New Irish Creatives by Embassy of Ireland, Berlin

FESTIVAL PROGRAMME FRIDAY 4TH To sign up to take part in this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s festival, please register here. 20:30 CET Follow our facebook, twitter, and instagram to keep up to date with our events

Artist Showcase & Discussion with Dylan Kerr, Liam Ryan, Lily Guinness, Sean Gallen

19:00 CET Lisa McInerney In Conversation with Rob Doyle & Adrian Duncan

15:00 CET Launch of the online exhibition & showcase

SUNDAY 6TH

SATURDAY 5TH 20:30 CET New Irish Creatives Networking

19:00 CET

Eugene Downes, Caroline Staunton & Jeremy Bines present New Irish Creatives Classical & Opera

New Irish Creatives Short film screening & Award ceremony

15:00 CET 15:00 CET Masterclass Gerard Byrne

Workshop Strategies & Planning for artists with Kristen Harrison

13:00 CET

Masterclass Sam Slater

Masterclass Marguerite Donlon

Foreword Berlin is a hub that attracts creative talents from far and wide. I think that one of the reasons why Berlin thrives as an artistic community is the networking effect - the ease with which aspiring artists can connect with like-minded souls. All of this has, sadly, come to a halt over the last few months due to the pandemic. Following on from the success of New Irish Creatives two years ago, the Embassy is delighted to bring together a multidisciplinary festival focused on supporting and promoting new Irish creative talent in Berlin. The festival will take the form of showcases, discussions, readings, networking and masterclasses with renowned professional creatives. We are above all delighted to have genuinely world-class Irish talent with us for the festival. Gerard Byrne and Marguerite Donlon are both world-class artists who will conduct very special masterclasses. Jeremy Bines and Caroline Staunton will take part in the classical and opera showcase, and we have the privilege of being joined by writers Lisa McInerney, Rob Doyle and Adrian Duncan.

It is wonderful to have such a broad array of art forms represented including visual art, literature, music, dance, fashion, and film, in order to really create a sense that you may discover something new. I would like to extend our thanks to the festival’s media partner ArtConnect for helping to connect to so many more art lovers in Berlin. As part of this year’s festival, we are launching the New Irish Creatives film grant and award. The grantees’ films will be screened and the award will be presented at the close of the festival by a panel of judges composed of German and Irish industry professionals. I am delighted to say that the response to the grant was great, and the quality of the applications very high. Many of the artists in the line-up have only recently moved to Berlin. We hope that this festival will assist them in building up their much-needed network, as well as gaining some understanding of the Berlin arts landscape. We are very proud of our aspiring artistic community, and of having such a deep pool of up-and-coming talent.

The commitment to support cultural expression among our diaspora is central to Global Ireland, our recently launched diaspora strategy 20202025. The arts, as a fundamental component of our identity, is a key thread that binds together our diaspora. I am therefore delighted to welcome you to New Irish Creatives, which I am sure will be a great success!

Dr. Nicholas O’Brien Ambassador

This online festival magazine was produced by : The Embassy of Ireland, Berlin Editor - Candice Gordon Assistant Editor - Milena Seitzinger Illustration + layout - Robert Mirolo

Contents Exhibition and Showcase Visual & performance arts Fashion, and writing:

Festival Programme: p. 82 p. 83 p. 84 p. 86

Literature Lisa McInerney Adrian Duncan Rob Doyle

p. 34 p. 38 p. 42 p. 46 p. 50 p. 54 p. 58 p. 62

Aileen Murphy Andrew Neville Ciara Lee Clare Davies Dylan Kerr Hannah McNulty & Laura Wilson Jacintha Murphy Julia Dubsky Liam Ryan Lily Guinness Paul Tobin Samuel Laurence Cunnane Sheena Malone Sophie Iremonger

p. 88 p. 90 p. 91 p. 92 p. 93

Classical Music Laura Murphy Killian White Jeremy Bines Caroline Staunton

p. 66

Music feature by Clare Davies:

p. 68 p. 70 p. 72 p. 74 p. 76 p. 78 p. 80

Ciarรกn Sweeney Landers Lucy McWilliams Ruth Mac Sirkt Son Wyvern Lingo Young Baby Kafka

p. 94 p. 96 p. 98 p. 100 p. 102 p. 104 p. 106 p. 108

Film grant & award Ciarรกn Fahey Katie McFadden Jack Hogan Aoife Leonard Jonathan Sammon Mary Kelly About the Jury

p. 112

Masterclasses & workshop

p. 116

Close of festival

p. 6 p. 10 p. 14 p. 18 p. 22 p. 26

Aileen Murphy

O! O! , oil on canvas, 195x280cm (two equal parts), 2020

Aileen Murphy (b.1984) is an Irish painter based in Berlin. Her recent solo exhibitions are Flush at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery London, PANTING, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin (2019), Bounty (with Diana Copperwhite), Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2018), Naked Cheerleaders in my Chest, Deborah Schamoni, Munich (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Fables of Resurrection, Deborah Schamoni, Munich, THE SAME AS EVER BUT MORE SO, Braunsfelder, Cologne (2018), Murphy studied at NCAD, Dublin, and Staedelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt am Main.

All images are courtesy of Amanda Wilkinson gallery, London.

Real bees petting, oil on canvas, 170x140cm, 2020

In the gale, with Gale, oil on canvas, 195x140cm, 2020.

Pinking, oil on canvas, 150x140cm, 2020.

Andrew Neville In my paintings I seek to represent the uncanny in what is intimately known to me - lived experience and locality rendered disorienting through technological mediation. Combining online depictions of my native Dublin and personal memory as source material serves as a basis to explore ideas of alienation, spatial memory and illusion. Emerging from the works are spaces informed by the mechanics and aesthetics found in 3d rendering programs and visual programming languages. Figures exist almost as the spectral remnants of documentation that function solely to convey the inevitable performativity that comes with being recorded.

Unmoore â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2019

Floating Point â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2020 10

The Past Is Not A Peaceful Landscape — 2020

Double Bass — 2020 11

The Drain â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2020

The Conveyor â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2020

Ciara Lee The project Balter is about club culture and dance spaces, concentrating on how people act and interact in those spaces. The aim of the project Balter is to capture the catharsis of the dancers whom are being released from the emotional tension of everyday life. It explores dance as an involuntary, thoughtless reaction to music. I want to capture the real moments in the dance where people let go of all their inhibitions and let their body do what it wants to do, the moment when the body starts moving to the rhythm of the music without a thought from the head stepping in and stalling it. It is a primitive moment full of passion and longing to move a certain way that I try to capture. To balter is to dance artlessly without particular skill or grace but usually with great enjoyment. To balter in itself involves a certain degree of letting go. Balter aims to capture the boisterous grittiness of what it is to be a part of the dancefloor. The feelings one experiences and the sights one sees. Removing the beer goggles and the drug infused state, one experiences the dancefloor differently now that it is laid out in front of them. The sense of nostalgia or déjà vu plays a big role in my work. You start to think of all the people you’ve interacted with on the dancefloor. People you’ve danced with. The feeling of sweat rolling down your face and of clothes clinging to your back. As we look at the photographs we swap places with the camera and become another person in the dance space.

Dance. It is what inspires. It’s what I admire. I will never tire from its constant attraction to me. It is a distraction to me, With its strong interaction and flows between the Jim Crows and John Does. Dance, it is what I constantly crave. People can be so fucking brave, Challenging epilepsy at a rave. The beauty enslaves me. Behind the lens I am in a trance. All I want to do is dance but the circumstance ain’t right. I want to dance with these fools To be in that spotlight That ankle popping, finger clicking, fat jiggling feeling Of losing yourself to the music You know what I’m talking about You felt that feeling before Coulda swore that was you I saw on the dancefloor. Dance is something I’d pay for if it were not free I swear I would climb a mountain of trees, if only I could see The dancing you do behind closed doors. Dancing like a dinosaur with your labrador. The dancefloor is a primitive place where your suddenly remember how to move to the bass It’s fast pace, state of grace, stone-like face Slipping, Dripping, To reveal, that long forgotten sex appeal.

I became interested in space during the early stages of the project Balter. Dance helped me look at space in a new way. I became particularly interested in the space between dancers. How far away could dancers be from one another and still be considered to be dancing with each other? The shutting down of clubs and dance spaces this year made this question all the more urgent in my work. I never thought touching was necessary for two people dancing with one another but how far could this distance be pushed? Could they be on the other side of the room? Could they be on the other side of the road? Could they be on the other side

of the window? Could they be on the other side of a wall? Could there be a person in between them, a person separate to the dancers? Could they be on the other side of the world? Could they be separated by time? Dancers need some form of contact with each other if they are not touching and it became obvious to me that what connects dancers together most of all is the eyes. There needs to be some form of seeing one another. If the dancers cannot see or touch one another then the link becomes broken and they can no longer dance with one another.

Clare Davies

A life-long interest in music and culture combined with my educational background in fine art photography and journalism is what influences my work. A fascination with those that create and the impulse to document their practice has resulted in numerous collaborative photo and text based projects. My work to date has spanned reviews, interviews, artwork and creative direction for albums and look-books, inspired by my own personal zine-making projects and DIY darkroom printing. I’m lucky that my friends are some of the most

creative people I know, and am honoured to have been included in their process. I’ve chosen to include one of my favourite projects to date — the cover for a limited edition 45 of “Feeling Fades,” the debut single by Irish band “The Murder Capital”. This project was conceptualised by myself and my good pal and frontman, James McGovern, and pays homage to the work of the incredible Francesca Woodman.

See More from Clare Davies

Dylan Kerr Exodus 20:3 3“You shall have no other gods before me. 4“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Digital painting by Mateusz Bratkowski Baptist Goth is the fusion of past and present. From Lil Peep, to St. Agata. From Kurt Cobain, to John the Baptist. Baptist Goth is a rupture to the second commandment (exodus 20:3)A rupture which creates the opening to a non-binary re-imagining of christianity, of religious energy.

Dylan Kerr is dead and what’s left of them now takes the form of Baptist Goth. Baptist Goth is the meeting point of the Idol - The Idol of religious belief, the Idol of popular culture. Baptist Goth is the intersection of the Idol. Both in popular culture and in Religious belief, Idols are born out of martyrdom and death. 22

Dylan came close to taking their own life, but Baptist Goth saved whatever parts of Dylan were still living and became a new entity.

Religious energy will not wither, despite scientific discovery. But the institutions that have claimed ownership over religion are riddled with corruption - rife with sexual abuse and enforced patriarchy. Religious energy is weaponized the world over. Dylan Kerr was living in Poznan, Poland, as hateful and violent rhetoric against the LGBT+ community was being used for political gain. The reasoning for this violence - biblical scripture.

