'Sonic Displacements' Screening from a live event at Project Arts Centre, curated by graduating students from the MFA Fine Art programme at NCAD

Sonic Displacements is curated by graduating students from the MFA Fine Art programme at NCAD, in response to recent exhibitions and research events at Project. Isabel English, Saoirse Groves-Murphy, Justine Rainer and Beatrice O’Connell have brought together the work of artists Sharon Phelan and Aisling Ní Aodha in a temporal event structured around a performance and discussion chaired by writer Nathan O’Donnell.

There is a marked interplay between Phelan and Ní Aodha’s practices. As researchers and practitioners their combined mediums of writing, sound, and performance, detail notions surrounding language and displacement. For Sonic Displacements both artists reflect on the historical and colonial properties of Echo. Embodied, this character - Echo - appears in Greek mythology as a nymph; an endlessly returning, if elusive figure who is condemned to repeat the words and phrases spoken by others.

Both Phelan and Ní Aodha simultaneously call our attention to those ‘vocal voids’ that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. This fragmentation, or displacement of the voice, might reflect those sonic waves that help to position us in relation to our setting. Here unfolds the fabrication of an imageless map of sorts, an aural choreography to navigate uncertain environments.

With thanks to Sara Greavu, Project and Sarah Durcan, NCAD.

1. Vergilius Maro, P. and Davidson, J., 1785. The works of Virgil. London.

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Aisling-Ór Ní Aodha is an artist based in Dublin. Through the mediums of sound, text, sculpture and radio broadcast her practice interrogates the enactment of colonial ideologies and state institutions upon the body. Her practice draws upon performance studies, queer theory and Irish folklore. The early stages of this research regularly informs her monthly radio show ‘Lowlands / Ísealchríoch’ on Dublin Digital Radio. Recent work includes the audio piece ‘Now You’re Talking!’(2021), the audio essay ‘Faoi Gheasa: Kitty Gallagher’(2021), and published texts include ‘flight from the rookery’ (2021) and ‘Poll an Phúca’ (2021).

Sharon Phelan is an artist, writer and musician. Her practice researches resonance and poetics of place — drawing from past sites of radical potential while speculating on the relationship between myth and history. She is currently working on a project, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, that explores ways of listening and expanded notions of voice through artistic research, field recordings and sound essays.

Nathan O’Donnell is a writer, researcher, and co-editor of Paper Visual Art. He has edited and produced several project-based publications and zines, often in collaboration, and in 2020, with Marysia Więckiewicz-Carroll, he founded Numbered Editions, an experimental imprint for artists’ writing. He had his first solo exhibition (focused on alternative educational philosophies) at the Illuminations Gallery, Maynooth University, in 2020. He has been awarded bursaries from the Arts Council and Dublin City Council, as well as artist’s commissions from IMMA, Ormston House, Dublin City Council, the Arts Council, and South Dublin County Council. He was writer-in-residence at Maynooth University, 2020–21. He lectures at Trinity College Dublin and on the MA/MFAArt in the Contemporary World at NCAD.

Reading list

We have never been displaced, Timothy Morton - Olafur Eliasson

sonic-urbanismtheatrum-mundiandbeyond_WEB

Scheper Hughes Ethnography’s Kitchen

MirrorLampPress-no3

Grieving for a Lost Home - Marc Fried

EchoesonEchoes-Sharon_Phelan

A Resonant Tomb_The Audible Past