A (un)heard voice reads into public air

‘Performances’ at Lourdes

 Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Sorrowful), Lourdes| May, June, July 2024

A ‘return’,

An invitation from my Irish grandmother

These photos were taken during the ‘Public’ Air performances in Lourdes 28 May - 1 June 2024

Each ‘performance’ sits in the durational time spent in Lourdes, 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.

Wednesday 29 May 2024

‘I am calling you at Lourdes. You don’t answer. 

I am going the wrong way.

Everyone is moving in the other direction.

A procession of people pushing blue carriages along a red line.

My voice hesitates in the air.

I continue my phone call to you.

My body hesitates.

At Lourdes in Dublin.

I spoke into the air.

Reading your letter in the air.

The recorder at my side.

At Lourdes, I hesitate.

I record my call to you.

No one answers.

I sit on a bench in the shadows.

I look up at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary.

I am the intruder.

I feel the cloth of my grandmother’s dress to my side.

I feel the wooden pew on my legs.

I breathe Lourdes air.

Your letter, Theresa, didn’t arrive.

I didn’t carry it with me.

My right hand touches the leather pouch of your rosary

Hidden in my dress pocket.

I will speak to you, tomorrow, Theresa.’

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.