Religion undoubtedly has made the life of many of its believers meaningful to themselves and useful to others. Through religious faith their adherents have been able to transcend themselves and been able to do great things. Even if it is all based on delusions, would not this be enough for us to protect, maybe even encourage its practices, in spite of the intellectual reservations we may harbour? ^

Dylan died, Baptist Goth was born. Let’s look at the recent protests in Warsaw, where three activists from the group Stop Bzdurom were charged for placing pride flags on religious statues in protest of all the hate speech brought about again by Andrzez Duda before his re-election. Duda says that these actions were an attack on religious feelings. What about the spread of homophobic ideology by polish government officials? After they removed the flag from the statue of Jesus, the statue and the square it was in were then guarded by the police, while there was a rise in attacks on queer people around the country.

That’s where Baptist Goth came from, an early fascination with the church and religious music, combined with Dylan’s “worship” of Lil Peep during lockdown. Baptist Goth performs under the guise of a saint, a fusion of an emo trap idol and a Catholic idol. Baptist Goth performs re-interpretations of hymns and religious scripture, appreciating the beauty of religious music, but also raising questions about the church and the problems associated with it.

^ Breaking The Spell, Dan Hennett, Penguin, 2006

Duda says that these actions were an attack on religious feelings. What about the spread of homophobic ideology by polish government officials? After they removed the flag from the statue of Jesus, the statue and the square it was in were then guarded by the police, while there was a rise in attacks on queer people around the country.

Baptist Goth Bandcamp All proceeds from the sale of this work will be donated and split between two Polish charities: 1. Fundusz Dla Odmiany, whose goal is to make LGBT + people feel at home in every community in Poland. The money will be used to fund workshops, educational programmes, support networks etc. Providing support to queer people in local communities across the country

Polish hate speech laws protect religious statues, but not living, queer people. Baptist Goth is the creation of a queer sainthood in Catholic Poland.

2. Aborcja Bez Granic, which is a source of information and practical and financial support for people in Poland who need an abortion in the country (by obtaining information on safe abortion pills) and abroad (surgery in a clinic).

Baptist Goth presents us with a world in which our idols are queer, inviting us to overhaul our concepts of structural belief. This invitation takes its form in the fusion of religious ceremony and music. Baptist Goth is a means of rebirth out of darkness. Of saviour from death. Baptist Goth’s first work is now available on Bandcamp. ‘I wake up in the morning and I cry’ was composed for Dylan Kerr’s funeral in June 2020.

Baptist Goth will continue to work towards releasing an album in 2021, and who knows what after that, or what form they will take. They will forever be evolving. Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces^

^ Aveux non avenus, Claude Cahun, Editions Du Carrefour, Paris, 1930

Hannah McNulty Madden & Lauren Wilson As a collaborative practice, we look at internet themes as internet women. We try to interpret the ever-changing trends of the internet and understand it both digitally and physically. Medium translation is one of the main focuses of our practice. We take ideas and concepts from the digital sphere and bring them into real life, like a Telenovela. Our approach to responding to the world can be taken as absurd perhaps, but how absurd is it really when compared to the times we are in. The internet has changed the way people now “find themselves”, between buzzfeed and astrology, the internet is an overflowing cup of personality trends to drink from. The act of finding yourself has been transformed into nearly a completely digital experience and we use craft, textile and mediums of what we consider to be completely opposite to digital to try and understand what “finding yourself” really means.

Julia Leads the Blind Our work plays with the humorous aspect of identity, the “finding yourself” that the internet enables us to indulge in. From BuzzFeed quizzes to daily horoscopes, we seem to be in an age of using hypothetical cheeses to find out who we really are. Each of the answers received from the quizzes that we answer mindlessly, yet simultaneously consider carefully, brings us one step closer to understanding ourselves and unlocking the true meaning of our existence. We exist in a time where we feel the need to add more substance to ourselves, perhaps indicative of a mysterious, unspoken emptiness; therefore we feel obliged to do things such as investigate our birth dates, and demand that it tell us something profound about ourselves, if we are here for a grander purpose, something to make us special. “The internet owes me these answers, it needs to tell me I’m pretty or I’m retaking the quiz, it needs to tell me the answer that I want!” you say to yourself as you furiously select “potato in MASH form” as your definitive answer. That wonderful feeling of relief when you choose your all-timefavourite apostle, and it resonates with your preferred sex position - Buzzfeed confirming its now undisputed legitimacy. What makes us believe that the method we used to decide things reveals a deeper truth about our inner psyche which we have been hiding from ourselves? Are we not aware, possibly hyper-aware, of who we are? Why does there always have to be more? And does it really matter?

Julia Leads the Blind performance - 2019 Many of us are guilty of reading about our star sign and looking at what personality traits we should or should not possess. Being a Taurus gives you an excuse to be stubborn. Oh, you’re a Pisces? You really are selfless. Do the stars really determine our personalities? Or is this a weak template for how you/we are supposed to be? Does having an undying love for Toto’s Africa make you more interesting, giving you that edge that the rest of us are lacking? “This is MY song, this is my SONG”, a distant cry of someone latching on to a thing, more importantly, their thing , making them whole once more.

This piece is trying to give the feeling of searching for hidden meaning within yourself a physicality, through a somewhat anthropomorphic and lighthearted approach, and explore how the experience of interacting with vapid self-discovery in the real world differs to doing so in the intangible internet realm. What will you find out about yourself today? Does the fact that the experience is physical make it seem more real, more genuine? Will it reveal the real truth, the answers you have been scouring the internet, the night sky, and Buzzfeed for? Riddle us this, what exactly are you hoping to find?

Do The Asterisks Gaze Back Performance — May 2019

”I think there’s a lot to be learned from childish behaviour. Examining the world we live in in a playful way - true giddiness is when I feel like I’m doing something right, which feels ghostly, interlinked with the interest I have in some aspects of the female experience - the fluctuating oddities involved, particularly apparent in the betwixt and between periods of my woman-ness. I often employ a mix of moving image, textiles, and performance; building characters, creatures and narratives that help me humorously explore these strange waters.” — Lauren Wilson

Do The Asterisks Gaze Back Performance â&#x20AC;&#x201D; May 2019 29

Hannah McNulty Madden I am a writer by trade but a performer by night. Currently, I am struggling with combining my writing and my art, unable to see them as one. I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t force them to merge, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll say that now. But I am interested in why I struggle to even let them meet. But not meet in the kiss way. But maybe the kiss way could happen too. I am invested in not only myself and who I am, but also you and who you are. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m interested in people being interested in themselves, in the space where we are the same. I use theatrics to convey how far we can indulge ourselves in our identities and how we live. I play with what makes us uncomfortable in relation to what we know to be true.

Waiting Room

Morning Routine

Morning routine-

Waiting room-

Some things are both very public and very private. Public and performative, intimate and sensual, the mouth can’t be deemed as one or the other. I’m interested in how it can be both and what it looks like to make a private experience public. This is like teeth brushing XXL.

Some of us all have very similar shared experiences. The dentist, for example, is a very specific situation with very distinctive sensory memories related to it. Not very pleasant, really, when you think about it. The smell of the gloves in your mouth, the sound of metal against bone, scraping the plaque. It would be terrible if someone were to recreate those feelings, wouldn’t it?

Lauren Wilson

Teenage Diary

Still from Välillä/Idir – 2019 Teenage Diary is part of an anthropological study of pubescent females using excerpts from a diary I kept as an angsty and famehungry adolescent. Using a critical and academic approach, I explore the bizarre inner workings of the former Self, cautiously introducing her to the judgemental new Self.

Välillä/Idir is a video piece involving multiple projections examining belief in, and cynicism around, ghost stories. Footage can be found on Vimeo. Truth HZ is an interactive installation I made in collaboration with a sound engineer, Tony Sikström. An antique chair was rigged with subwoofers, and I invited participants into a constructed oneseater restaurant to choose from a menu of various frequencies, most notably the delicious 18.98 Hz, which has become known as the Ghost Frequency. The critics left uncomfortable reviews, which became a significant part of my work.

Truth HZ, installation 33

Jacintha Murphy Jacintha Murphy is an Irish visual artist/writer based in Berlin. A graduate of Limerick School of Art & Designâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Painting Department, she takes a painterly approach to creating bodily, fleshy objects and images dripping in Kristevan Abjection; works that demonstrate a dichotomous push & pull between attraction and repulsion. Using a variety of visceral, decayable, and sometimes living materials such as wax, paint, pomegranate seeds, fabric and bacterial cultures, she demonstrates the intrinsic relationship between destruction and creation, death and birth, presenting states that exist between these processes; states of becoming.

She, The Mound

Skin Study

feCunt

Nipple Study

Julia Dubsky

Fictions of Modesty Part fig leaf (a symbol of modesty) — part ‘fig.’ standing for ‘figure’ — or abstract mark (‘ein Fleck’, ‘a stain’ in German) — in these paintings I have been dealing with expectations of dominance. The figure-ground relationship is complicated intuitively by reversals of perceptive depth. The difference between red (protrusive) and blue (recessive) lends itself well to such inversions and the restricted palette provides a uniforming putti to chew and remould over time and layers. The variety of pigments used have differing biases of temperature and hue that act like false friends in translation, wherein language doesn’t continue as expected, and the pace of interpretation is slowed.

Art historical references, such as a detail of wallpaper from a painting by Edward Vuillard, act as a point of departure together with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 19th century feminist short story, ”The Yellow Wallpaper”. The painting “Fictions of Modesty”, is named after a book by Ruth Bernard Yaezell with this title, that deals with the modest heroine in English literature from the late 17th to the beginning of the 20th century. The jacket illustration pictures a painting by James McNeil Whistler of a woman in a white dress. Her dark hair has a slight red glow that might have un-knowingly informed a similar slight colour halo around one of the white shapes, although in this instance it is green.

Fig Rabbit Duck (Kaninchen und Ente) Julia Dubsky (b. Dublin) based in Berlin, graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2016. Currently in the MA class of Jutta Koether in HfBK Hamburg. Represented by Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London, after first solo exhibition, The Marshland Akimbo, in September 2019.

Recipient of the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Recent Graduate Residency Award in April 2017 until May 2018; â&#x20AC;&#x2039;Salon of Good Time solo residency exhibition in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin (2018); Basic Space Artist Talk, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2018); Art School Alliance Goldsmiths residency (Spring 2020); Essay, hot sterility, published by Circa (2020); solo exhibition M/modesty, Amanda Wilkinson Gallery (December 2020) (LINK); group exhibition Sphinx of Black Quartz, Judge My Vow, Palfrey, London (opening 9.12.2020) (LINK).

