ArtTrail Opening Night

ArtTrail 2009 opened last night with a huge turnout for the opening party at the Savoy.  Kevin Tuohy opened the festival with the collective recital by all there, of the names of all the artists, writers, organisers, directors, collaborators and volunteers.  This served to highlight the sort of connectedness, community spirit and mutual respect required between all sorts of groups of people, in order to realise an undertaking such as this.

The opening event featured a variety of work by several artists.  Molly Mishkas' two-screen video installation tells the true story of Helen in Sligo, who walks weekly the ten mile round trip to dance at a Country and Western music night at a nearby hotel.  Helen spends much of her time sourcing a different outfit for each Sunday's dancing from various charity shops, weaving a web of connections throughout her locality.

Joanne Collins performed a hypnotic rendition of Kurt Schwitter's 1922 "Merz 24" or "Ursonata", a phonetic poem which lasts almost thirty minutes, manipulating and undoing the sounds of the German alphabet.  The repetition and rhythm quickly became mesmorising and initial efforts at trying to decipher meaning and impose some sort of order to this 'language' soon gave way to focussing on pure sound as the tongue-twisting phrases sucked you in.  All evening, people could be heard here and there, reciting a line of sounds from this performance.  I found myself thinking about language and the sort of local phrases which connect groups.  Imagine unpicking all those familiar and meaningful sounds and repeating them in new combinations, until they no longer have the power to communicate meaning and groups are separated into isolated individuals.

Later on Lisa Dalton's video "Celestial Cobweb" was screened, telling the story of a lost robot, who lands in a strange new environment and attempts to familiarise himself with this new space.  Adam Faramawy's video, which uses white noise and black sound, sought to explore some of the ways in which individuals and society can become agitated or alienated.  More of Adam Faramawy's work, including this video, can be seen at Triskel, presented by The Black Mariah for the rest of the festival.