St Brigid’s Day Embodied Workshop

Graduate Diploma Workshop

LAB - Histories of Art Module

1 Feb 2024

I invite you to move around your space,

trace the floor with your feet,

How does the ground feel against your body,

How does the air move around you?

inhale,

exale,

and find a place to settle.

When you are ready, I invite you to listen with your body.

Through the invitation of Dr Alice Andrews, this workshop tangled with the modalities of the LAB in the Histories of Art Module of the Graduate Diploma at Goldsmiths University in London.

This workshop took the form of four mysteries,

joyfulnesses,

sorrowful,

glorious,

and

luminous.

I invited students to

listen,

move,

breathe,

and

read together

as we traced

these four mysteries within the space at Goldsmiths University in London. 

This workshop moved through four mysteries or ‘parts’ as we 

Orientated

Disorientated

And

Reorientated together. 

Unlearning,

And moved through unknowing together.

During this workshop, I invited students to collectively explore and feel with ‘Filmic Bodies of Breath’ of an in-process filmic body, - Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Joyfulness) and previous filmic bodies of my practice.

The in-process film, Poetics of Filmic Breath in the Four Mysteries of the Irish Catholic Maternal (Joyfulness), breathes with an ongoing performance that

follows my body as I am pulled towards

the Rosary Way in Dublin,

allowing my feet to trace the way from the different places I stay in Dublin.

Speaking words aloud from women in the 1950s at different points of the rosary way,

the recording, and the breaths from these words affect how the filmic body breathes.

I invited students to respond to this filmic body, to move with the physicality of the different points of the Rosary way,

The heights of the stone artworks

in relation to my body and those in this space.

Sounds

the P.E class from the local school.

laughing from one of the houses that encloses the Rosary Way.

the lady and her husky as they run around the circular space together.

Ladybirds

that huddle together on the stone

Moss

Whilst working in the archives, I have began to think with the small bodily gestures or complexities of movements of defiance that mothers sought in the 1950s in London.

Thinking with

bodily autonomy,

shame and

reorientation.

The practice seeks to feel with the bodily traces within my own body, entangled with transgenerational rememberings,

in contemporary Catholic spaces of pilgrimage

to hold these bodily gestures of the 1950s in London, to return.

To return to the rosary from Lourdes,

that has been passed down from my grandmother, to my mother and to me, to navigate shared breath across generations. These performances seek to let the body speak, to opening space for the bodily Catholic generational knowledges and those of defiance to converse.

The repetition is intentional, as we hold the shared breath.

Remember to breathe.

This space explored how to collectively move through non-hierarchical conversations and to open to the potentials of unexpected sociability of the unknown encounters, to pose a speculative space to think with the temporalities of the ‘Feminine-to-Come’ in the Irish Catholic maternal.

To feel with our bodies and think with Irish emotions that are always felt on the body. 

In Ireland, 1st February, which was the day of this workshop, marks the beginning of spring and the celebration of St Brigid's Day. The day honours the Celtic goddess Brigit, who embodies

inspiration,

healing,

magic,

wisdom,

poetry,

protection,

fire and earth.

Beyond nature’s reawakening, it is a time for new ideas and growth. This day celebrates hope, renewal and the creativity of the feminine energy. I invoked this Irish ‘feminine-to-come’ energy collectively in this space in London, to think with and reorientate with the Irish women who left Ireland in 1950s for London, due to ‘secret’ premarital pregnancies.

The repetition is intentional, as we hold the shared breath.

Remember to breathe.

I call here to the words of this course, ‘our bodies, minds, and circumstances are continuously changing’.

I offer here a moment from my research:

From a moment of leaving Ireland, I felt a sudden deep grief and at a loss,

This was the time before the storm, where Dublin held me longer that expected,

Moving

Unwillingly

through thick mud

back to London.

Feeling the breath of the women with me.

The constantly movement has become unexpectedly unnegotiable

A return of sorts, an un-return, a shared breath.

As we weave the spaces as we speak,

allow yourself to

move,

to rest,

to be interrupted, and fragmented.

Moving with different temporalities, our moment together on this page and spaces within this workshop which has now passed in a sense but also held.

We inhale and hold for the other as we share our bodies of water together, our at first seemingly disparate archives to think and feel together the Irish Catholic maternal.

Remember to breathe.

This is our space to move, listen, pause, enter or leave, and ask questions.

The filmic bodies are part of the embodied practice and just the stills are present here. Coming along to future workshops to move, breath, pause, listen with the filmic bodies of my practice.

Remember to breathe.