Fig. Fleck

Fig Leaf Wallpaper

Liam Ryan

Born in Mallow in 1982, Liam studied in NCAD, Dublin, before rellocating to London.

I moved to Berlin this Autumn. Prior to the move, I had been living in the UK for thirteen years. For the past four years, I have been making black on black and silver paintings. One of these is featured here. The paintings are dark. As Max Ernst once said, “if you live in revolting times, you should make revolting Art.”; He said something like that once anyway.. I really shouldn’t use quotation marks. Generally the text in the dark paintings is painted backwards and my intention was that the paintings would address the viewer as mirrors...A friend reflected on these works in an eloquent way, beyond my capability: “Painting black on black, Liam Ryan invites the viewer to peer through a glass darkly. As in a mirror, referenced images appear reversed, though darkness obscures them. This encourages the viewer to actively engage with the paintings, to recover what there is to be seen. Even should the attempt to recover the referenced images prove impossible, the viewer enjoys formal features of the image perhaps otherwise obscured by the light of day, their play with negative spaces and the fine grain of texture of the painting itself. The paintings are thus an absurd mirror, rendering the visible invisible, and the invisible, visible.” - Prof Mark Eli Kalderon

Guaranteed Forever, Watercolour, 60x45cm (2020) The featured painting Guaranteed Forever is a new work, a watercolour and it marks my return to colour, being re-energiszd with a new start in Berlin and new hope. The other two paintings in colour, featured in the group, are earlier works - painted in London too. I was looking for a way to make new surreal paintings and the works were composed in a paripaitetic, loose manner. Titles were garnered from a cut up technique.

Angel of Yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Forgotten Promise, oil on linen 25cm x 25cm

British Brain Washing Corp, oil on linen 150cm x 120cm (2018)

Koumpoiunaphobia, oil in linen 55 x 45cm (2016)

Lily Guinness Lily Guinness is an Irish fashion designer based in Berlin. A recent graduate of Dublin’s Grafton Academy Of Fashion Design – where she specialised in tailoring, menswear and lingerie – Lily has spent most of the last year designing stage outfits for musicians and tailoring suits for Irish media personalities. Bold colours, clean lines and unusual fabrics are hallmarks of Lily’s aesthetic, which takes its cues from a combination of Nudie Cohn’s rodeo tailoring as well as from Barbarella-era Paco Rabanne. A dedicated campaigner against fashion waste, Lily goes to great lengths to use repurposed fabric as much as possible as part of her process. Lily’s currently working on a new collection that takes a structured approach to casual wear, which will be created from a palette of dark fabrics with accents of colour. Illustrations of images inspired by Dante’s Inferno – including angels, demons, knives and teeth – will embellish the garments.

Embroidery detail

Credits: Photography - Erica Coburn Model - Katie Freeney Styling - Lucy O’Sullivan MUA - Emma Freeney

Paul Tobin “In my work, I try to evoke a sense of place. The places that I shoot can be found everywhere, but the subjects are unique to a particular place, from a village in Ireland, or a backstreet in Berlin, to a corner in Paris. I try to find the overseen and overlooked, drawing attention to the mundane objects and liminal spaces through the medium of film photography. I love the German concept of “Gemütlichkeit” and its connotations with cosiness and familiarity. The familiarity of the everyday is expressed through the photos that I take and the subjects that I choose. Gemütlichkeit is not confined to Germany, it is a feeling that can be found anywhere. I attempt to capture this feeling in every place that I photograph.”

Samuel Laurence Cunnane “Having been very influenced by documentary film, in particular direct cinema or cinema verite, my approach to photography has from quite early on in my practice probed questions about the apparatus of the camera as analogous to the mechanisms of the eye and the act of witnessing itself.

villages, normally in the outskirts and using these very different and varied elements to form my own alternate vision of a place; one of surreal scenes of post colonial flora and the incessant damp, harsh light and pebble dash. The idea of the landscape as a disconnected and vaguely threatening force barely held in check by a veneer of human order seems increasingly pertinent.

I am interested in the formal interaction between eye and lens and where the shortcomings of both interact.

I am interested in exploring the parts of the landscape or environment that are liminal spaces, not only in the physical sense such as a boundary on the edge of a town or a forgotten woodland or even garden but in the sense of being on the outskirts of our ability to perceive, a blind spot of sorts, its presence felt perhaps but difficult to comprehend.”

I’m interested in the detritus and left over elements of what isn’t tidy and doesn’t get subsumed but resists progress and commodification or what is left after commodification occurs. For my most recent work I have been working in the west of Ireland photographing in small towns and

Bird Statue (2019)

Siobhรกn 1 (2019)

Fox (2019)

Plant Study (2018)

Sheena Malone At the onset of the pandemic, all my freelance work slipped away from me over the course of one weekend in March, beginning on the aptly dated Friday 13th. For a moment, it seemed like the options were to either hibernate until all had passed or find a way of using this pause from normality in a productive manner. My online exploration for a creative lockdown distraction led me to Ana Stankovic-Fitzgerald’s Fashion Illustration course at the London College of Fashion. While I have always drawn as a hobby, my background has generally been focused on the administrative and curatorial side of exhibition-making, and without much formal artistic training, I have always been a little reticent about showing my drawings to others.

Coach Autumn Winter 2020 — Marker and colouring pencil — 2020

and discovering new illustrators and illustration techniques. I am taking my first tentative steps into this world without knowing where it will take me.

The closest I’d previously come to the genre of fashion illustration had been a street style blog called Drawing on Stockholm) which comprised 50 drawings of strangers met on the streets of Swedish capital. The world of fashion illustration is a new departure for me and for the last six months it has been immense fun delving into fashion history, the new collections,

In my drawings, which are mainly executed in watercolour and colouring pencils, I aim to take the models and clothes away from the catwalk and place them in different settings. I want to imbue the drawing with a sense of narrative that adds mystery for the viewer, while simultaneously complementing the original inspiration of the designer’s collection.

Your clothes are all made by Balmain and your horse is a stud in Kildare (Resort 2021) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Watercolour and colouring pencil â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2020

Your clothes are all made by Balmain and you dance in the bogs in Kildare (Resort 2021) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Watercolour and colouring pencil â&#x20AC;&#x201D;2020

Batsheva Spring 2021 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Watercolour and colouring pencil â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2020

Sophie Iremonger Mashing up animals and plants in a hole in your face, with others, Looking at them Loved ones also spinning their vortices of crushed plants and animals, Staring with love in each others eyes, An Eating.

Born 1983 Dublin Ireland, educated at the National College of Art and Design, Sophie Iremonger graduated in 2008 with a BA in Painting. She has lived in Berlin for many years developing a strong studio practice and has exhibited extensively in Europe and America.

She makes paintings, books, and illustrations thematically concerned with wastelands and the junctures between human and non-human worlds. Other themes include food and deconstructing baroque art. Her paintings utilize print, collage, and acrylics. She also illustrates and writes books, which is a new development for her.

Written and illustrated by Sophie Iremonger ‘An Eating’ was an experimental cook book written over two years and completed in 2018. It was read as part of of an immersive installation at the Kunstsenter Bergen Norway. ‘An Eating’ was published by Coda press founded by Scott Elliott in 2016 who also edited the book in his capacity as curator and program organiser. During my residency in Bergen I staged a reading and food performance surrounded by experimental jellies with flavours like green tea and tuna. The food and reading synchronised to produce an ambiguous experience of disgust and pleasure connecting artists and community through word and food.

The author shares her experiences of serving chips to 20 school children when there were no chips, of serving quiches when they were refused to be solid in the middle and leaked their raw contents across the counter. Such an experience wouldn’t be complete without the chicken resurrecting itself back up from the floor where it was so unceremoniously dropped and landing back on your plate, so of course, that happens too. Bon appetit!

‘An Eating’ is a collection of economic recipes interspersed with stream of consciousness prose and sketches in ink. It concerns ‘Precariat’, a new economic category of human, privileged yet under paid. A new type of human who clings onto gentility though she is chipping frozen peas off the back of a shared art studio freezer in an attempt to make soup. Taking place in Ireland, Finland, Berlin, Norway and London, the recipes listed are made with the minimal amount of ingredients necessary. It is a book about the colonial origins of basic kitchen supplies and survival skills. It is a slim book about togetherness. Each friendship in the authors life is represented by a recipe. The job and its torments are only relieved by shared moments ‘An Eating’ is also a mini memoir of mediocre work moments experienced in minimum wage jobs as the artist struggles to maintain her ideal of ‘being an artist’ while working 12 hour shifts in the British library canteen. of oddity, despair and fathomless exhaustion with diverse colleagues all speaking different languages who frequently misunderstand each other.

illustration from ‘An Eating’, 2018

‘Writing and illustrating really took off for me about 3 years ago because of a book entitled ‘An Eating’ which I wrote and illustrated in collaboration with the Hordeland Kunstsenter in 2018. It was edited by Scott Elliott and designed by Magnus Nyquist as part of the Kunstsenter art program 2018. The book was funded by the Norwegian artscouncil and published by Coda press, a press Scott founded in 2016 focused on the production of limited edition artist books. I read an Eating in person at an event at the Hordeland Kunstsenter, which you can see me doing in the attached photo.

The result was a book with a unique voice which opened up new possibilities for me in regards to using the written word. After ‘An Eating’ I started experimenting more with writing and also took on paid illustration projects, examples of which are a magazine cover for ExBerliner in 2018, 15 illustrations for a privately commissioned children book ‘Squire Bear’ in 2019 and an illustration of Author Lauren John Joseph for their book cover in 2020. I also wrote and illustrated 2 unpublished children books: ‘Big wind in Little Crangle Knocker’ in 2018 and ‘small cats / Large cats’ in 2019.

Scott had suggested to me that I create a book about two years prior during a visit to Berlin and we worked together over those two years towards the completion of this unique and exciting book.

I look forward to integrating more writing into my practice and blurring the already indistinct line between illustration and fine art.

Small Cats, Large Cats, 2019 This book appears to be about cats, but is really a colourful story about human attitudesthe ways humans see pet vs wild cats, and the different roles and attitudes we assign to them: dangerous vs cute etc. Sometimes it is only by comparison with another species that we can truly see ourselves. Here the human beings are seen only as hands and feet but their presence is felt in the book by the way the cats behave towards these human hands and feet, by the way they look up at the unseen people. The purpose of the book is to help children ask questions about what it means to be a human and what it means to be a cat. Why do we see cats the way we do? how can this be communicated in a simple fun way? and what can we learn about ourselves from how we interact with animals?

