A (un)heard voice reads into public air

‘Performances’ at Convent in Venice

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

A ‘return’,

An invitation on the path to Lourdes

These photos were taken during the ‘Public’ Air performances in a convent in Venice 7 - 15 July 2024

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

These performances began from a ‘return’ to a book left in a convent in Venice of ‘My Mother Laughs’ by Chantal Akerman in 2023. This conversation with Akerman and her mother continue through exploring the poetics of breath in the text. Situated Irish maternal breath explodes outwards to encompass all those who arrive.

Fragments of the script from the ‘performance’ follow.

‘Time out of kilter.

Theresa, and I never shared living air. Yet, we share air. I hold onto your relation, a desire to not to hang up. By writing to you, a relation of reorientation is continuously opened up. A relation between mother and daughter which is new. The third in the relation will be navigated. 

“We often, can only ever know our Irish mothers, through our grandmother. The relation is too close otherwise.”

The third in the relation, opens a space to move through disorientation, orientation and reorientation in the Irish Catholic maternal, in the relation between mother and daughter. The ‘glitch’, the ‘interference’ across the conversations between Chantal Akerman and her mother across the dining table, open a space for them to breathe together. I return to Akerman’s My Mother Laughs. 

I feel the yellow orange of your, book in my left hand, 

My Mother Laughs

as I place you, on a wooden bookshelf in a convent in Venice. 

A stream of light floats in the air.

The outside sunlight, moving through an open window.

I follow your path, to the grotto of the Virgin Mary in the garden.

I long to return.

Will you be there?

I have tried to return many times.

Flight booked.

Each time detoured.

Jury duty.

Flight booked.

Detoured.

I cannot remember the reason this time.

A return yet to come.

Flights booked for the month ahead.

Will you still be there?

Akerman speaks through breathy desire to relate to her mother.

The filmic body becomes the third in their relation.

The third becomes the relation to escape the bond that can be fatal.

‘…because maybe my mother and I were too bonded, a bond that was fatal for me.’ Pp81-2

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.