Short independent, collaborative works which are either part of bigger projects or the beginnings of something new.
This work is A Walking project which investigates embodying geographical texture, for performance, through walking in Belfast, Dublin, Longford and Wexford..The footage was shot with my mobile phone and the edit was done by Will Maloney(USA/Belfast).
Created by Regan O'Brien and Donal Donohoe. This is a short video exploring the use of analogue recordings, psycho acoustics and the development of a dramatic sonic landscape in response to movement. This work was made in SARC, Queens University Belfast in 2010.
Bounding
Photographer: Lidong Zhao
Bounding is a seed. an on-going, transdisciplinary performance investigation.. It seeks within and explores the artists relationship with her feelings of the disembodied dimensions of subjectivity which are occurring in the process of transforming and becoming at once Mother and Other through performance: sound design, video, song, mindful presence and text.
The Mother-tree breathes in continually without pause for renewal.
Bounding presents a rhythmical and poetic relationscape of the artists experience of the in/visible shifting personal, social and cosmic boundaries which include being bound, binding and 'bounding through' the personal and social affect of 'Othering-the-Mother'.
“Our mothers were our first firmament, literally, our first homes, the universe from whose substance we were formed”. David Fergusun, Guardian. March 2016
Derrida: Hostipallity (sic)
If we want to turn to absolute hospitality, we simultaneously enter what is unstable, flickering, dynamic and only ambiguously outlined on the horizon of thought. We are moving toward the stranger as different, foreign, and above all incomparable with anything known to us.
“Derrida defines the sense of feeling at home, so much guarded by the host, with the term at-home (chez-soi)8. This is simply the interior we inhabit, with which we are closely connected and stay in constant homely relations….Of course, it refers not only to the living space of the house, but also to the broader notion of belong- ing to a family, nation, country, or the community of citizens.”
Wouldn’t this mother tongue be a sort of second skin you wear on yourself, a mobile home? But also an immobile home since it moves about with us?. J. Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 89.
My beating heart in my hand.
A selection from bounding Video material.
Video materials shot by Emma Fitzgerald, Astrid Walsh and Regan O'Brien
Performance by Regan O"Brien
Video edited by Jason Byrne
Original song 'Cyborgs Lament' written and performed by Regan O'Brien
Recorded at Waveform Studio, Dublin 2.
Thanks to Giles Packham, Karl Burke, Gillian Hunt, David Layde, MAM.
On-Going performance research work created and performed by Regan O’Brien
This performance took place as part of New Movements @ Dance Ireland in Dublin June 2018
Created and performed by Regan O’Brien
Photographer: Karl Burke
Videographer and Editor: Jason Byrne
This project is investigating the nature of collaboration from within a new mothers body on a scale from the cellular to the social.
The pregnancy event and how it obliterates and mutates the woman entirely.
The excavation of new identity, new landscapes and systems organisation.
Noticing how society values the mothers role .
Bounding looks at the layers of disembodiment involved in becoming a mother; Socially, personally and economically. I’m working on excavating a true identity and sense of value for the skill sets of Mothers from beneath the consumerist landscape we are all participants in cultivating.
I’m asking questions such as:
What are the skills a woman learns autodidactically, automatically through the process of transforming into and becoming a Mother?
What happens to her brain? What are the effects of the neural re-modeling which takes place during pregnancy and after giving birth?
What is Micro-chimerism and how does it effect a mothers physical and mental transformation?
What is embryonic breathing? What does it really mean to share space with I-not-I?
What does it sound like to have the voice of another dimension of sense developing within?
What is amnoitics?
Does society feel they own their Mothers body?
How long after their birth does a human being still feel they own their mothers body?
How can we reclaim the identity of mother despite the social messages written on her body?
Can we let society in so close to our bodies, microscopically close till their vision and the edges of perceived reality is blurred so that they may no longer see from their schema of Mother but must re-learn how to engage from a place of not-knowing? Look again.
"Bounding with un-known others in the process of transformation and becoming mother".
Inspired by Bracha Ettingers Matrixial Theory
Bounding. A Performance Installation in St. Johns Church, Dance Limerick & Dance Ireland June and October 2018. Edited by Jason Byrne Voice over: David Layde and Regan O'Brien Audio: Simon Milligan and Jason Byrne Attuning to the female body in a ‘state’ of transformation journeying from the cellular to the cosmic. Bounding is a Science Fiction performance world, set and played out inside M/others body: A space craft, an external, psychic womb space… her every move is closely watched, examined, forming through the eyes of the witness...At all times. While the womb is a past site for every single human that was ever born, it is also a potential future site for fe-me-male…. A place of vulnerability. The place from where things grow! The story is about a M/other who journeys inward to discover her Matrixial powers which have been lying dormant in her species for millennia. She journeys outward and learns how to focus these powers and slowly, begins to conceive a new way of living. Culture is born and slippy. Bounding explores a rhythmical, poetic and immersive relationscape of the artists experience of the in/visible and shifting boundaries which include being bound, binding and 'bounding through' the personal and social effect of 'Othering-the-Mother’. Bounding invites you to investigate the limits of your perception of Motherhood. Does what happens inside the Mothers body mirror what happens outside it? Should it? Not just for girls.
Live presentation of new research material for Bounding. An on-going Science Fiction research project examining womens mutation into Mother from conception through pregnancy and into the continuously developing state of motherhood; the powers and skills she acquires through the transition and how they are valued in a consumer-driven culture. Or not. Original song Cyborgs Lament written and performed live by Regan O'Brien.