I chose the colours used in this book because of a desire to create a retro 70’s feel, inspired by illustrators like Brian Wildsmith. The book was also inspired by Hillaire Belloch’s ‘Book of beasts for worse children’. Techniques: using mono-print throughout as a unifying factor, initially a blot of acrylic paint was applied to a piece of acetate. This was painted into a rough approximation of the desired image upon the acetate, then Fabriano paper (Rose Ivoir) was placed on top of the blot, and rolled with a lino cutting roller on the clean side. Then the paper was peeled from the wet paint. The resulting blots on the paper contained ridges that I later worked around when the paint was dry by high-lighting with oil pastel. These ridges could be turned into the feel of fur or the texture of a flower petal, or the look of tree branches. I worked with the blot when it was dry to create the finished image using water colour, acrylic paints, faber castell brush tip pens and oil pastels.

NEW MUSIC FEATURING INTERVIEWS WITH: CIARÁN SWEENEY LANDERS LUCY MCWILLIAMS RUTH MAC SIRKT SON WYVERN LINGO YOUNG BABY KAFKA

Words & Photographs by Clare Davies Ireland has long been a nation of emigrants. Almost double the island’s current population of 4.9 million has made the trip overseas since the latter part of the nineteenth century — travelling in droves to search for work or adventure. The Irish have adapted and assimilated into cultures and countries all over the world, and there are currently 30,000 of us who have chosen to call Germany our home away from home. As we acclimatise here in Berlin, the word “deadly” transforms to “super”, “genau” creeps intoour vernacular and we lose count of how many times we’ve had to explain the meaning of“grand”. We begin to doubt our own knowledge of traditional Irish music when ourinternational counterparts mention The Kelly Family, confused by how we — as natives of Ireland — have never heard of them before. A sandwich is no longer made up of Denny’s ham and slabs of red cheddar between two slices of Brennan’s batch, but instead is a crunchy ball of chickpeas, complemented by something off-pink and pickled and a splash of yoghurt, wrapped up into a durum. €800 for a flat replaces €800 for a room, and German friends are wide-eyed as we regale them with tales of pints “triple this price” in the faraway bars of Fade Street, during a Friday Kneipe-crawl. Nevertheless, as we loudly proclaim “Sláinte!” before clinking a half-litre mug of beer into another, we reflect on how nice it is that the lad from Kerry who overheard our dulcet Irish tones felt comfortable in asking to join the table. It’s then that we realise that even though we’re geographically distant from home, the culture of Irish diaspora makes it feel like we never stepped foot into another country.

Ireland is a small island with a huge community that stretches the four corners of the earth, and somehow — like moths to a flame — we manage to find each other. The concept of six degrees of separation seems to dissolve when it comes to the Irish, which has been highlighted over the last few weeks during which I had the privilege of interviewing New Irish Musicians in Berlin. As I greet Karen, Caoimhe and Saoirse of Wyvern Lingo, the latter tells me that my face is familiar, and we agree that we’ve definitely met on a night out at home before. During my chat with John Rooney (aka Sirkut Son) we realise that the man I used to have my picture frames made by is his former flatmate. Max and Paul — the Berliners that make up two-thirds of Landers — exchange knowing glances as Christopher and I discover we have a friend in common, and I assume that this isn’t the first time they’ve been in the Baldoyle man’s company when a mutual Irish connection has been made.

Ciarรกn Sweeney

Right off the bat, he jumped in two feet first and infiltrated the Irish pub scene, gigging at The Irish Times and The Irish Harp. Here he met Liam Blaney and a host of other Irish session musicians, and soon after, was invited to play at The Irish Festival. He played alongside a collage of artists from Ireland and mainland Europe, all of whom share an affinity with Irish music. “It brought loads of people from all walks of life to witness what we do, and raked in a few more fans of our culture,” Ciarán says, before telling me about a Greek friend of his who has a passion for Irish Dancing.

Ciarán Sweeney has been playing Irish music for his entire life. A carpenter by trade, he had a six year stint between Australia and New Zealand — travelling around, living in hostels and using his guitar to educate the other guests about Irish traditional music. “That really gave me a bit more confidence in my presence as a musician,” he remembers. “I was playing to different people all the time and getting good responses.” Out of the various adventurers from a host of different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds and countries that passed through the hostel circuits, Ciarán made a lot of German friends. They told him about how multi-cultural Berlin is and how great it is for artists starting out, which made him wonder if the capital might be somewhere he could make a career as a full time musician.

Although Ciarán mainly performs covers by the likes of The Dubliners, he also writes his own songs. Working with Ken Deburca — a pioneer of the Irish music scene here in Berlin — Ciarán recently released his track Éireann Mo Ghrá. The tribute song to Martin McGuinness, “A great man who did a lot for Ireland,” has been cut from 12 minutes to 5 for the sake of recording, but was received well when played in its entirety back home. He’s looking forward to debuting this song to a German crowd, which he credits as being a very engaged audience who show a genuine interest in hearing about the culture and really tune in to the story you’re trying to tell.

A brief spell back in his hometown of Killygordon in Donegal only encouraged this idea further. Upon his return, Ciarán spent his time perfecting his guitar-playing skills and becoming more comfortable on stage by playing in local bars, and he noticed there were a lot of German tourists in the crowd. “The Germans have this song that has the same air as Wild Rover called Nordseeküste, and anytime I played that they were able to tap and clap along,” he tells me. Based on this Ciarán thought that there might be a market for Irish traditional music in Berlin and decided to make the move.

Landers

In 2006, Christopher Colm Morrin showed up to his first German gig. Going under the moniker Robotnik back then, a friend had put him forward to play at a business hotel in Karlsruhe, where he performed in the basement to an audience of five men in suits. He enjoyed the experience of gigging outside of Ireland, which prompted him to organise his first Berlin show just a few months later. Fast forward 5 years of experimental folk performances at Whelan’s and poetry nights in the magical basement of International Bar, and Christopher was back in Berlin to stay.

“From the first rehearsal, I thought, ‘This going well!’,” Christopher tells me. “We all felt secure even though our insecurities were out there, which is when experimentation comes to the fore.” With influences spanning Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis and Sean Nós singer Joe Heaney to ambient sounds and drones, it is easy to understand why experimentation is important to the group. Pleased with how things were going, and even though Landers were only playing as a unit for a matter of months at this stage, the band spontaneously decided to record something. Renting out a room in KAOS — a warehouse near Schöneweide — they set up a small interface and a couple of mics and enlisted the help of Aidan Floatinghome. Four days of recording resulted in six tracks, but the lads decided against releasing the KAOS session as an album. “With the psychotic split of the band, some tracks are more traditional and some are more like experimental jams,” Christopher explains. They opted to instead stagger their releases in two track packages, and obviously made good use of their time in lockdown, because two of four parts of the session are already available to the public. Just Thinking followed the April release, Clear Blue Sky, this month, and Landers are expecting to have their third segment out by February.

As he reminisces on the “conveyor belt of madness” that was the Dublin folk scene, he tells me he misses the bond that the community had at the time, but credits his move to Berlin as “an expansion of the mind.” Acquiring an atelier in Neukölln, Christopher’s focus switched from music to painting and writing poetry for a few years, before a chance encounter with drummer, Max Von Der Goltz encouraged him to start making music again. Through Max, bassist Paul Breiting was recruited, and the threesome began playing together under what would come to be known as Landers.

Lucy McWilliams

“Bursting with youth,” reads a YouTube comment underneath Lucy McWilliams’ music video for Runaway. This really couldn’t be more accurate.

Their most recent track has been a resounding success, and has hit over a million plays on Spotify since its release earlier this year.

As the song opens and we follow the protagonist on her route through urban green spaces and the juxtaposing concrete of Mehringdamm train station, the excitement and freedom of being young and in Berlin is infectious. The chorus kicks in, and we arrive at the canal, where the sun and Lucy’s friends are beaming. Hugs and beers are exchanged, rollies and photos are made and then the gang are on their way. After a quick pitstop at the Späti, they arrive in Tempelhofer Feld, and are filmed running around — singing and dancing until the sun sets — as Lucy’s melodic harmonies play in the background.

Collaboration is a big factor when it comes to writing with her own band, too. A student at BIMM, Lucy has had the opportunity to meet some very talented musicians since she’s been in Berlin, and feels lucky to have found Sebastian (bass), Riccardo (keys), Victor (guitar) and Nic (drums). Lockdown was a creative process for the 5-piece, as they relocated to to Dublin and settled into writing music for a whole month. Much like with Malaki and Matthew, Lucy clicked instantaneously with her band, which is clear to see in the live streams they’ve been partaking in over lockdown. Just like the video for Runaway, the energy coming through the laptop screen when watching their Hotpress Lockdown Session, in particular, is palpable, and I’m excited to see them play live when they eventually can.

The video is so much fun, and the singer tells me the playful aspect that shines through is attributed to the fact that all of the people featured are friends of hers. “It’s so much nicer to share these kind of things with people,” she tells me. “There’s no point doing it without your friends.” Working with friends and other artists has been a massive part of Lucy’s musical trajectory. A few years ago, she was approached by rising star on the Irish rap scene, Malaki, who heard her singing and thought she’d be perfect to feature on his song, J.A.C.K. “I had never collaborated with anyone before,” Lucy says. “I’d only ever written alone, and I felt so much pressure because this meant so much to someone. I didn’t want to do it wrong.” Clearly though, Malaki was impressed by Lucy’s contribution, because the pair have continued to work together alongside producer Matthew Harris.

Ruth Mac

Hailing from the West of Ireland, Ruth Mac grew up amongst a lively community of traditional musicians. 40 minutes from Galway on the Clare border, the cute and colourful port village of Kinvara hosts the famous Cruinniú na mBád race of the Galway hookers every year, and is also home to the music and community arts festival, Fleadh na gCuach. With a population of no more than a thousand, Kinvara is a one street town with a school and nine pubs. Through the “serious sessions,” in these pubs, Ruth became interested in learning to play the guitar herself, the many traditional musicians that passed through the village becoming her teachers. While Ruth’s inspiration came from the traditional music she was engulfed by as a kid, her influences are more ingrained in folk and soft-rock. Her parents’ very solid collection of records were consistently played around the house as she was growing up, and have been significant in determining her sound. There are definite notes of Joan Baez in Ruth’s vocals for her song Speed, and her preference for sparsity when it comes to guitar arrangements mirrors the compositions of one of her childhood favourites, Joni Mitchell.

