SARAH LONG INTERVIEWS MARIANNE KEATING ABOUT HER LATEST FILM AND TOURING EXHIBITION.
Sarah Long: An Ciúnas/The Silence (2023) builds on your body of films exploring Irish histories, particularly the diaspora. The work was recently presented as a three-channel installation at The Showroom in London (13 October 2023 – 13 January 2024) and will soon tour venues throughout Ireland. Can you talk about how this work fits your larger oeuvre and at what point these ideas around presentation began to develop?
Marianne Keating: Over the last decade, my practice has focused on tracing the legacy of the Irish diaspora in the Caribbean, examining Irish-Jamaican anti-colonial ties and both countries’ fight for self-determination through a series of film installations. With An Ciúnas/The Silence, I wanted to push my film production, integrating these complex intersecting narratives in one space. By allowing these histories to be complex, these lingering archival impulses give voice to these histories, returning a voice to what had once been rendered mute. I aimed to highlight how these movements and themes are interconnected and that nothing exists as a singular moment.
From the initial concept of An Ciúnas/The Silence, I wanted the screens to also have a role in the narrative, with no one screen holding dominance or hierarchy. The use of 5:1 sound design was also crucial in the space. For example, when the dialogue comes from the left screen, the left speaker becomes the active speaker, drawing the viewers to turn and interact with that screen, making them active rather than passive participants.
The three-channel installation allows me to highlight multiple legacies of colonialism and how, until those systems that are still in place are fully broken down, true decolonisation can never be achieved. As Audre Lorde states, and which is highlighted in the work, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” This work allows the viewer to see how these threads intertwine and overlap.
SL: The work highlights how Empire’s power structures create dualisms that strengthen its position. Could you speak more about this idea, particularly your provocation, “How Free is Independence?”
MK: The work interrogates how far it may be possible to upend the loop of “unfree independence” that left countries tied to or subjugated by systems set up by the British Empire. Here we see how, after Independence in Ireland, the mechanism of oppression remained and passed to the Catholic Church, which, although a different power, was a power nonetheless that continued to control the population through oppression and subjugation. In the context of Jamaica, I examine the resulting impact of the Irish diaspora on contemporary politics. The work traces how men of Irish descent replaced the outgoing colonial body and that, although change was coming, it was to be based on the systems devised by the coloniser rather than a new, radical approach.
The legacy of colonialism can be seen in how borders were utilised in the 20th century in Ireland and Jamaica, as well as each country’s relationship with Britain today. The role of a border becomes interchangeable depending on the dominant countries’ economic needs. For those who emigrate, the reason has not really changed from that of the Famine years, with economic survival being predominant.
The work’s presentation as a continuous loop reflects that even though the viewer is witnessing historical moments of liberation, migration, and the fight for self-determination and independence, the topics, tensions, and troubles have remained the same throughout history in many ways – highlighting the seemingly endless loop of unfree ‘independence’.
SL: The work’s bilingual title, An Ciúnas/The Silence, is also striking because of its implied dualism: English and Gaeilge; Ireland and the diaspora; the archive and what is lost, censored, or otherwise hidden.
MK: The title of the exhibition can be read in many ways that examine the pervasive power of Empire and the intersecting erasures within Irish diasporic histories. ‘The Great Silence’ stemmed from the Famine, which reduced the passing down of lore between lost generations of Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht regions through death and migration. The silence equally refers to survivors of the Famine, “who would not talk of the past” and “would remain silent as to why and how they had survived.” More recently, ‘the silence’ refers to those who remained in Ireland and chose not to talk about the possibility of the failure of those who migrated. Materially, the silence references the near-total destruction of public records held at the Public Records Office of Ireland at the beginning of the Irish Civil War during the bombardment of the Four Courts in Dublin.
SL: The work is strikingly insightful, with a firm grounding in research, statistics, and archival sources. Can you describe your approach to working with these materials?
MK: Through my films I move forward and backwards in time, manipulating time, modes, and forms of production, and incorporating many sources and creating new, dense and complex narratives. My montage style allows me to incorporate many modes of production, from textual graphics to archival black and white photographs taken with traditional large format cameras or 35mm film reels, which invites the viewer to explore the historical past. Often, the viewer accepts these images as genuine, unedited, and natural without staging or bias, but this is often not the case.
Through the process, I digitally sample many sources (colour, black and white, still and moving images, as well as sound), recombining this visual and aural data to share with the audience. In some films, I use this method to disrupt present-day footage filmed with a 4K camera by distressing the footage and reducing it to what Hito Steyerl describes as a ‘poor image’ – a substandard copy that is deficient and inferior to its higher quality original. It may no longer be the hierarchical premium quality original, but it is still an image, and in its lower resolution format concedes universal access, decolonial in its approach.
SL: The work has been exhibited in The Showroom in London and will soon tour Ireland. How do you envisage these different contexts and sites will impact the work’s reception?
MK: In one way, that is a tricky question; I left Ireland in September 2011 after the recession pushed me out. The story I am telling is so much a part of all of us, yet by leaving, you are no longer the same; you are different. You see Ireland through an outside lens because you no longer get to see the day-to-day changes, and you are othered by the process. In one way, I tell these histories to inform people of all nationalities who don’t know them. Still, many people in Ireland will speak to aspects of these histories better than I do, as I’m not a historian.
But from what I have found from those of all nationalities who have watched my films, the compassion, empathy and understanding for all countries that have shared similar histories – colonialism, migration, and the struggle for economic survival – unites us all together. Our continued solidarity is our strength. All we have to do is look through our eyes and see the same in others.
Sarah Long is an artist and writer based in Cork. In 2020, she created The Paper – an online forum for discussing and responding to the Cork art scene.
@thepapercork
Marianne Keating is an Irish artist and researcher based in London. The Irish tour of ‘An Ciúnas/The Silence’ was initiated and organised by SIRIUS, and is curated by SIRIUS Director Miguel Amado, with Rayne Booth as Project Manager.
mariannekeating.com
‘Áilleacht Uafásach /A Terrible Beauty’ runs at The Model in Sligo from 16 March to 19 May and includes a larger presentation of the artist’s work. Subsequent tour venues include Galway Arts Centre, Rua Red, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and Wexford Arts Centre.
themodel.ie
