Liminality
Liminality is a project by Ciara Mc Mahon, manifesting at the NCAD Gallery Dublin
Friday, 4th February - Wednesday, 9th February 2011
Liminality is a project by Ciara Mc Mahon, manifesting at the NCAD Gallery Dublin from Friday 4th until Saturday 12th February 2011. During interviews with the artist, heart and lung transplant recipients reported that waiting for an organ transplant was like existing in a limbo state, an in-between land. They felt hopeful and yet feared that the offer of an organ would come too late. Liminality uses the metaphor of heart/lung transplantation to juxtapose a waiting experience with a series of discursive events exploring subjectivity and intersubjectivity.
Ciara McMahon: Liminality, installation/ performance shot, NCAD Gallery; courtesy the artist
Deploying the experience of waiting and transplanting it to the gallery environment, the project looks for a creative tension between a waiting subject – dependent on others to release them from a form of confinement – and that of the seeking subject – actively looking for answers through theory. Liminality invites gallery goers to inhabit the role of a (hospital) visitor and/or to conditionally donate their physical presence, their self, to the project. Participants of parallel discursive events will explore such questions as : What is a subject? What is signified by intersubjectivity? What are the implications of mutual interdependence? There is an urgency to such questions given our current socio-political climate. Liminality is funded by the Arts Council through the artist in the community scheme, managed by Create, the National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts.
Viewers are invited to participate in the project by taking part in the discursive seminars or by stepping into the artist shoes as part of the installation, thus creating a flawed simulacra of a donation process. No appointments are necessary to take part and further schedule information for seminars during Liminality can be found at www.ncad.ie/about/gallery or at www.livinggift.ie/leaky-self/blog . Liminality will be accompanied by a commissioned essay by Tina Kinsella, edited by Emma Dwyer,Available on the opening night.
Ciara McMahon trained and practices both fine art and medicine. She recently graduated from NCAD with masters in Art in the Contemporary World (combined pathway). McMahon received a first (commended) in Fine Art Practice and Art History from NCAD. Her art work is collaborative and performative, realised through digital media and site specific installation. In 2010, McMahon was awarded a bursary to attend the Theory and Philosophy Summer School, Cork and a capital grant from Dun Laoghaire County Council. Her work is in the collection of the OPW, Ireland. In 2011 Ciara is due to sit on the editorial panel of the forthcoming Arts and Health website Council funded by the Arts Council. Selected exhibitions include: Chimeric Agonism, Broadstone Studio and Gallery, Preface, Pallas Heights; The Leaky Self Project, Dublin, TULCA; Détruis Space, The joinery; Moving Media Exhibiton, RUA; My Space, Breaking Ground, Limerick City Museum; Annual Exhibition, R.U.A.; Future exhibitions include Mutual:Esteem, Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery.
Schedule for seminars during Liminality Project, NCAD
Note: During these times, it is possible as an alternative to taking part in these discursive seminars to step into the artists shoes within the installation, thus creating, however flawed, a simulacra of a donation process. Seminars will take place in the NCAD gallery. Seating for seminars limited to 15 (including the leader/s). The panel discussion will take place in the Harry Clarke lecture theatre. For this discussion seating is limited to 60. There is to be no prior booking. Places allocated on first come first served basis.
• Saturday 5th : 2pm- 3pm: Infinite distraction: the erosion of attention in everyday life.
Dr.Aislinn O’Donnell : will open a dialogue about the role of attention. Is attention to something or to someone becoming increasingly difficult to sustain? Rather than offer a neuroscientific account, I look to the work of Bernard Stiegler and Simone Weil to examine the relation between attention and education. I then ask what, if any, is the relation between phenomenological experiences of paying attention and of waiting.
• Monday 7th: 6pm – 7.30pm: The body as a site of Liminality:
Screening of ITU (2007) followed by a discussion between artists John Wynne and Tim Wainwright and Dr Francis Halsall. Photographer Tim Wainwright and sound artist John Wynne spent a year as artists-in-residence at the Royal Brompton & Harefield. ITU (2007) shot in the intensive treatment unit of the hospitals heart transplant unit resulted from that residency and collaboration.
• Tuesday 8th 10.30 – 12.30pm:… the truth of the subject is its estrangement and its excessiveness’
In this seminar, Tine Kinsella will review the ethico-aesthetic writings of Nancy and the art practice and theoretical writings of Ettinger in order to explore the notion that the “body” and the “artwork” are potentially ethico-aesthetic sites at which the conundrum of personal identity can be investigated.
• Wednesday 9th 3.30 - 4.30pm: Screenings: Transplant (2008) John Wynne and Tim Wainwright and I used to say it was gold, but really it’s a platinum one, Platinum (2011) Ciara McMahon and Living Gift Transplant Support Group.
• Friday 11th : 11am- 1pm: Joint seminar by GradCam seminar groups: Dead Public and Dead Public and Undead: alternatives and alterity. Resourced by Dr.Mick Wilson, Dr. Syliva Loeffler and Edia Connole
• Saturday 12th : 2 – 3.30pm, Harry Clarke Lecture Hall. Artist in conversation with Fiona Loughnan / Tina Kinsella /Dr. Silivia Loeffler/ Ciara McMahon
NCAD Gallery, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8, Ireland. Open Mon – Fri 1pm- 5pm. Admission free.
For more information please contact +353 (0) 1 6364390 or gallery@staff.ncad.ie
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