“I was very much a bedroom musician until about a year after I finished college,” Ruth tells me. She had moved to Dublin aged 18 to attend Trinity College, and spent her evenings writing in her room. It was in Dublin where she performed her own songs to an audience for the first time, and where she formed a stable band. Since moving to Berlin, Ruth has been playing solo at the likes of Madame Claude and Hosek Contemporary, but is excited to show the bassist and drummer she’s recently recruited the EP she’s written. “The fact that Berlin gives me the opportunity to afford to have a studio to write in is a huge game-changer,” she says, when I ask her if being in Berlin has changed the direction of her music. When it comes to writing from experience or coming up with fictional concepts, Ruth tells me she does both — although her writing from experience comes more from a place of observation. Her time spent in Berlin means that she observes her home differently to how she did when she was living there. Ruth expresses that she feels more influenced as a musician by Ireland now, and makes the point that the feeling of home is very strong when she goes back. She finds herself very inspired by the physical place, stating, “I forget until I’m there how beautiful the West of Ireland is.”

Sirkut Son

Derry native, John Rooney, has always been creative. He won his first art competition aged 4 (a drawing of himself and his mam for Mothers Day) and eventually went on to study Visual Communications in Belfast. After graduating, he moved to Dublin, where he continued his illustrative pursuits and also busked on Grafton Street as the bassist in an 80s hair-metal group. Covering the songs of Kiss, they called themselves Shift, — wordplay on the band they emulated, using Irish slang. Alternating between leather trousers and matching suits, Shift doubled up as a 50s/60s era wedding band, and even had the opportunity to play at an Irish bar in Russia after an eager publican approached them during one of their street sessions. The gig in “Hamiltons” felt like the bands peak, and so they parted ways after that. Going solo, John began making synth-wave as Haüer, and ran a successful night called Technoir in the venue formerly known as The Twisted Pepper. However, the over-saturation of synth music at the time combined with the desire to begin injecting vocals into his music — plus the fact that no-one seemed to be able to pronounce Haüer — led John to explore new avenues. This eventually lead to his current project, Sirkut Son.

Initially, John broached the idea of vocals to his ex band-mate from Shift. When he put down his own demo to give some structural advice, he thought, “This sounds alright actually, maybe I’ll give this a go myself.” From there, he got in touch with producer Sean Corcoran with the intention of producing an EP, but there was so much recyclable material from his years of making music that they finished up with a seven track album. Obtaining the title Sirkut Son from a piece of graffiti on Clanbrassil Street, John tells me it was originally used to name an old demo which has since been re-worked and has become the first track on his debut album, Photo Sensitive. Now named, You Have Used Me For Long Enough, the track was the first single from the album and is complemented by John’s self-made music video. The video portrays John “playing” a series of handdrawn cardboard instruments in his Berlin flat, while wearing a black and white mask that is not too dissimilar to the face-paint of Gene Simmons.

Wyvern Lingo

Wyvern Lingo has been on the Irish music scene for years. “Friends first and a band second,” Karen Cowley, Saoirse Duane and Caoimhe Barry all grew up close to each other in Bray, County Wicklow, and bonded at age 11 over similar tastes in music.

Karen explains that it just felt right to release Brutal Lottery at this time, because, “Like with Black Lives Matter, a huge part of the refugee crisis is structural racism.” All proceeds went towards the Belgian organisation, Missing Children Europe.

The three had siblings that played music together, all of whom were very encouraging when it came to them starting their own band. Karen’s brother inspired her to pick up the bass as well as continuing her piano lessons, and Caoimhe was influenced into buying a drum-kit with her confirmation money. From then, the trio would spend school lunchtimes rehearsing in Caoimhe’s garage, often using the classic Irish excuse of, “We forgot we left the immersion on and had to go back,” for returning late to class. Saoirse tells me that she has recently organised all of the bands early recordings, which, she says, are surprisingly good quality and could easily be repurposed. “Some of the tunes are pretty banging!” they all agree, before telling me about an old diss song they wrote. It was about a friend called Lucy, whos name for the purpose of the song was changed to Goosey. A second diss song followed referring to the girls who told Lucy about the song.

This is not the first time Wyvern Lingo have actively contributed to social and political causes; I remember seeing them play at the Olympia in Dublin years ago in aid of Repeal the 8th, and more recently, the group contributed to Ruth-Anne Cunningham’s “Irish Women in Harmony” project. Collaborating with 38 other Irish female musicians on a cover of the Cranberries song, Dreams, the venture raised over €200,000 for Safe Ireland. Speaking of their experience, the group says, “That was a great lockdown project that, most importantly, shone a light on the female scene in Irish music.” The band has made good use of their lockdown time. They’ve finished their upcoming record Awake You Lie, — which is now available for preorder on their website — and are in the process of editing the music video for their most recent single, Rapture. Comfortable in their studio set up (a boat on the Spree), Wyvern Lingo is grateful to the city of Berlin and its appreciation for people doing creative things, and are excited for their audience to experience the vibrancy of the city through their video.

Wyvern Lingo’s lyrical content has come a long way since the “un-self-aware teenage emotion” displayed in the recordings of their garage sessions. This is especially apparent on Brutal Lottery, one of the four singles the band has released this year ahead of their second album. The song was written four years ago, and recorded last year here in Berlin. It is a raw and powerful ballad, calling out the “blissful apathy” of many to the plight of the tens of thousands of refugee children that have “slipped into the cracks.” The threesome chose to finally release the track in the late summer of this year, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement that was sweeping the globe.

Young Baby Kafka

Seán Gallen arrived in Berlin five years ago by way of Glasgow, where — alongside studying filmmaking — he created his rap alias, Young Baby Kafka. Born in Paris and raised in Dublin, Seán grew up in a household much like my own — one that favoured rock and reggae over rap. As we chat about Bowie and Desmond Dekker, Seán makes the point that although it wasn’t played at home, the likes of Eminem and Dr. Dre were difficult to avoid when growing up as a teenager in Noughties Ireland, before admitting that he actually purposely did not listen to rap at that time.

Young Baby Kafka is an amplification of Seán’s persona. While aspects of his own life were borrowed to build the character, he was attracted to rap because, “You can create an alter-ego, an escapist fantasy to live in.” He’s conscious of not going down the traditional, trap route and putting forth an ultra-macho image, but stresses that he doesn’t want Young Baby Kafka to be a political vehicle either. Interested in postirony within the spectrum of rap, the project is not conscious hip-hop. Aptly titled The First, Young Baby Kafka’s debut mixtape was released earlier this year. It consists of four tracks, features a host of collaborators, and is mixed and mastered by Seán himself. A stand-out track on this release — not just for its catchy chorus — is RIP Joe Dolan. I’m curious if Seán is a secret showbands fan. He tells me about the rap cliché of making a track for the dead homies, and explains how that, combined with the fact that the name just rhymed perfectly with everything else, is the reason behind the lyrics, before proclaiming “I have a huge respect for Joe and his work!”

Half-Irish and half-Martinican, Seán speaks about the irony of the kids at school bullying him for being black while claiming that Tupac was their favourite artist. Coming up against different forms of racism and trying his best to fit in, Seán says he leaned heavily into indie music, so as not to be tokenised as the “black kid”. It was only when he heard Dizzee Rascal’s “game-changer” of a debut album, Boy in da Corner, that his interest in rap was peaked.

As we discuss the potential release date for his second mixtape, Jazz for Cows, I can’t help but wonder if any more obscure Irish references have been made.

LITERATURE FRIDAY 4TH DECEMBER

Lisa McInerney in Conversation with Rob Doyle & Adrian Duncan New Irish Creatives festival kicks off on Friday night with Lisa McInerney in Conversation with Rob Doyle and Adrian Duncan. The three highly acclaimed, witty, and astute authors will discuss new releases by Rob and Adrian with both Berlin-based authors reading excerpts and giving insight into their writing.

Lisa McInerney

photo credit: Bríd O’Donovan Lisa McInerney’s work has featured in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Granta, The Guardian, Le Monde, The Irish Times, BBC Radio 4 and various anthologies. Her story Navigation was longlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. Her debut novel The Glorious Heresies

won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second novel, The Blood Miracles, won the 2018 RSL Encore Award. Her third, The Rules of Revelation, will be published in 2021.

Adrian Duncan Adrian Duncan is an Irish artist and writer. His first novel Love Notes from a German Building Site, published by The Lilliput Press, won the 2019 John McGahern Book Prize. His second novel A Sabbatical in Leipzig was published in 2020. In 2021 his collection of short stories Midfield Dynamo will be published by The Lilliput Press.

photo credit: Finn Richards

Back to my left, the road turns up into Kalea Sorkunda, which is a street on an incline that leads on to a park and beyond to the church hospital. One day, soon after I settled here, I wandered a few hundred yards up the Sorkunda and came upon a music school, it a substantial two-storey building fronting onto the narrow carriageway. That morning, as I passed underneath an open window, I could hear a tuba and a clarinet playing some sort of duet. The two students playing these instruments were obviously getting to know the music, because every now and then the tune would break down, they’d mutter something to each other, then some moments later start up again and play for a while, then break down, then they played uninterruptedly for almost two whole minutes. I leaned back against the wall as the music poured out over my head and I realized I was enjoying this music because it lacked mastery, and this lack of mastery contained for me drama and tension that seemed to colour deeply what I could possibly sense around me at that time. A dog began barking farther up the hill, a bell pealed from the church, a truck rattled past and on a small pitched roof to the top of a building back down the street two men, who’d clambered off a tower of scaffolding a few moments before, had begun scorching bitumen onto the roof felt with a flamethrower. I looked at the younger of the two roofers. He was without a safety harness and he stood with what I thought was a disproportionate calmness on the edge of the roof – the blue-red flame arrowing out in front of him, and I imagined him slipping and falling to the ground and the flame spinning in the air. Then the music broke down into parps and peeps once more. As I wandered down the hill the music then gathered stertorously back up again behind me, and as I returned past the scaffolding the roofers had clambered from, I thought of a pastel work I saw in the Grassi on the evening of Catherine’s retirement. The work was called The Chocolate Girl and had been composed by a French artist called Liotard. That part of the gallery that evening was quiet, and all I could think about while gazing at the pale pastel granules making up this image of a young lady dressed in a pink-and-white bonnet and dark frock – she carrying a cup of chocolate and a tall glass of water on a tray from left to right across the frame of the image – was the description of entropy in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I thought then if this image were to disintegrate and if the coloured grains of pastel were carried off, dispersing and gathering and dispersing and gathering in giant vectoring winds across the entropic cosmos, to some alien interface similar in size and material to the one holding the grains of pastel I looked at that day in the Grassi, arranged so expertly by this Liotard almost 300 years before, and if these same grains were to land on this interface in this far distant place in exactly the form with which they were arranged before me then, then it would be in front of this second version of this handsome pastel work that I would find Catherine, she gazing and probably contemplating, like me, on how such a work could possibly come into being.

