Independence can be defined as freedom from outside control, or the authority of another. External control may comprise an oppressive political regime; familial, societal, or institutional repression; or the tyranny of one’s own mind. Even in the absence of external control, is true independence even possible? Is it possible for one’s trajectory in life to be completely uninfluenced by the wills and preferences of others? We are all products of society, whether or not we like to admit it. Might the only pathway to uncompromised independence be to live alone in nature, hunting and gathering, with only one’s thoughts as company?

States of Independence as a theme is explored beautifully below, in the works of our Featured Artist Jessica Traynor, Théodore Géricault, Senator Lynn Ruane, Abel Meeropol, and Nina Simone. Read on for news, 10 We Admire, and grants and opportunities.

 

‘We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.’
         – Malala Yousafzai

‘An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.’
         – Viktor Frankl
 

An anthem of emancipation, ‘Redemption Song’ leaves a timeless message for listeners. Marley borrowed an excerpt from black nationalist Marcus Garvey’s 1937 speech, ’emancipate yourselves from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our minds’. The lyrics encourage people to live the way they want and not how society dictates. It’s about taking a step to rid yourself of the negative influences in life and fulfilling your potential. To listen, click the image above.
 

Middlemarch, in full Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life, is a novel by George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) that appeared in eight instalments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. It is considered to be Eliot’s masterpiece. The realist work is a study of every class of society in the town of Middlemarch, from the landed gentry and clergy to the manufacturers and professional men, farmers, and labourers. The focus, however, is on the thwarted idealism of its two principal characters, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, both of whom marry disastrously.
 

This episode from Donal Fallon’s Three Castles Burning podcast sees him interview musician Joe Chester about his album Lucia, a beautiful musical tribute to Lucia Joyce, the dancer and illustrator. Daughter of James Joyce, Lucia was born in Trieste in 1907. She would go on to spend 46 years of her life in institutions after being diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid-1930s. Lucia by Joe Chester is his first major composition for classical guitar and strings, inspired by her journey (a journey covered recently in Féilim James’ play Sole Flower, Spidered Soul, performed in Smashing Times’ Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival 2023). Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
 

This month’s Featured Artist is poet Jessica Traynor. Traynor’s third collection, Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is the 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. A poetry critic for The Irish Times, and poetry editor at Banshee Press, Jessica is the 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in University of Galway. She was also one of three ambassadors for Smashing Times’ Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival 2023.

Traynor’s three poems below deal with the theme of independence via the prism of the past. Traynor examines how the dead – victims and perpetrators of injustice alike – have a bearing on the extent to which we can be independent in the present day. Without acknowledging and paying homage to the everyday victims of past injustices, how can we ensure that such injustices are not repeated? Likewise, equality is threatened by the idea that dead people’s opinions take precedence over the needs of the living, that tradition and custom rank above change and progress. This social conscience extends to Traynor’s expertly crafted sestina, ‘A Demonstration’, where the activist Dr Kathleen Lynn explores the motivations behind her participation in the Easter Rising of 1916.

In Bath Cathedral

O reader stay one moment with the dead –
our bones are mingling beneath your feet
and we are all alone.

Stay with us while our knuckles roll
amongst pence and relics, over curses
scratched on tin or silver to hex a neighbour

for a stolen blanket. All the company
we have now is Minerva’s stone head
that never suffered joy or entropy,

her brow smooth while all around us
hot spring water picks holes in bones.
Stay through days of rotting joists,

through bombs that make the air sing
with flying glass. Stay, though the nave
is scattered with broken saints;

stay and hear and remember –
our echoes chime around the world.
They sound through the breath of others,

in unimagined deserts and cities,
in Damascus, in Gaza, in Palmyra.
Stay and hold vigil. The dead are all the same.

First published in The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2018)

Citizens’ Assembly

We called a meeting with the Catholic dead
                         got little sense from them
but it had to be done.

One woman in mob-cap and woolen shawl
ranted about Peelers         the price of flour
            a bewigged man condemned
the whoredom         that had left him poxed.

A fat man took an apoplexy over women’s rights
                         died all over again
while wan adolescents thronged the back
            coughing blood.

A lechery of priests were first to comment        
McQuaid in scarlet         stepped forward
                         to speak for us all        owned
they could not agree on anything        except
 
that no decision should be made without
the input         of the faithful departed:
life is too serious a business         for those
                        with eyes clouded
            by a future.

