A (un)heard voice reads into public air

‘Performances’ at Gougana Barra

Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Glorious), Gougana Barra | Aug 2024

A ‘return’,

An invitation from ‘home’ in Cork

Each ‘performance’ sits in the durational time spent in the stations of the cross behind the church, 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.

My breath from the ‘Public’ Performances is felt in the filmic bodies, layered over the ‘Private’ Performances.

Gestures,

Voice,

Breath,

Air,

Ear,

Temporal Rituals.

Fragments of the script from the ‘performance’ follow.

‘My grandmother has departed.

I ‘return’ to your ‘home’ of Cork,

my mind returns to your ‘home’ in London.

The house feels colder to my skin.

I feel the coldness on my skin in our air.

Arm hairs dancing in the dim light.

Dust dances in the rays of the afternoon sun, which cut through the darkness of your hallway.

The moth bites in the blankets from Ireland, 

in your ottoman at the end of your bed, yet to be found.

I am almost a teenager, between childhood and adulthood.

I return to this memory in the mountain air of Andorra.

My grandmother joins me across the dining room table.

The priest is in your kitchen.

He invites my mother to the confessional, over my grandmother’s kitchen table.

The door is closed.

I am left in the hallway, to wander alone in the house.

Your flowers are still blooming in your front room.

Two plastic doves sit on the fireplace.

I tip one and it sings into the air.

They will soon be mine. Are they mine yet?

These birds await my return to London.

I am, already departed.

Here, in Cork.

My mum’s cousin waiting in the car.

I think of the words that are passing between the priest and my mother in the kitchen. 

Words suspended with the priest.

Words held in the air, 

traces felt between mouthfuls of food 

that will come later.

The seconds, turn to minutes, to hours.

The priest is still in the kitchen.

My mother is still in the kitchen.

The glow of the red light.

The red light glow of the kitchen persists, radiating from the Sacred Heart of your Jesus lamp. These memories are saturated in red. 

Rooms full of devotion. 

I cannot shake these memories. 

The repetition is the same but different.

Time out of kilter. 

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.