Event type: Comedy

The original event was a drop-in live performance (beginning at 3pm on Fri 21 Oct) that allowed people to stay for as long or little time as preferred.

The performance lasted for roughly 120 mins. From Mon 24 Oct, a recording will be available (here),  which can be accessed virtually to accompany site visits.

Sound and space
An immersive sound installation featuring harp, vocals and live processing, unheard from is performed by composer Manon McCoy. This collaboration with Sweeney’s Unquiet Islands -Martin McCoy’s print exhibition- explores through sound the representation of landscape within the prints. unheard from responds to the textures, layers and movement found within the etchings and monotypes. Manon uses them as a lens through which to access the acoustic environments of these landscapes. The performance is built from drone-based textures; ambient found sounds; harp and vocal effects conjuring a sound world in which these images exist.

The installation involves spatialisation of sounds, interacting directly with the acoustics of the gallery space. The audience are invited to move through and explore the space of the piece. They choose where they are drawn to stand and by extension how they want to perceive the space.
Connection
Daughter of the artist, as well as a classically trained (Royal Northern College of Music) experimental harpist and vocalist, Manon has a background in traditional Irish music. Additionally, Manon has since studied genres; including improvised music, contemporary Jazz, Hindustani classical music and recently electronics and live processing.

Manon’s compositional work focuses on presenting personal experiences of the body, community, environment, womanhood, the experience of time and physical space. Through collaborative projects -involving interactions across art forms- she aims to actively explore creative solutions to shifting social environments; representing and acting for social change.

Manon is particularly interested in the uses of spaces, musical and physical, often designing pieces that rework performer-audience dynamics. She creates site-specific sound installations that explore the acoustic environments of her location. Doing so layers the compositions with a strong sense of storytelling and space sharing.

This event contributes to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family and Nook and Cranny Spaces work strands. ♀️❤️?

Using the classical grammar of the joke…
…its framing, telling and punchline -in a roundabout sort of way (the ‘telling’ was created first, followed by the ‘punchline’, followed by the ‘framing’)- Ciara Finnegan and Paola Bernardelli created a series of  jokes which they will post daily.
Bernadelli created and photographed the setups that form the tellings, while Finnegan responds with photographic inventions to form the punchlines and cooks up the framing text.

The make up of a joke
Known as The Daily Gag this relay will take place on Liverpool Irish Festival’s Instagram account (www.instagram.com/LivIrishFest) and can be found and followed using the hashtag #LIF2022Housing
Following her participation in Housing -a remote residency at Art Arcadia- Ciara Finnegan (artist) invited Bernardelli (founder/Director Art Arcadia) to play with the hyperbolic sculptural figures in the transparent plexiglass dollhouse, which Finnegan built in the exhibition space in Derry. See more on the exhibition origins here.

Play and references
Playing with the figures, the transparent structure of the house and the shift of light and point of view, Bernardelli staged (and photographed) a series of absurd scenarios. These setups serve as the ‘telling’ of a gag to which –drawing on Maggie Hennefeld’s** research on the physical comedy of early 20th century film comediennes- Finnegan and her 10-year-old daughter, provide a punchline.
As with her work on Housing within The Daily Gag sequence, Finnegan makes reference to Malcolm Turvey’s analysis of the comedy in the films of Jacques Tati and what he terms ‘comedic modernism’*, and continues to poke at issues around transparency and privacy in the contemporary age.
In the way that Tati’s films stimulated audiences to be alert to the comic possibilities of everyday life, The Daily Gag seeks to invite the spectator to participate in co-authoring the humour. It also laughs at itself (self-consciously aware that it plays on some of the more abstruse behaviours of contemporary art) and the audiences’ studious urge to ‘get’ contemporary art or, conversely, dismiss it quickly with “Yeah. I don’t get it”.
*Malcolm Turvey, Play Time Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism (Columbia University Press, 2020)
**Maggie Hennefeld (2015) Miniature Women, acrobatic maids and self-amputating domestics: Comediennes of the trick film, Early Popular Visual Culture.

Laura Matikaite is the selected artist for this year’s In The Window, a month long exhibition of work, shown ‘in the window’ at Bluecoat Display Centre.

Join Laura and the Bluecoat Display Centre, in their gallery, for an informal conversation about Laura’s Lithuanian-Irish background and emerging ceramics talent.

Laura’s ceramic vessels explore the versatility of clay and ideas of duality – juxtaposing polychromatic collections with monochromatic versions. Consumed by one palette for a time, Laura grows to miss the other, switching between the two as her hunger demands.

This event is free to attend.
Please book your place by calling us on +44 (0) 151 709 4014 or via email at crafts@bluecoatdisplaycentre.com
“My work goes through a cycle, in which, after a season of monochrome, monotone, creating surfaces on the spectrum of Black to White, I hunger for colour, and this sparks a new range or multitoned, coloured and playful ceramic work.
“Before long feeding back into the sophistication and elegant simplicity of monotone. Allowing the form to say something else.
“Colour has the ability to create a mood, I use this to my advantage when creating a body of work, that refuels the making process.
“It is through a balance of expressing developed design ideas and creative intuition that I absorb the nutritious versatility of clay and glaze chemistry.” – Laura Matikaite
Laura’s work is currently on display ‘In the Window’ on College Lane throughout October. A selection of her work will also be available to purchase via the Bluecoat Display Centre’s online shop soon.

The Mersey Mash hits #LIF2022.

Following months of interviews, podcasts, trips across the country -not to mention a pandemic- Doug Devaney presents The Mersey Mash.

