A (un)heard voice reads into public air

‘Performances’ at the Rosary Way in Dublin

Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Joyfulness), Rosary Way Dublin| Jan 2024

A ‘return’,

An invitation from a friend to ‘Lourdes’

These photos were taken during the ‘Public’ Air performances in Dublin at the Rosary Way 1st - 31st January 2024.

Each ‘performance’ sits in the durational time spent in Dublin, moving from the writing of scripts to the voicing into ‘public’ air. My body acts as compass as it pulls me to the space of the Inchicore’s Lourdes. 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.

‘I record myself speaking aloud the words of Theresa at sites of the rosary.

I record my mother reading the words of Theresa as we sit together at the dining room table.

I record my myself reading the words of Theresa as we sit together at the dining room table.

You smile.

A shared air holds over the dining room table. I smile. 

Your touch remains. 

The repetition is the same but different.

The air feels cold on my skin.

I cross the car park, which holds the life-size Lourdes grotto at its side. 

My movement is circular, moving around the entirety of the rosary way in Dublin, on each visit.

My voice held in the air. At moments lost.

Joyfulness

Sorrowful

Glorious

Luminous 

These are the affective terrains of my maternal.

Listen to the air.

A lady speaks into her mobile as she runs around the rosary way for the fifth time with her husky dog. Her words breathy as she passes me each time. I catch words in the air. “Oh god love him.”

Presentation

Finding

Children laugh in the distance. I remember a time when a whole P.E class where here from a local school. Bodies moving in quick succession around the rosary. 

Baptism 

A man tells a joke as he pauses in his prayers to the rosary. I smile.

Cana

Kingdom.’

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.