An excerpt from A Sabbatical in Leipzig, (The Lilliput Press, 2020)

Rob Doyle

photo credit: John Minihan

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Rob Doyle is the author of three internationally acclaimed books, all published by Bloomsbury: Threshold, This Is the Ritual, and Here Are the Young Men, which has been adapted for film.

His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, TLS, Vice, and many other publications, and his work has been translated into various languages. He is the editor of two books: The Other Irish Tradition, and In This Skull Hotel Where I Never Sleep. He lives in Berlin.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

When I was younger than I’ll ever be again I fixated on the idea of moving to Berlin. I spent a couple of years drifting around the world, and every place I went, the most interesting people I met would say: Berlin. By the time I returned to Ireland, I wanted so badly to move to Berlin that I began learning German, read up on the city’s history, packed my belongings, and finally moved to Sicily. The reason I moved to Sicily back then and not Berlin involves my Berliner friend Linda, and the notorious week I spent at her apartment in Friedrichshain, prior to my planned move. But I’ll get back to that, or maybe I won’t. For now, suffice it to say it was a real shitshow, and consequently I only got round to living in Berlin a decade later, when I spent a winter there with the aim of researching a novel. I arrived in the city in late November, just when everybody else wanted to leave. The winter was tightening its grip – the days were over before they began. I worked in my room in Schöneberg each afternoon, and in the evenings I rode the S-Bahn around the city. Because it was dark whenever I took the train, it was impossible to get a sense of Berlin’s visual character, what distinguished one neighbourhood from another. The streets seemed deserted as I soared above them, peering in the windows of cuboid offices – it was the emptiest capital in Europe. The Berliners wore black-hole clothes that sucked in whatever light there was – the city hid itself in its citizens, and vice versa. After a week or two the colourlessness of Berlin began to unsettle me. It wasn’t long before I came to believe that it was all a reflection: I saw no colour because I was colourless myself, saw no light because a light had gone out in me. It was on one of my aimless night journeys, as a shoal of grey citizens poured off the train at Hauptbahnhof, that the thought hit me: I was jaded. The suicidal mania I’d endured in Paris and Spain had relented, but it had left in its stead a condition of surfeit and indifference. As the train trundled out of the station over the dark city, it seemed to me more shameful to be jaded than it did to be heartbroken or suicidal. Those were distressing experiences, obviously, but they were violent conditions, the consequences of passion gone awry. Jadedness was a more contemptible kind of defeat, a death in life without dignity or valour. You were so jaded when I met you, a woman had said to me once. She was right that I had been jaded, and right to imply that it was through her I became unjaded. There are worse descriptions of what it is to fall in love than that: an unjadening. The event of encountering an unanticipated, amazing other destabilises your categories, overturns your certainties, so that it is no longer viable to go on as you have been. But that – love – was in the past, and possibly in the future: in the present there was solitude, and a habit of promiscuity that iterated with diminishing zeal so that lovers had come to seem disposable, interchangeable, like the faces that scroll past on a dating app. I sensed I had strayed too long and lost the thread of return. The prospect of ever again being so enchanted by any one person that I would commit to making a life with them – or, if I did meet such a person, that I would be un-fucked-up enough to make them stay – seemed remoter as the years fell off. An excerpt from Threshold, (Bloomsbury, 2020) 87

CLASSICAL & OPERA SATURDAY 5TH DECEMBER 19:00 CET

Eugene Downes, Caroline Staunton & Jeremy Bines Present New Irish Creatives Classical and Opera Showcase with Killian White and Laura Murphy

Foreword by Eugene Downes, Cultural Director at The Department of Foreighn Affairs. Berlin has a fair claim to be the centre of the operatic universe, hosting three of the world’s leading opera companies – the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Deutsche Oper and Komische Oper. In this evening’s event, leading Irish creatives from these companies and other young Irish artists studying and working in Germany will share experiences and ask what the future holds for the musical world emerging from the pandemic, interspersed with short performances specially curated for the event.

Classical & opera showcase repertoire G. F. Handel - "Verdi prati" from Alcina Gustav Mahler - Rheinlegendchen from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (arr. J. Bines) Johannes Brahms - Sonata for piano and cello in E minor, op. 38 (first movement) Anton Webern - Drei kleine Stücke für Violoncello und Klavier, op. 11 Credits: Curated by Caroline Staunton Piano & arrangements - Jeremy Bines Cello - Killian White Mezzo Soprano - Laura Murphy Video - Kyle Ferguson Sound - Leonard Kaage Filmed on location at the Mendelssohn Remise

Laura Murphy. Photo credit: Kyle Ferguson

Laura Murphy Laura Murphy is an Irish Mezzo-Soprano based in Berlin. A native of Wexford she completed her Masters in Opera at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik Berlin under Prof. Sebastian Noack. She completed her previous studies with first class honours at the Royal Irish Academy of Music Dublin under Mary Brennan and was also a member of the opera studio of Northern Ireland Opera. Laura is currently engaged as a member of the Alto Section of the Rundfunkchor Berlin. Notable engagements include the opening concert of the 2019/20 season at the Brandenberger Tor under Kirill Petrenko, and a tour of China with works by Johnathan Dove and Brahms, both with the Rundfunkchor Berlin. Other highlights include Peter Sellar’s production of Bach’s Johannes Passion under Sir Simon Rattle with the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the Chinese première of Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion in Hong Kong and as alto soloist at the inaugural Bach Festival Edinbach in Edinburgh. She premièred Hassan Khan’s Tainted at the Märzmusik Festival in Berlin, sang the leading role Vera in the world première of Conversations Across Time in Ireland with John McIlduff and Brian Irvine, and Ham in the world première of Tako Tsubo in the Neue Szene III, die Durchbohrung der Welt at the Tischlerei of Deutsche Oper. She was also a Young Artist for the Mozartfest Würzburg 2017. She sang the role Olive in Delius’ Koanga at Wexford Festival Opera and the role of Woman in the world première of Brian Irvine’s Lovegolflove with Northern Ireland Opera, Third Lady in The Magic Flute at Nevill Holt Opera and at Northern Ireland Opera, Ino in Semele and Nancy in Albert Herring

photo credit: Lia Naviliat Cuncic with the Royal Irish Academy of Music Dublin, Ottone in Agrippina at Radialsystem Berlin, Nicklausse in The Tales of Hoffmann and Arsamene in Serse in university productions of the HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin. Laura is a multiple prizewinner at the ESB Feis Ceoil. She was also the winner of the Iréne Sandford Award and Bursary and the Gaiety Bursary at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. She was a finalist in the Northern Ireland Opera Festival of Voice and of the Bernadette Greevy Vocal Bursary at the National Concert Hall.

Killian White Killian White is the first cellist to be awarded the RDS Music Bursary, the single largest annual classical music award in Ireland, and one of the largest in Europe. Killian was described as “an outstanding winner who impressed with a superb performance and a crystal clear sense of purpose,” by John O’Kane (RTE) and, “undoubtedly a performer with a very exciting career ahead of him” by Michael Duffy (RDS CEO). Prior to being awarded the bursary, Killian was the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Fr Frank Maher Award (2017), the Aileen Gore Cup and RTE Lyric FM Award at ESB Feis Ceoil, the National Concert Hall Young Musician Award, the Flax Trust Award and the Audience Prize at Camerata Ireland Clandeboye Music Festival. Born in 2000, Killian studied first with Martin Johnson, principal cellist with the NSO, and then with Christopher Marwood at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He is currently in the third year of his bachelor’s degree at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, under world renowned professor Frans Helmerson. Since he has commenced his studies in Berlin he has enjoyed a busy concert schedule – performing many times in Berlin at the Pierre Boulez Saal and also at the James Simon Gallerie, while also engaging in solo performances in London, the NCH in Dublin and numerous other venues throughout Ireland.

From 2015 to 2017 he participated in the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra in Switzerland. Killian has performed as soloist with many orchestras including Camerata Ireland, the RTE Concert Orchestra, RTE Symphony Orchestra, Kaunas Symphony Orchestra, the Hibernian Orchestra, Dublin Symphony Orchestra, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Estonia and the New York Concerti Sinfonietta at Carnegie Hall. He has attended masterclasses with many renowned musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, Jerome Pernoo, Mauricio Fuks, and Andres Diaz.

Killian has passion for chamber music and performed in the National Concert Hall Chamber Music Gathering in January 2017, 2018 and 2019. He recently performed as part of the Ophelia Quartet at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and on a tour throughout Ireland supported by the National String Quartet Foundation. He also enjoys orchestral performance and in January 2016 he was principal cellist with the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland.

Jeremy Bines Jeremy Bines is the Chorus Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Born in Belfast, he studied music at Cambridge University and trained as a répétiteur at London’s National Opera Studio. He has worked all over Europe in the field of opera, has guested repeatedly at ENO and ROH, and was a regular guest coach at the Young Artists’ Programme at Covent Garden for over a decade before moving to Germany. He has conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in La bohème and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Glyndebourne Festival. He was previously Chorus Master of the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, and was the longest serving Chorus Master in the history of Glyndebourne, where he also conducted several productions in the Festival and on Tour. He has been nominated for an International Opera Award twice, for his work with the Glyndebourne Chorus in 2016, and the Chor der Deutschen Oper in 2020. Jeremy’s work with the Chorus at DOB has been a major contributory factor in the successes of such new productions as Das Wunder der Heliane and Detlev Glanert’s Oceane.

photo credit: Jennifer Hughes-Bines

Jeremy lives in Berlin with his Dublin-born wife Jennifer, and their cats Pixel and Tayto. He once accidentally commissioned David Hockney’s first cupcake design.

Caroline Staunton Caroline lives in Berlin, working at the Staatsoper Berlin as a Staff Director.

Since discovering her passion for opera, she has directed works for Theater Freiburg (Der Sängerkrieg der Heidehasen) and with Irish National Opera (Mozart’s The Opera Director and The Magic Flute).

She regularly works with leading directors (such as Claus Guth, Dmitri Tcherniakov, David McVicar, Calixto Bieto) and is responsible for revival productions of repertoire works.

