their ugliness. It is a production of consummate genius. There is an attention paid to the preservation of costume, even in the minutest point...as attentive to the appearance of the meanest domestic as of the hero of the piece.

But, how they are to communicate what they do not know, is not very clear.

They asked me what I thought the revolution, if begun, would terminate in...I only answered that I could not venture to foretell what the combination of events for twenty years might produce, but that in the present posture of affairs, there were few things which presented themselves in my view under a more improbable shape.

It was a sublime spectacle and I am glad that I have seen it as a matter of curiosity, but, on the whole, disappointed, as every man will be who expects extravagantly.

Well! All those things are past and gone, just as if they had never been. And, by all I can see, it is by no means certain that our voyages are yet entirely finished.

Video still, documentation of live performance 30/03/2013

Video still, documentation of live performance 30/03/2013

With special thanks to:

Artlink BuncranaPaola BernardelliCCA Derry-LondonderryHalo Hairdressing, Muff Nicky Harley Ben KingCathal McGinleyMoville Clothing CompanySeán Ó CuireáinDaire Greavu Ó MocháinDeaglán Ó MocháinFiona O’ReillyDeclan SheehanPatricia SpokesMhairi SutherlandVoid

and all the actors who took part in the performance.

Budget:

Costumes/Uniforms E520Transportation of actors £160 (E189.22) Actors’ honorariums £240 (E283.84) Lead actor £150 (E177.40) Camera operators + transportation £100 (E118.27) Installers £60 (E70.96) Food/catering £80 (E94.61) Camera hire £30 (E35.48) General transporation E300Vinyl cutting £30 (E35.48) Giclée printing £38 (E44.94) Framer £40 (E47.31) Postage/shipping £10 (E11.83) Photographic rights E60 Publication printing contribution E230

External hard drive £61.25 (E72.44)Speakers x 2 £179.90 (E212.76)USB storage £71.11 (E84.10)HDMI Connectors £32.18 (E38.01)Media Players x 2 £168.35 (E199.10)

Artist’s fee, 6 months @ E362.38 per month

Of the money spent on the production of this work (not including the artist’s fee), 79% was spent within Ireland, north and south, with the bulk of this being spent in the local Derry/Donegal area.