First published in The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2018)

A Demonstration

Letter by this morning’s post to say I may go home for Xmas if I won’t have a demonstration (do they picture bands?) – Dr Kathleen Lynn

What might drive me, a doctor,
to fall out of reason and into the fire
of rebellion? Haunted by skulls
that boast through the thin skin of children
who ghost the alleyways, dying
young in silent demonstration,

I raise my own demonstration
against my limits as woman and doctor.
I remember those I’ve watched dying
of gulping coughs, praise the mercy of gun-fire
that scythes through women and children.
I number those dead, count their skulls.

Outside city hall, a policeman’s skull,
shattered by a bullet. This is less a demonstration,
more a bewilderment of poets and children,
watched over by one errant doctor.
My convictions temper in the fire
and quicklime of what follows, the dying

man brought out and shot at dawn, the ever-dying
Cuchulainn with his necklace of skulls –
all that spitting, revolutionary fire.
And my part in that demonstration
won’t be forgotten, but as a woman doctor
put down to hysteria, or a lack of children –

for what are women, they say, but children
themselves, living and dying
without reason? They say a real doctor
might cure me, could measure my skull
and tell its emptiness, demonstrate
my zeal was nothing but a mindless fire.

A rebel dying stokes the nation’s fire,
but starving children? Ask this doctor
to number our gains in skulls. Expect a demonstration.

‘A Demonstration’ was commissioned by the Arts Council and the Irish Writers Centre as part of A Poet’s Rising in 2016
 

The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault is an oil painting of 1818-19 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. This over-life-size painting depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today’s Mauritania on 2 July, 1816. On 5 July, 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation, dehydration, and practiced cannibalism (the custom of the sea). The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain.

The Raft of the Medusa was first shown at the 1819 Paris Salon, an exhibition sponsored by Louis XVIII. The critics were divided: the horror and ‘terribilità’ of the subject exercised fascination, but devotees of classicism expressed their distaste for what they described as a ‘pile of corpses’, whose realism they considered a far cry from the ‘ideal beauty’ represented by Girodet’s Pygmalion and Galatea, which triumphed the same year. Géricault’s work expressed a paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art and reality? The painting’s admirers praised its political theme, its liberal position, its advancement of the black community, and its modernity. The decision to place a black man at the pinnacle of the composition was a controversial expression of Géricault’s abolitionist sympathies. The art critic Christine Riding has speculated that the painting’s later exhibition in London was planned to coincide with anti-slavery agitation there.

The Raft of the Medusa was championed by the curator of the Louvre, comte de Forbin, who purchased it for the museum from Géricault’s heirs after his death in 1824. The painting now dominates the gallery in the Louvre, where the caption tells us that ‘the only hero in this poignant story is humanity’. The historian Jules Michelet stated: ‘our whole society is aboard the raft of the Medusa’. This comment illustrates The Raft of the Medusa‘s relevance today, a time when we have sadly become inured to the news of migrants drowning in The Mediterranean while fleeing poverty, war, and oppression. According to the United Nations, up to 27,000 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014. On 14 June, 2023, a trawler named the Adriana sank off the coast of Greece with over 750 men, women, and children on board. The migrant ship lost power and drifted off the coast of Greece. Despite the fact that the ship had been tracked for up to 13 hours and European border officials knew of its existence, the ship sank with only one Greek coastguard ship present. More than 600 people died. This incident inspired visual artist Hina Khan and writer Mary Moynihan’s collaboration on an installation titled Eternity, which was presented as part of the States of Independence project for the 2023 Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival.
 

Conversations on the Margins is a GoLoud Original Podcast presented by Senator Lynn Ruane. This limited series podcast brings you meaningful conversations and discussions about life, family, art, music, and more, all from inside the Irish prison system.

In ‘Chapter 1: Origins’, we hear from Stretch, Marty, Anto, Alex, Paul, and Senan in Wheatfield prison, as they sit and converse with Lynn Ruane. This episode covers their early years; the men reflect on their schooldays and their youth, both fond memories and times in which they were failed by the system. All the music you hear in this episode is performed by students in the Wheatfield prison education centre. Listen to this episode here.

