This work explores notions of ruination within a site-specific context of Dublin, Ireland. Working with Maud Hendricks and Bernie O’Reilly (of Irish theatre group OT Practice/Platform) we generated shared performances around the idea of the ‘Theatre of Ruins’. Positioning their neighbourhood, Dublin 8, as a location of the sublime anthropocene examines the continuously unfolding now of ruination past, present and anticipatory. Using Samuel Beckett’s experience in the bombed ruins of St Lô (The Capital of the Ruins) offers a conduit into wider contemporary witnessing of ruination, both physical and political.
In Dublin 8, a pattern emerges: the ruination catalysed by ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’: peoples and places are being moved, altered and displaced as mere commodities, and communities, both new and more settled, change as quickly as the fabric of the buildings. Ruined buildings are venerated for their historical patina while ruined communities scattered by global market forces are not. This transience is performed daily, invasively and often by external forces; political, historical and commercial. This work was first shown as a video installation at the John Ruskin School of Art, Cambridge, 2019.
In Dublin 8, a pattern emerges: the ruination catalysed by ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’: peoples and places are being moved, altered and displaced as mere commodities, and communities, both new and more settled, change as quickly as the fabric of the buildings. Ruined buildings are venerated for their historical patina while ruined communities scattered by global market forces are not. This transience is performed daily, invasively and often by external forces; political, historical and commercial. This work was first shown as a video installation at the John Ruskin School of Art, Cambridge, 2019.