Posts by roomsAccess

BEYOND THESE ROOMS | Visitor Histories

January 22nd, 2019 Posted by Archive 0 comments on “BEYOND THESE ROOMS | Visitor Histories”

Bringing Complex Conflicted History Back to Life: One Story, Two Perspectives

“My husband, Peter Connolly, was a carrier and a general dealer.  He was 39 years of age.  On Easter Friday evening at dusk he had gone over to Hickey’s to move two mirror glasses.  When the firing began apparently he could not return home, and I never saw him alive again.”

– Statement of Mrs Connolly, taken from A FRAGMENT OF 1916 HISTORY held at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks. (REFERENCE NUMBER 35J 6/13)

“Mrs Hughes told us that she had seen Connolly on the roofs of houses at the rear of her house, leading the rebels across the roofs.  I know Connolly to have been a sergeant in the National Volunteers, and Mrs Connolly told me that he gave the Irish volunteers 2 rifles during the Rebellion.”
– Statement of Police Sergeant O’Gorman, taken from COURTS OF ENQUIRY INTO THE ALLEGED SHOOTING OF CIVILIANS BY SOLDIERS held at The National Archive, Kew. (REFERENCE NUMBER WO. 35/67/3)

icon-archive

Narrating Conflicted Histories

A core objective of BEYOND THESE ROOMS was to actively engage visitors into creating their own versions of this conflicted history.    The installation at Tate Exchange, Tate Liverpool, housed a large light table with multiple sentences taken from the following two governments’ enquiries conducted following the North King Street massacre:

  • A FRAGMENT OF 1916 HISTORY held at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.
  • COURTS OF ENQUIRY INTO THE ALLEGED SHOOTING OF CIVILIANS BY SOLDIERS held at the National Archive, Kew, London

Visitors were given the following instructions

  • ASSEMBLE the sentences and create your own narrative of the incident.
  • ARCHIVE your statement by pressing the keypad located in the middle of the lightbox table – it will be uploaded to theserooms.ie

We have been amazed by the response – thank you so much to all those who participated!

NOTE: these images are raw files uploaded from the light table at Tate Exchange and have not been altered in any way – to see the text clearly click to magnify.

9 FEBRUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 2 › »

8 FEBRUARY 2019

7 FEBRUARY 2019

6 FEBRUARY 2019

5 FEBRUARY 2019

3 FEBRUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 2 › »

2 FEBRUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 2 › »

1 FEBRUARY 2019

31 JANUARY 2019

30 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 2 › »

29 JANUARY 2019

28 JANUARY 2019

27 JANUARY 2019

26 JANUARY 2019

25 JANUARY 2019

24 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 2 › »

23 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 2 › »

22 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 3 › »

21 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 3 › »

20 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 5 › »

19 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 5 › »

18 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 3 › »

17 JANUARY 2019

« ‹ 1 of 3 › »

CLICK HERE to return to the Process & Archive Room

Tags:

The Hickey Family

November 15th, 2016 Posted by Research 0 comments on “The Hickey Family”

Emma O’Kane

My research for These Rooms focused on the Hickey family, in particular Teresa Hickey, wife of Thomas and mother of Christopher. Both were killed in the North King Street massacre. Call it a coincidence, a sign or the power and might of live performance, but unbeknown to me I came face to face with the Grandniece of Thomas Hickey in performance.

I shared a one-on-one moment with this woman, showing her a memorial card in memory of Thomas and Christopher Hickey. Not knowing at the time that I was actually showing her a photograph of her relatives. This was a defining moment for me where the space of 100 years and the lives of the inhabitants of North King Street did not seem so distant or unfamiliar. The story of These Rooms is universal and the reality of working on a show that deals with actual events means that its effects are still felt presently and reverberate globally. Sadly atrocities happen to human beings every day. People get caught in the crossfire. Not every citizen has the same agenda as those handling the arms.