Lynn Ruane is an independent Irish politician who has served as an Senator and deputy leader of the Civil Engagement Group in Seanad Éireann since 2016. Lynn is also a published author, a frequent contributor in print and online media, and, most recently, the co-presenter of the RTÉ documentary Lady Gregory: Ireland’s First Social Influencer with Miriam Margolyes.
 

No one can deny that Abel Meeropol’s haunting, masterfully crafted song ‘Strange Fruit’ was given new life by Nina Simone’s 1965 recording, via the latter’s gravelly yet sonorous voice and sparse piano accompaniment. The song protests the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that likened the bodies of the victims to the fruit of trees. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century. The song has been called ‘a declaration’ and ‘the beginning of the civil rights movement.’ Its hard-hitting lyrics hold their own without any music (indeed, they originated as a poem): ‘Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees’. In this opening verse or stanza, precise, evocative description meets intense colour meets allegory meets sociopolitical statement to render some sort of terrible beauty that has lived on in the hearts of activists and artists alike ever since. Simone’s rendition was even sampled in famed contemporary rapper Kanye West’s song, ‘Blood on the Leaves’.
 

Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and Front Line Defenders, alongside a range of partners, presented the international Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival from 13 to 22 October, 2023. The festival was a huge success, featuring innovative events promoting equality, human rights, and diversity through the arts. It took place in Dublin, Kerry, Donegal, and Cork, with artists and speakers in attendance from Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. The aim of the festival was to showcase and highlight the extraordinary work of human rights defenders in Ireland and around the world, past and present, and the role of the arts and artists in promoting human rights today.

The artistic curator for the festival was Mary Moynihan, Artistic Director, Smashing Times, while the human rights curator was Laura O’Leary, International Events and Promotions Coordinator, Front Line Defenders. Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, the festival was a hybrid programme delivered over 10 days. It hosted an exciting blend of events occurring in person and online, reaching audiences locally, nationally, and internationally. The festival comprised 21 live performances, six exhibitions, nine talks or panel discussions, four installations, three workshops, three film screenings, two partner exchanges, one podcast, and one radio documentary. Events took place across 17 different venues, involving 29 different organisations nationwide.
 

Eternal Rebels Changemakers Exhibition, with Eternity by Hina Khan in the centre, at the Pumphouse, Dublin Port

Festival highlights included the Eternal Rebels Changemakers Exhibition, a multidisciplinary exhibition by artists Mary Moynihan, Amna Walayat, and Hina Khan. The exhibition, held in the Pumphouse, Dublin Port for the duration of the festival, featured visual art, film, photography, and poetry, and was a visual and poetic reflection on the stories of changemakers in Irish history from the period 1912-1923 to today. Changemaker stories include Eva Gore-Booth, poet and trade unionist; Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, feminist, pacifist, and one of Ireland’s foremost suffragettes; and James Connolly, Irish revolutionary and trade union leader.

(L-R) Michael McCabe, Daniel Mahon, and Fiona Bawn-Thompson in Sole Flower, Spidered Soul by Féilim James

Meanwhile, the States of Independence: Live Multidisciplinary Performance took place in The Pumphouse, Dublin Port on 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22 October. Inspired by stories of changemaker activists and artists from the past, the performance combined theatre, film screenings, poetry, film projections, and live music. A key part of the performance was the premiere of the play Sole Flower, Spidered Soul, written by Féilim James and directed by Patrick Byrnes, concerning the relationship between the writer James Joyce and his troubled dancer daughter, Lucia. This was followed by Grace and Joe, a film by Mary Moynihan based on writings and witness statements from Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gifford. To conclude, Amy Kidd and Michael McCabe performed poetry by Eva Gore-Booth, Irish writer and campaigner for equality.

 

 

 

 

This multidisciplinary exhibition, featuring photography, poetry, and story, is a visual and poetical reflection on the stories of changemaker human rights defenders today. Human rights defenders are persons, who individually, or in association with others, work peacefully to promote and protect universally recognised human rights and fundamental freedoms, in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. The exhibition runs until 11 November, 2023, Tuesday to Saturday only, 11am-4pm (closed 1.30-2.30pm) at the DLR Mill Theatre, Dundrum. The exhibition is a collaboration between Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and Front Line Defenders. No booking necessary. Full details here.
 