She is also artistic director and co-founder of Puccini’s Toaster, a pop-up opera company for which she has directed a series of sitespecific productions, including Dido and Aeneas and La Boheme.

A native of Dublin, Caroline began directing while studying philosophy and English at UCD. On completing an MA in Modern Drama, she directed works for the Dublin Fringe Festival (The Marowitz Hamlet, Bulgakov’s Black Snow).

Killian White, Jeremy Bines, and Laura Murphy. Photo credit: Kyle Ferguson

FILM SCREENING & AWARD SUNDAY 6TH DECEMBER 19:00 CET

We are joined by a panel of four professionals in film and are very grateful to our jury panel for the time and consideration they have taken to review and award the winner of the competition.

This year’s festival saw the launch of the first ever associated film grant and award. We were bowled over by the enthusiastic response we had to the open call and we had a difficult task to choose which films should be awarded the grant.

As a group of esteemed Irish and German film professionals representing a wide range of genres, their views will offer our diverse film collection experienced and thoughtful consideration.

We decided on these six as they presented creative and entertaining ideas, offered a wide and varied range of concepts and aesthetics, and seemed to us to be feasible undertakings given the relatively short time period and limitations that the COVID 19 restrictions presented.

Join us on the final day of the festival for the screening of the six films that were supported by the New Irish Creatives Film Grant and find out who is the winner of the New Irish Creatives Film Award.

There is a wonderful mix of film genres including art film, narrative, documentary, and music video. With this in mind it will be a challenge to judge the entries and declare a winner.

The Jury Gerard Byrne Stephanie Von Beauvais

The Films

Clare Stronge

Ciarán Fahey - ‘Dubliner Straße’ Uli Wegenast Katie McFadden - ‘The Guttering Light’ Jack Hogan - ‘Cows and Flies’ Aoife Leonard - ‘Snip’ Jonathan Sammon - ‘The Endless Joy & Sorrow of Dickie Marie’ Mary Kelly - ‘Lorna in Lockdown’

Dubliner Straße

Ciarán Fahey The film is about Berlin’s Dubliner Straße, which is a long street in the so-called Englische Viertel (English Quarter) in the Wedding district. The street itself is – as one of the locals says in the film – like any other street in the area. But if anything, it’s even quieter. It’s one of the quietest roads in Wedding (and possibly Berlin) with very little going on. It’s so quiet that driving instructors bring their pupils there to practice driving without provoking the ire of other motorists – there are hardly any. The inhabitants like it that way. They describe a quiet, peaceful road with parks on either side that has been left virtually unchanged by the passing decades. Whether it was in the French sector

of West Berlin, or now in the reunified city, it doesn’t matter to the locals, who go about their daily life regardless. They just don’t care. Thankfully, they like talking, possibly because no one ever asked them questions before. They tell tales of life and leisure, of resistance and community spirit. They take pride in their community, which boasts a UNESCO world heritage site in the Weimar-era Schillerpark housing estate. They’re happy to be Berlin’s “Dubliners,” even if they know little about their street’s namesake in Ireland. They have more in common with the Irish capital than they know – the Englische Viertel got its street names after the visit of a British king.

Originally from Co. Wexford, I have been living in Berlin for the last decade or so. I work as a journalist with The Associated Press. I also run the Abandoned Berlin website, Two books have come from that project now. The first won an ITB BuchAward and the second, well, the second came out in time for the pandemic, so I’m not sure how that’s going yet. I’m also a student at the Neue Schule für Fotografie.

The Abandoned Berlin work piqued my interest in photography, which was just a hobby up to then. Now I’d like to pursue it further and hopefully reach the level where I can get paid for it. I’d like to get into documentary work, telling stories with photos rather than words as I’ve been doing up to now. Dubliner Straße was my first. Maybe it won’t be my last.

Katie McFadden

The Guttering Light

Katie McFadden is an artist and filmmaker from Donegal, Ireland. Currently residing in Berlin, her practice is deeply focussed on the landscape, questioning the purpose and impact of humanity on the natural, and illuminating the increasingly fractured relationship between humanity and the authentic.

Under the watchful gaze of the lighthouse beam we witness the dwindling population of an island in the dark. Transformed by the light, their solitude is made paramount, underlining humanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alienation within the modern landscape.

Cows and Flies

Jack Hogan

Every cow is a map of a world. I made a life-sized print of eight huddled cows as a sort of costume for entanglement. Their hides already resemble maps, and so I was reminded of the Borges, Carroll and Eco stories about 1:1 scale maps. I had theorised it as a cloaking mechanism, allowing the undercommons to flourish, but soon realised it had none of the ineffable qualities of the original. So the work became about that: how animals (including people) and places are flattened, fragmented, stripped of information, context and complexity, in order to be instrumentalised, branded and easily consumed. We are encouraged to pluck out one aspect of ourselves and others, and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts for the sake of externally imposed definition.

In this work, I trace a line between the social lives of cows and flies and the process of mapmaking, in the broadest sense of literal and figurative flattening. The map is an object of political and social worldmaking, from wars to vacations. Maps usually depict the oblate spheroid earth, or other threedimensional objects, on a flat plane. Implicit in these translations are decisions that determine ethical priorities. Misrepresentations exist at every scale. Europeans used ink to draw lines on maps that did not exist in reality. Drawing perimeters is an invasive procedure, an imperial attempt to regulate and contain internal differentiation. It is meant to exclude and make a boundary around generativity and degenerativity. The creator reserves the right to transgress.

100

Born in Waterford in 1986, Jack Hogan is an artist and architect, working in video, performance, drawing, painting, sculpture, text, amongst other things. Their fellowships include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, ARoS Aarhus, MASS MoCA, The Andy Warhol Foundation (as a resident in Flux Factory) and Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, Berlin.

101

Jack was awarded scholarships to complete their MFA at Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers and their BArch at University College Dublin. Currently, they are a member of Lensbased collective, founded by Hito Steyerl. In 2021, Jack will be a participant in the Whitney Museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Independent Study Program and the Athens Biennale.

Snip

Aoife Leonard Aoife Leonard is multimedia creative whose work spans theatre, visual art, and broadcasting. Her first play, Made Up, toured Ireland before being selected for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016. Following this, she was awarded the Patricia Leggett scholarship to pursue a Master in Fine Art at Trinity College Dublinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lir Academy. Since moving to Berlin, she has continued to explore new mediums of creative expression, most recently attempting to learn to DJ (much to the dismay of her housemates). Snip is her first film project.

102

Petra likes going on dates. She likes the getting ready part, and drinking wine part, and the going to bed part. But most of all, she likes fleeing her victimâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house in the dead of night, never to be seen again. Snip is a short film about a girl with scissors and a secret.

103

Jonathan Sammon On the north-west outskirts of Berlin lies Tegel forest. Within this forest we find an 800-year-old oak tree nicknamed Dickie Marie (Fat Marie). It is almost 19 metres tall. It is the oldest tree in Berlin, older than the city itself. It is from the perspective of this ancient being that this story will be told. The filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s title is a playful homage to the famous novel The Sorrows Of Young Werther (1774) by German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who is said to have once visited Dickie Marie in 1778. This factual meeting acts as the stepping off point for the central conceit of the film, of giving voice to Dickie Marie in an act of creative anthropomorphism. Through this process, a story both elegiac and playful will unfold. The film will act as both a portrait of the tree and its environment and as a meditation on perceptions of time, memory and presence.

104

The Endless Joy & Sorrow of Dickie Marie

By reversing the role of the human observer and the observed non-human, our tree narrator will seek in its musings to understand the human forms which have come to visit and bear witness to it for generation upon generation, as well as the vast city which has formed close by. The film-maker will record Dickie Marie over the course of one day and night, capturing the multitudinous tones and textures which make up its environment before moving away from the forest and into the city. We hear the voice of the tree recount its existence and the many creatures both human and non-human which it has encountered throughout its existence. Later, we are floating above dense forests. We see the ruin of the Teufelsberg listening station far below us.

Sounds and textures combine to create an almost overwhelming sense of activity, the hustle and bustle starkly contrasting the near silence of the forest where we began our journey and to which we will soon return. The techniques employed by the filmmaker ( layered voice, ultra-violet, aerial and timelapse photography, heightened sound effects ) will combine to create a sense of an invisible consciousness drifting around us, moving back and forth through time touching here and there upon points stored in the memory of its form. 105

The voice, attempting all the while to interpret what it has observed. To make sense of these other communities. Trying to discern method, pattern, purpose. Meaning. This collage of voice, sound and image eventually gives way and we are led back to the stillness of the forest. Once again we find ourselves in the presence of Dickie Marie as it contemplates the world around it. The interconnectedness of everything and despite its old age, the ephemerality of all things.

Lorna in Lockdown

Mary Kelly Having spent the last 10 years Scuba Diving around the world, Lorna, 42, gets stranded in silent suburban lockdown while visiting her elderly mother in Dublin. Quickly haunted by how and why she left in the first place, she sets out to make amends, through Zoom, with those she left behind. This film is her first call. Playwright/Actor Mary Kelly brought a small solid team of Irish Theatre practitioners together and between Dublin and Berlin theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve given life to this lively and harrowing scene between estranged friends, Lorna and Maeve. An event that only took place because the world stood still.

106

Mary is an actor and a seven times produced, twice published playwright (Nick Hern Books, London, Stinging-Fly Press, Dublin). Her extensive theatre experience includes All my Sons at The Gate Theatre Dublin, The Little Mermaid World Tour (Big-Telly Theatre Co.) and Two for a Girl German tour (co-produced with English Theatre Berlin IPAC, co-written and performed by Mary). Her next appearance at English Theatre Berlin IPAC will be in their 2021 production Cool Aid. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s currently writing a play about the birth of RocknRoll in Dublin.

107

ABOUT THE JURY

Gerard Byrne

Gerard Byrne has exhibited at Skulptur Projekte Muenster (2017), Documenta 13, 54th Venice Biennale, and biennials in Sydney, Gwangju, Lyon, Istanbul, and recently at Busan.

In 2006 he received the Paul Hamlyn award. He is represented by Lisson Gallery internationally, Kerlin Gallery in Dublin, and Nordenhake Gallery, Stockholm. He has held professorships at the art academies of Copenhagen (200716) and at Staedelschule, Frankfurt (2018-), and was recently elected to Aosdรกna.

