A (un)heard voice reads into public air

‘Performances’ at Fátima

Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Sorrowful), Fátima | August 2024

A ‘Return’,

Follow the Yellow Arrows

These photos were taken during the ‘Public’ Air performances in Fátima 9- 13 August 2024.

Each ‘performance’ sits in the durational time spent in Fátima, moving from the writing of scripts to the voicing into ‘public’ air. Each iteration moves as its desires through the space, bodily tracings through the atmospheres it breathes.

Gestures,

Voice,

Breath,

Air,

Ear,

Temporal Rituals.

Fragments of the script from the ‘performance’ follow. The performances took place after the bodily pull of the yellow of the arrows of the Camino.

‘The rosary stops in my left hand.

An air of defiance surrounds my left hand. As always. 

The defiant presence returns.

I breathe into the air.

Two doves sit on either side of me.

Eyes watching all around.

We share air.

I call you.

I am kept on hold.

As I walked, to call you.

I noticed two priests.

All dressed in black.

One with a coat, one without.

My gaze fixed.

The priest in your kitchen. 

Why am I startled by your presence here?

The priests in public. The public priests. 

My eyes lose focus.

The doves disappear,

disappear,

disappear,

into the pure white of the walls on either side of me.

The priest drinks tea in your kitchen.

The cup sticks on the table.

Refuses to let go.

Jesus repeats on the plastic tablecloth.

The tea cup glows red.

The red glow of devotion

My grandmother and I eat sandwiches at your kitchen table.

Mouthfuls of devoted air fill our lungs.

We sip tea.

These tea cups sit in my mother’s dresser in London.

Dust dances on the touch of the priest.  

The red glow is gone.’

Fragments are held here from the scripts, that are felt in full in filmic breath and voiced into the air at embodied circular readings. Theresa’s words (my aunt) and my mother’s are held only in the temporal care of the embodied circular readings alongside the polyphony of voices that join the chorus of the reorientations of the Irish Catholic maternal.