Working on These Rooms has made me understand the importance of remaining impartial when creating work around real life testimonies. The testimonies are very harrowing and it is hard not to have an opinion about the perpetrators. But whom does that serve? Does an audience really need to see my blame played out in front of them? Blame keeps us stuck in the past.

This way of seeing has taken me a while to fully implement in my process and the work that I have created from directly relating to the testimonies in These Rooms. But I believe it is richer for it. Essentially I believe the role of the artist is to raise questions but not necessarily to answer them. Doing so robs the audience of their experience and the opportunity for them to formulate their own opinions.

As an artist responding to the testimonies one hundred years since the North King Street massacre, the single most important element of this creation for me is that the voices of the testimonies are heard and their stories are told. It is my job to do this with an impartiality that allows the audience to see these people as people and not just victims of a crime, without that human connection they just fade back into the past and we never get to hear their voices.

In hearing their voices one hopes that history does not repeat itself.

Tags:

The Cast respond to the testimonies

July 18th, 2016 Posted by Notes 0 comments on “The Cast respond to the testimonies”

Burst

Hands up

Searching

Ordered

Took

Fallen

Broke

Lying

Wash

Dead

These are just a few words taken from the testimony of Sally Hughes ( wife of Micheal Hughes). Micheal was murdered in North King street by the South Staffordshire regiment. In looking into the testimonies off all these men who were brutally killed it asks the question of why don’t we know about this?

Why now one hundred years on have we still not got the full truth and statements that were recorded. Will we ever know what really happened to those men and why it was done to them when they had nothing to do with the Volunteers.

Why Christopher Hickey a 16 year old boy was butchered to death. 31 pages, thats all we have. Maybe its all will ever have.

CRAIG CONNOLLY

Tags:

Development Workshop

July 18th, 2016 Posted by Research 0 comments on “Development Workshop”

David Bolger, Louise Lowe and Owen Boss held a series of creative development workshops during the autumn of 2015, culminating in a three day session in December with a number of performers.  Here are a series of images to give an idea of this work in embryonic form.

Tags:

Eye Witness Accounts

July 18th, 2016 Posted by Archive 0 comments on “Eye Witness Accounts”

“TAKE NO PRISONERS”

blog-06-1

“On Saturday 29th April about six soldiers with a sergeant knocked at the door and without waiting to have it opened broke the door in. They made us hold up our hands and made us go before them to the top back room. There we were all searched. When the soldiers broke in one of [the] men said ’friends’ & they said ‘no foes!’ At 7pm, over 12 hours later, I eventually I got to the top back room and I found there the dead bodies of my son and four others.”

“I came down crying and we all went to the priest’s house where we got tea. We had to stay there all night as no one was allowed out. Next morning at my request one of the priests went to pray over the bodies but he was not allowed into No. 27. A message came later that one of us would be allowed in to arrange about the bodies but when I got to the house there were neither soldiers nor bodies there. We were told that soldiers were digging in the back yard during the night. We found the four bodies burned in the back garden. Mrs. McCartney’s brother-in-law got here to disinter them and they were buried in Glasnevin in the following Tuesday, the 2nd May.”

Tags:

The Imperial War Museum and 14-18 NOW

July 18th, 2016 Posted by Research 0 comments on “The Imperial War Museum and 14-18 NOW”

In early to mid January myself, Louise Lowe and Owen Boss from ANU and David Bolger and Bridget Webster from CoisCeim traversed the Irish sea in simpler pre-Brexit times to take a visit to the beautiful Imperial War Museum where 14-18NOW have their headquarters to continue conversations in relation to THESE ROOMS.

14-18NOW is an arts commissioning body commemorating the centenary of the Great War. Looking up their programme in advance I felt that I could not remember seeing a more innovative, ambitious or appropriate centenary programme which seemed to span all sides, points of view and sensibilities when dealing with such an incredibly complex and confounding event such as the First World War. Some of 14-18