A seven-channel video installation by Candice Breitz, interrogating the mechanics of identification and the conditions under which empathy is produced. The work is based on the personal narratives of six individuals who have fled their countries in response to a range of oppressive conditions, and features Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore. The video installation is currently being held in Rua Red, South Dublin Arts Centre, from 10am-6pm, Monday to Saturday, until November 11, 2023. No booking necessary. Full details here.
 

Quintessence Theatre present their thrilling new historical play titled The Curious Case of Albert Cashier: Lincoln’s ‘Lady’ Soldier, based on the extraordinary true story of the Irish Transgender American War Hero, Albert D.J. Cashier. The performance takes place in the DLR Mill Theatre, Dundrum, on 28 October, 2023 at 8pm. More details and booking here.
 

Smashing Times were delighted to welcome a number of European partners to Dublin this month. First, representatives from several different organisations involved in the European project Theatre in Palm attended the opening weekend of the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival (13-15 October). These groups then performed in the events An Afternoon/Evening with the Changemaker: Theatre in Palm Festival within a Festival on Sunday, 15 October. These events included, among other elements, a workshop exploring the use of VR, motion capture, and animation in creative projects; About Womankind, a one-woman comedic non-verbal lecture about universal womanhood; and Lady Grey, in which a lonely woman attempts to tell her life story through the prism of childhood.

Furthermore, the final international partner exchange of the Erasmus+ project Empower Young Citizens to Influence Society (AYE), of which Smashing Times are the lead, took place in Dublin on 19 October. Throughout the project, the partners have worked to raise awareness about the role of youth in shaping our current society. The project seeks to promote concrete, innovative partnerships and solutions based on the implementation of meaningful actions involving EU youth from diverse backgrounds, including those facing disadvantage. Read more on this project here.

Smashing Times were also delighted to host partners from Poland, Spain, and Cyprus for a meeting of the Erasmus+ funded project Remembrance on 20 October. This project fosters civic engagement and raises awareness of cultural heritage for European students. The project partners have developed training tools that use stories of activists who stood up against fascism in a time of war. Through these stories, they explore what happens when free speech and democratic practices are denied. Click here for more on this project.
 

Smashing Times Company Manager Freda Manweiler was in Tbilisi, Georgia from 20-22 October to deliver the Creative Connections Arts-Based Training Programme alongside her co-facilitator Frédérique Lecomte. The unique ‘train the trainer’ training programme provided training in theatre facilitation practice, with trainees learning how to use creative processes of theatre and film to promote conflict resolution and peace-building with local communities. This was the second of a two-part training programme; the first took place back in August in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Creative Connections training programme is developed by Mary Moynihan and delivered by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality as part of a consortium delivering the project EU4Dialogue, supported by the European Development Fund, which improves exchanges across the divide through education and culture. Read more about this project here.
 

 

This month, as we look to our theme of States of Independence, we are focusing on famous quotations from 10 people we greatly admire. Their inspirational statements demonstrate just how powerful words can be in elaborating the need for social justice.

‘Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.’
         – Rosa Luxemburg

‘Life without liberty is like a body without a spirit.’
         – Kahlil Gibran

‘Independence is a heady draft, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.’
         – Maya Angelou

‘For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.’
         – Nelson Mandela
 
‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.’
         – Charlotte Brontë

‘We must use our lives to make the world a better place to live, not just to acquire things. That is what we are put on the earth for.’
         – Dolores Huerta

‘We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.’
         – William Faulkner

‘To find yourself, think for yourself.’
         – Socrates
 
‘I do not wish them to have power over women; but over themselves.’
         – Mary Wollstonecraft

‘We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.’
         – Margaret Atwood
 

On 14 October, Human Rights Under Threat: The Arts Respond, presented by Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann in partnership with Smashing Times, saw George Szirtes, poet, interviewed by Mary Moynihan, artist and Smashing Times Artistic Director. Szirtes discussed migration, human rights, and freedom of expression, and the role of poetry in these challenging times. He also gave a short reading from his work. The discussion was accompanied by a reading from Hungarian writer and translator, Csilla Toldy. This event took place in the Pearse Street Library Conference Centre, Dublin, as part of the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival 2023.
 

