‘Aeroponic’ – root systems nourished by air – Acts is the name given to the nomadic Dutch Art Institute’s final Kitchen presentations. Each participant addresses one question, as a practice of engagement.

Here you will find the documentation of Iarlaith Ní Fheorais's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Giulia Crispiani and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe

Iarlaith Ní Fheorais' question: Do you hear me?

Iarlaith's introduction: Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe is a performance in the shape of a fabulated art history lecture on the artist and sculptor J.J. Beegan. Beegan was from Ballinasloe, Ireland, who made drawings using burnt match sticks, recalling home while at Netherne Mental Health Hospital in Surrey, England, where he lived and died between the 1940s - 1950s. The performance sits with the experience of disabled diasporas, resulting from the displacement of medical incarceration.

Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe raises questions of how disabled artists are positioned within art history, authorship and the demands for and gaps in legibility. Using glamour, the aesthetics of access, and cripping pop songs, singing of longing and loss, the performance attempts to fill in what has been intentionally forgotten, erased by institutionalisation; facing towards home.

Access statement: The performance will be captioned in English and will include self-descriptions.

Giulia's report:

Matches lit on the corner of the stage, candles are lit, performers scream—“do you hear me” music and light turn on, performers come down the audience seatings—three more are singing Antony and the Johnsons’ Cripple and Starfish—one takes the mic, and describes herself. She’s joined by three starfishes and two little tricksters, and she takes the time to introduce everyone on stage and the space. Tell the story of J.J. Beegan, and art theraphy at St. Brigid's Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Ballinasloe, County Galway, Ireland. On the right side of the stage there’s also a screen with automatic subtitles. A big drawing comes in and is described in detail and showed around by a performer, and then hanged on the sticks hanging in the middle of the stage and lift up. The narrator voice explains—“Beegan called himself a sculptor. (…) Art Brut is the term used to classify artists making work in hospital asylums and prison.” From time to time the performers by the candles sing something out loud. Another drawing is brought in, described, shown, and hanged. Clair Wills’s account of Beegan’s conditions at the hospital and oeuvre is mentioned, as we learn that Netherne was the first hospital in the UK to open an art therapy program—speak of regimes of medical incarceration. Performers shout and beat the floor again, then third drawing comes in and the same procedure is followed. The narrator speaks of how Beegan draws human figures, and describes how these sites have in common more with prisons than with hospitals—“a life lived between landscapes of medical incarceration.” She tells how the collection of medical artifacts too delicate to be seen outside the climate controlled environment—“all we are left with is the violence of forgetting of medical incarceration. Many lives lost and the site bulldozed and forgotten.” Lights off and music plays again. 

Phanuel Antwi I’m thinking actually talking if you can hear me. The way you use speculation is such a disruptive beautiful way. What is the encounter between art history and disability and what art history owe to disable people? I think of movements and aesthetics and art practices that owe to disable people. Medical incarceration that happened to disable people, both mad and sane. When I say that you’ve disrupted something, the kinds of reception that we’re trained to be part of when we’re in front of, you disrupt that smooth line of perception—that is power. In the way you describe access, there’s this playful sensuality. We’re no longer given information, but you offer to see this smooth flow of perception. Fabulation and speculation around the lecture. In the violence of the archive, you offer us this imaginative possibility of engaging.

Ayesha Hameed Thank you for creating such an atmosphere with the medium. The way I enter through this is language, but also a very tender kind of set up. I want to come to language, maybe a new practice, your contribution has been introduced and I sat next to the screen, and I found it kind of violent because these AI don’t know what to do, but then you blended a theatrical description of the space with some description for those who don’t see. This screen is an addition, and it became resonant to your description, by having options to read or to hear. You brought a fictional translation into a space, in a constellation of constrains. This is not just an adaption, nothing feels forced, there’s such an economy in how you brought these things together…

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi The piece is about intertextuality. Mute drawings are there to remain on stage, but we have some many layers, the subtitles, the words… To me it’s about transcription, and the relationship between images, words, objects, and poetry. The method that comes from art history is now accustomed to the digital, we have to describe and transform, translate information. We stand in front of your question.

The work is very precise, the artworks are not visible, and the problem is solved by abandoning the fetishism of the original, by glorifying the work through its copy. 

Iarlaith's introduction to 'Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe' in italiano

About: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais

In italiano: 

TITOLO: Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe      

DOMANDA: Mi sentite?

Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe è una performance che mette in atto una fabulazione e raffigura una lezione di storia dell'arte sull'artista e scultore J.J. Beegan. Beegan era originario di Ballinasloe, in Irlanda, e realizzava disegni utilizzando bastoncini di fiammifero bruciati, ricordando la sua casa mentre si trovava all'ospedale psichiatrico di Netherne, nel Surrey, in Inghilterra, dove visse e morì tra gli anni Quaranta e Cinquanta. La performance inquadra l'esperienza di quelle diaspore dei disabili che derivano dall'incarcerazione medica.

Aughrim, Barrow, Ballinasloe si interroga sulla posizione degli artisti disabili all'interno della storia dell'arte, sull'autorialità e sulle istanze e lacune di leggibilità. Utilizzando il glamour, l'estetica dell'accesso e le canzoni pop, cantando del desiderio e della perdita, la performance tenta di colmare ciò che è stato intenzionalmente dimenticato, cancellato dall'istituzionalizzazione; rivolgendosi verso casa.

Dichiarazione di accesso: La performance sarà sottotitolata in inglese e comprenderà le autodescrizioni.”