Context Background:
This project was commissioned under In Context 3, of which the principle component was to create time for the artists to engage with the context. Urban journeys and observations are central to the artistic practice of Anne Cleary & Denis Connolly, inspired by their personal experiences of moving through the cities of Paris and Dublin and informed by urban theory and local history.
Dublin presented them with an opportunity to re-explore their home city, leading them to rediscover where they come from. “Possibilities of encounters and learning that would never have happened otherwise opened up through the device of focusing on everyday journeys; from our work with community groups and schools to our steadycam walks, from readings in urbanism and local history and our exploration of HD video. It has also been a journey in time for us, reawakening memories that are becoming part of the project, in particular with relationship to our own journeys through Dublin as students, but also bringing us back to our roots as architects, through a newfound fascination with the modern city and how it is made.”
Description:
A million everyday journeys course through the veins of Dublin, giving it life (or poisoning it?). These journeys range in scale and rhythm from the incessant and anonymous flow of motorway traffic, through the familiar trundling of a local bus journey right down to the micro-scale of an early morning stroll around the block with the dog.
This multiplicity of intersecting paths gives the place its form, carving roads, highways and public spaces, and filling the void in-between with buildings. The impact of these journeys transforms lives, changes the face of the city and resonates on a planetary level.
"Throughout the two years that we worked on Cityloops we moved around Dublin in every way possible by car, taxi, bus, train, tram, bicycle and on foot and in all seasons. We amassed a hoard of treasures video footage, photographs, interviews, ambient sounds, stories, all little snippets of Moving Dublin. These documents reflect as much the built reality of the urban space as they do a mental picture of the city that Lady Morgan once called her dear, dirty, Dublin."
The City Loops was concerned with everyday movement in the city, focusing on repeated journeys that are made over a long period of time (to work, to school, to shop or walk the dog). However complex our movements are, we will always make a loop that begins and ends at home, and each journey will be a variation of a pattern that is etched into our memory by countless repetition. We all have our own ‘city loop’, our own fingerprint on the city, and no two are quite the same. Focusing on a simple everyday activity that everyone can identify with allowed the artists to touch upon the real poetry of living in the city.
“The project has given us an opportunity to examine in depth a single place, a place which on one level is made up of “particularities”, its people, its precise location, its history etc, but on the other hand assembles a set of circumstances which together make up a worldwide phenomenon, what urbanists call the edgeless city.” Cleary Connolly
Anne Cleary & Denis Connolly created City Loops by talking to people about their daily experience of moving through the city. They filmed those experiences or asked people to film it themselves, working with a large cross-section of the urban community, meeting people of all ages and backgrounds to construct a major artwork that is both personal and universal. City Loops explores this part of the everyday that belongs both to the public realm and to the intimate life of each and every Dubliner. The place started to reveal itself through the words and steps of the people.
Moving Dublin emerged from the City Loops project as an exhibition and high quality publication featuring a selction of films on DVD, co-published with Gandon Editions
Artist Biography:
Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly (Cleary Connolly) both studied architecture in Dublin in the 1980s, before moving to Paris in 1990. After a lengthy collaboration with the French urban theorist Bernard Huet in the early 1990s, they developed a long-lasting interest in the filmed city. From 1999 to 2005 they produced a large-scale multimedia project, The Boulevard, inspired by the urban environment in which they live. Their work has been exhibited worldwide and has received several international awards.
In 2006 they created a series of interactive video works, for Limerick City Gallery of Art. This project evolved into Pourquoi pas Toi?, a major solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2008. They were awarded a two year residency by South Dublin County in December 2006, through which Moving Dublin was produced.
Mediation:
Moving Dublin Exhibition: Broadcast Gallery, DIT, Portland Row, Dublin 1 Dates: April 23rd – June 15th 2009.
Moving Dublin Book & DVD: Published by Gandon Editions in association with South Dublin County Council. Available from bookshops or direct from gandon@eircom.net.
Exhibition: Alight at RUA RED, featuring extract form City Loops South Dublin Arts Centre, Tallaght, Dublin 24. November 24th – December 18th 2008
Artist’s talk at RUA RED, City Loops and Other Journeys, re-imaging the city, part of the Insight at Alight programme of public tours, talks and events to provide access and insight to the In Context 3 programme.
Salon evening – Film clips, exhibition and artists’ talk at Mockingbird, Dublin, 2008, curated by Helen Carey.
Commissioner Type:
Local Authority
Commissioner:
South Dublin County Council SDCC
Programme:
In Context 3
PerCent for Art:
yes
Commissioning Process:
Two stage open competition
Funding:
Dept. of Environment Heritage and Local Government
Budget Range:
70,000 - 150,000
Exhibited:
Rua Red Arts Centre (25/11/2008 - 19/12/2008)
Broadcast Gallery (23/04/2009 - 15/06/2009)
Exhibition Details:
Rua Red Arts Centre: Exhibited at the Alight exhibition November/December 2008.
Broadcast Gallery: The Moving Dublin exhibition included the a new filmic work: Moving Dublin and was the launch of a collection of photographs, essays and video works produced in a new hard cover edition by Gandon Press
Associated Professionals:
Project Manager: Rachel McAree, Sarah Searson, Photographer: Cóilín Rush