Solo exhibitions include Secession, Vienna (2019), ACCA, Melbourne (2016), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2015), FRAC Pays de la Loire (2014), Whitechapel Gallery (2013), Renaissance Society, Chicago (2011), IMMA (2011). In 2007 he represented Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

108

Stephanie Von Beauvais

Since over twenty years Stephanie von Beauvais is a passionate Music Video Director and Producer. She has also shot many Commercials, Music Documentaries and Short Films all over the world. She has worked with acts such as Beatsteaks, Tocotronic, Kreator, Tom Schilling, Turbostaat, Gudrun Gut and many others. As a Commercial Film Director she shot ads for brands such as Twix, Axe, Maggi, Cabinet, SAT1, Brigitte, DEVK, Aok and many others. Steph was also the author and director of the tv-documentary series My Hometown, which was aired on ARD einsplus. Here, well known german musicians like Materia, Cro, Casper and others present their personal

stories in their hometown.She also created visuals for live music events at VolksbĂźhne Berlin and screened in selected Berlin based galleries and is a proud Alumni of the Berlinale Talents Campus.Stephanie has also always been very passionate about sharing her knowledge with others. She is currently teaching Video and Multimedia Production at the British Irish Modern Music Institute , BIMM Berlin and held several workshops on her favorite topic: how to create and produce Music Videos. Stephanie lives and works manly in Berlin, a selection of her work can be found on www.vonbeauvais.com

109

Clare Stronge

Clare Stronge is an Emmy and IFTA winning documentary producer. In the UK she produced and directed documentaries for channels such as BBC2, BBC4, Channel 4 and Nat Geo. Since returning to Ireland in 2015, she produced the Emmy winning feature documentary The Farthest, which was directed by Emer Reynolds. She was Archive Producer on Kim Longinottoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feature

documentary Shooting The Mafia. Her latest film - To the Moon from contemporary artist Tadhg Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Sullivan - was selected for the prestigious Telluride Film Festival before going on its world premiere at Venice Days in September. She is currently in preproduction on a number of projects.

110

Ulrich Wegenast In 2002 he developed the experimental film section for the Munich Filmfest. Curatorial work and jury work for the Goethe Institute and various other institutions and festivals around the world. From 2003 to 2004 he has worked as a consultant for the Frankfurt Schirn Kunsthalle and 2005 for the documenta jubilee exhibition. 20052013 member of the advisory board of the Goethe Institute (Film, TV, Radio), 20072013 member of the jury of the German Short Film Award. From 2004-2011 he was teaching Film/ Media Art, Media Theory and Alternative Distribution at the Karlsruhe School of Design, Stuttgart State Art Academy, and Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. From 2004 to 2014 he was head of the media department of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Free Art Academy. Ulrich Wegenast, born 1966 in Stuttgart. Master in History and History of Art at Stuttgart University (MA), postgraduate studies in Culture and Media Management (Arts Administration) at Hanns Eisler School of Music, Berlin. Since 2012 he is honorary professor at the Babelsberg Film University. 1987: founding member of Wand 5 and Stuttgart Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media – a festival for experimental film and media art. In 2001 development of the conference „media-space“. He was member of the Wand 5-board until 2006. From 1993-2005 has was curator for the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film and the European Shortfilm Biennale. In 2005 he became the artistic director of the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film.

111

He has published a 6-part DVD edition on German animated film in cooperation with Absolut Medien, Berlin, and Goethe Institut, Munich which has received the Willi Haas Award for best DVD-edition on German speaking film in 2012. Wegenast gave more than 100 lectures and workshops on animation, experimental film, media art, arts administration and game culture around the globe including Harvard University, University of Toronto, Berlinale Festival, Tallin Black Nights Festival, the Bangkok Culture Centre and Ars Electronica in Linz.

MASTERCLASSES & WORKSHOP The masterclasses and workshop are a chance for New Irish Creatives to gain new skills and insights from world-class professionals in their fields in order to further them on their artisic paths

112

Gerard Byrne Gerard’s masterclass provides a perspective based on his nearly 30 years of practice in the evolving field of Media Art. The group collectively compares notes, and discusses the current and future prospects for Media artists in the wake of the current pandemic, and the consequent migration of practice from closed gallery spaces to online platforms. For biography, see p. 108

Sam Slater Sam Slater presents a masterclass on the space between music, sound-design and regular sleep. During this hour and half masterclass, Sam Slater will discuss the creative process in longer projects, sourcing and developing original sounds and why to switch the lights off earlier than you do currently. Sam Slater is a Grammy Award winning music producer and composer from the south west of England, based since 2013 in Berlin, Germany.

As well as being Johann Johannsson’s musical sound designer for many years working on projects such as mother! and Mandy, his studio credits include Colin Stetson, Ben Frost, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Mica Levi, Shapednoise and ZebraKatz.

In 2019, he produced Hildur Guðnadóttir’s Emmy winning score for Chernobyl and her Oscar winning score for Joker. Together with Guðnadóttir and field recording master Chris Watson, they recently premiered a multichannel version of the Chernobyl OST, performed through a customised 10.6 channel immersive pa-system in an abandoned Telephone factory in Krakow, Poland. This show will continue to be performed in industrial spaces throughout the world in 2021.

His solo work focusses on open collaboration, hyper processed acoustic + orchestral instruments and hard-won location recordings to create dense spectral sound worlds for both screen, stage and record. His debut solo record was released on Iceland’s Bedroom Community label in 2018.

113

Marguerite Donlon In her masterclass, Marguerite Donlon talks about the world of choreography: what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to start a creation from a blank canvas, the importance of following flow, and building trust within the creative team so as to step out of the comfort zone.

After an exciting career as a dancer in London and Berlin working with choreographers such as William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Meg Stuart and Maurice Bejart she became a choreographer and is now at home with her own unique creations. Her work can be seen on major international stages such as The Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, The Collisium, London, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Sadlers Well London but also in many other Theaters in Germany.

She shares how to recognise a mistake or a misunderstanding as a possible chance or opportunity to find new ways, how to devise choreographic tools to help break habits, and understanding when to let go and allow the dancer to take ownership. This highly engaged masterclass allows for time to ask questions and discuss specific points.

Marguerite has received many acknowledgements for her creative work among them the Saarland Medal of Merit, a nomination for Die Faust and Prix Benois de la Danse and a Civic Reception by the Longford County Council, Ireland. In addition to her dance work, in 2014 she became an accredited PCT and RD1st Business Coach and Leadership Mentor.

She also talks about the importance of building up a network and finding the courage to follow ones own unique voice. Marguerite Donlon is a renowned, innovative, contemporary choreographer and Dance director based in Berlin with the Donlon Dance Collective and Theater Hagen as the Ballet Director and house choreographer.

114

Kristen Harrison Kristen leads an intensive workshop to launch a 12-week programme helping Irish creatives to achieve their professional goals.

Kristen is also the co-founder and curator of Visual Verse, an online publication that invites writers to respond to works of art.

In a series of hands-on activities, participants are guided through a process of setting goals and milestones, managing productivity, self-reflection and executing future plans. This is a great opportunity to revise and reset your objectives and to share and learn with other Irish creatives in Berlin.

She brings a wealth of experience across a number of topics that impact creatives, from getting funding, to managing an online presence and developing your creative practice.

Kristen is the Director of The Curved House, a publishing company that specialises in arts-based education. Originally from Australia, Kristen has lived and worked in the UK and Germany since 2004, and has produced dozens of projects and education programmes across the arts sector. She works with artists, authors and organisations including the UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, International Visual Literacy Association, Society of Authors and many more.

Kristen has a long history of collaborations with Irish artists and organisations. With support from the Irish Arts Council, she worked with visual artist Rhona Byrne and curator/art educator Katy Fitzpatrick to conceptualize a childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activity kit based on an interactive installation by Byrne called Bolthole. More recently, she coordinated a Visual Verse collaboration with Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork, co-curating an artwork with gallery director Fiona Kearney and featuring Irish playwright Enda Walsh. The result was published online and also exhibited at the 2018 Craw Festival.

An example of Visual Verse

115

THANK YOU FOR JOINING US!

116

Thank you for joining us for this year’s very special edition of New Irish Creatives. The conceptualisation and curation of this festival has been both a great pleasure and a deeply painful experience. From the first iterations that were to be restricted yet inreal-life, to the second that were much more restricted and hybrid, to finally taking the festival fully online - I must say that my heart sank every time I had to tear up well developed plans. I’m very happy to say though that from those challenges, wonderful creations have come to exist - this magazine with it’s online exhibition and showcase, the beautiful classical and opera films, and the collection of short films that were supported by the Embassy’s Film Grant are some things that may not have existed had we not had to think around COVID 19 restrictions. Some elements in the original programme like the literary panel, could be transferred online relatively easily. Although it would be nice to be in a room together to enjoy the discussions there are perks that have emerged - we could invite the wonderful Lisa McInerney and Eugene Downes to join us from Ireland and we are able to reach a much wider audience outside of Berlin.

The online exhibition and showcase of the artists gives you an insight to the breadth of talent we have amongst our creative diaspora here in Berlin. With 35 artists in the line-up, the festival is quite extensive in introducing new talents in this city, yet it’s only the tip of the iceberg of our vibrant creative community. For artists, connecting with each other, sharing ideas, and collaborating is a life-force, so I hope that the festival programme, with opportunities to network and learn from each other, helps the community to become even stronger together giving it a boost in these restricted times. The festival expresses the spirit of discovery, of newness and beginning, optimism in looking forward, and the sparks of creativity and inspiration that we get through connection, and we’re very proud to showcase all the inspiring talent that have come together for New Irish Creatives. That sinking feeling that I had at the beginning of this process is a common feeling that we have all shared this year, and with that understanding, our empathy and generosity of spirit towards each other has grown, which in turn allows us to try new things and discover new paths with the knowledge that we are supported.

The pandemic has forced us all to readjust the rules and expectations of what a festival is. The audience are now experiencing it on their laptops from their sofas or on their phones while having their dinner, and the challenge is to best showcase the artists in these formats, while delivering an engaging programme.

This is just the beginning, and all of us at the Embassy look forward to seeing what you, and the other New Irish Creatives, have in store. Candice Gordon, Head of Cultural Affairs, Embassy of Ireland, Berlin.

117

New Irish Creatives

Articles inside

Jacintha Murphy

Landers

Ciarán Sweeney

NEW MUSIC

Lily Guinness

Julia Dubsky

Clare Davies

Andrew Neville

Aileen Murphy

Sirkt Son

Wyvern Lingo

Ruth Mac

Lucy McWilliams

Sophie Iremonger

Paul Tobin

Hannah McNulty Madden & Lauren Wilson

Samuel Laurence Cunnane

Dylan Kerr

Sheena Malone

Ciara Lee

Liam Ryan