 

ICCL and the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) hosted a conference titled ‘Police Surveillance North and South: Covert Intelligence, Facial Recognition Technology, Oversight and Human Rights’ on Tuesday, 24 October at the Royal College of Physicians Ireland, 6 Kildare Street, Dublin. The conference brought stakeholders together to discuss the current and future landscape of covert policing on the island of Ireland, through the lens of human rights. This event was the second in a series of events co-hosted by ICCL and CAJ, each with the aim of discussing a different thematic aspect of policing.

The timing of this conference was particularly apt as generational police reforms in the Republic, which follow recommendations by the Commission on the Future of Policing, are entering a critical phase. These reforms comprise legislation on restructured oversight mechanisms and expanded police powers to track and monitor people’s movements, as well as the use of surveillance devices and systems such as drones and facial recognition technology. Meanwhile, in the North, there have been concerns regarding the rollback of human rights-based policing, including public order and Covid-19 policing, and legacy cases.
 

For writers, artists, and creators
 

The Traditional Artist-in-Residence, based in the Department of Music in the College of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Social Sciences, is designed to provide a traditional artist (traditional musician, singer, dancer, storyteller or practitioner of the oral arts such as agallamh beirte and lúibíní) with a unique opportunity to develop their practice in a university environment while offering students of music the opportunity to engage with a practising artist in a meaningful way during the course of their studies. The deadline is 9 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.

 

 

The Arts Council has a long-standing partnership with a number of Irish universities offering Writer-in-Residence/Fellowship positions to provide university students of Creative Writing MA and MFA programmes with an opportunity to work with and learn from a professional author of distinction, and to enable writers to develop their work while in a position of relative financial stability. The deadline is 9 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.

 
FLIP (Finance, Learning, Innovation, and Patenting)/IPR for Cultural and Creative Industries: Policy Project Grant

 
The 2023 annual work programme for the implementation of the Creative Europe programme foresees the publication of a call for proposals with €1.05 million allocated to the development of an action for cultural and creative sectors and industries. This call builds upon the results of the European Parliament’s pilot project and the preparatory action FLIP (Finance, Learning, Innovation, and Patenting/IPR). The deadline is 1 December, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.

 

 

The Project Awards is for projects commencing on or after 1 March, 2024 through to 31 December, 2024. The Arts Participation Project Award supports initiatives in the field of arts participation (participatory, collaborative, community, and socially engaged arts practices). The deadline is 16 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.
 

Similarly, this funding call is for projects commencing on or after 1 March, 2024 through to 31 December, 2024. This award supports projects in the field of circus. The deadline is 16 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.

 

The Project Arts Centre (PAC) is seeking applications from skilled, experienced, and motivated individuals to join their marketing and communications team. Key areas include leading departmental activity in social media analytics, box office and sales activity, and tracking overall marketing efficacy. The deadline is 30 October, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.

Fire Station Artists’ Studios (FSAS) invites international curators, working either independently or with institutions, to apply for residencies which will take place in 2024. Up to six residencies will be awarded. Through these residencies, FSAS provides the armature to build links and foster collaborations between international artists, curators, art institutions, and their Irish counterparts. The deadline is 15 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.

 
Residency Programme, Helsinki International Artist Programme

 

Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP) invites artists and other art practitioners to apply for residencies in Suomenlinna and Cable Factory for 2024. This international open call is for artists who are not based in Finland. The HIAP Residency Programme focuses on visual art but is open to art professionals from other disciplines as well. The programme offers time and support for developing new work in dialogue with the local art scene. The deadline is 31 October, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.
 

 

The purpose of the Commissioning Programme is to enable organisations to commission new work. The finished work should be in a form capable of being presented, exhibited, published, performed, and/or disseminated in its entirety at the point of completion in Northern Ireland (if applicable abroad) either live or online. The deadline is 1 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.
 

 

Age & Opportunity and Arts & Disability Ireland are seeking tenders from suitably qualified individuals or organisations to carry out an Arts, Disability, and Older Person training review as part of its joint access initiative. Part of the work involves developing training supports for arts organisations wishing to work with older people. The deadline is 3 November, 2023. Further details can be reached through our Grants and Opportunities page.
 

That’s it for this edition. We will be back next month under the theme of ‘The Right to Express’ on 30 November. Please keep an eye out on our website and social media for our submissions call if you’re interested in contributing artworks or news pieces.

Take care,

Féilim Ó Brádaigh and Niamh Clowry