A magazine-style film and performance, The Mersey Mash collects and relates the tales community members have told him over the last two years. For those involved, the evening presents an opportunity to see yourself onscreen and witness stories from your community. For others, it’s a chance to revel and reflect -chat, critique and add your own voice- in the welcoming surroundings of the Liverpool Irish Centre and the people who make it great. This is an exchange between audience and documentarist; people and places. After tonight, the show will be remastered for an online release, ensuring the stories of The Mersey Mash last forever.

The Mersey Mash is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Family and Heritage work strands. ❤️? For more on Doug and his work, look up The Plastics Podcast, here.

This event will be followed on 10 Nov with an online watch party of the full feature.

This event is copromoted with Black History Month.

After the interviews, the events, the laugher and the tears, The Mersey Mash reaches its destination: the final cut.

Doug Devaney and his trusty technical crew –Sean and Charlie- will finally let their 2021/22 expedition fly into the ether; free to be watched by all and sundry! A document of Liverpool and its Irish community, The Mersey Mash bears witness to the people, places and events we share, along with the islands that influenced us all.

The Mersey Mash is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Family and Heritage work strands. For more on Doug and his work, look up The Plastics Podcast, here.

 

How has Brexit affected Irish identity?

PhD researcher Niamh Lear presents on her paper Irishness in England post-Brexit, looking specifically at regional perspectives on Irishness in England.

Following her presentation, Niamh will be interviewed by Catherine Harvey, actor, writer, broadcaster and producer of Tongue and Talk: The Dialect Poets. Over the course of the interview and following Q&A we’ll attempt to draw some comparisons between Niamh’s work and the Liverpool Irish experience, fielding questions from the audience.

This is a live online event, hosted on Zoom. People will book via an Eventbrite link (available here shortly) and Zoom details will be sent closer to the date with links to join. Zoom is free to use, but users will have to have downloaded and installed the software ahead of the event.

This event contributes to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family and Heritage work strands. ♀️❤️?

Recording of the event

Liverpool Irish Festival invite you to meet our volunteer History Research Group, led by ArtsGroupie Director John Maguire.

Responsible for unveiling the research that now populates the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail’s site information, this group have been central to the Trail’s revitalisation, collectively spending 850+ hours on research! Closely linked with the development of this year’s book release -Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive- the team discuss their findings and research activity in a presentation followed by a Q&A session. Details will also be shared about how to apply to be involved in the next stage of work, as we continue to develop the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail. For more information on the Trail visit liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com All the Festival’s Trail work has been supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Heritage and Irish Famine work strand  (?) and takes place as part of the Family Day at Museum of Liverpool. The Family Day is sponsored by Tourism Ireland.

Silence often follows disaster.

Drawing together two impressive writers, Famished: Women and the Irish Famine comprises a performance of Cherry Smyth’s poem Famished, followed by a presentation by Jaki McCarrick on her play (recently shown in New York): Belfast Girls. Both works handle the Irish Famine, the poverty it continues to reveal and bearing witness to a lost generation.

Famished is a poetic sequence by Cherry Smyth, exploring the Irish Famine and how imperialism contributed to the largest refugee crisis of the nineteenth century. Delivered with composer Ed Bennett and vocalist Lauren Kinsella, her poetry draws on the power of collective lament, using music and expanded singing.

Belfast Girls is a play that follows five women on their flight from Famine to refuge in Australia, bereft of choice, money and nourishment. McCarrick will speak of the inspiration for the work and her plans for it now.

An in-conversation Q&A follows, in which Smyth and McCarrick reflect on each other’s work and take questions from the audience.

This event contributes to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family and Heritage work strands. ♀️❤️? It is delivered in partnership with Liverpool Everyman and takes place in the downstairs bistro.

Photographic discussion workshop on the life and influence of Frederick Douglass.

Famed African-American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) sailed to Ireland from Liverpool in 1845, witnessing at first hand the suffering caused by the Irish Famine. It is understood two Irishmen inspired Douglass to escape his enforced slavery in America, which remains celebrated in a mural on the Falls Road, Belfast. Before sailing to Ireland, it is understood that Frederick stayed in a temperance house in Liverpool, later speaking at Hope Place (where now stands the Liverpool Everyman, site of half of our workshops).

Frederick Douglass was a master at using early photography to aid representation. Always presenting as well-dressed, proud and educated, Douglass repeatedly used his image to speak about Black rights and break the visual culture of ‘Black exoticism’. He adopted Western styles of dress and hair styling, sitting in classic portrait poses to show himself as ‘like all others’.

Ruth McHugh invites you to have your image taken, amidst items you feel help to represent you. Ruth will develop these images and work them into a Daguerreotype-style and participants will receive these sepia portraits within a month of the workshop.

You will work with resources that highlight the struggles Douglass -and all people oppressed for their race- face. As the workshop develops, participants will talk through some of Douglass’s experiences; learn about his connections with Liverpool and Ireland and see what form his actions against racism took. In doing so, we can learn something about our image, what a selfie says about us and how we identify with our representation.

These workshops contribute to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family, Nook and Cranny Spaces and Heritage workstrands. ♀️❤️??
Pick your workshop carefully
There will be four workshops:

9.30am and 1pm, Thurs 27 Oct. International Slavery Museum (youth focussed)
9.30am and 1pm, Fri 28 Oct. Everyman Bistro (adult focussed).

When booking, please be sure to select and note the correct workshop time and location. See our location listing for each venue, using the links above.
Note on age and relevance:
This workshop focusses on ideas of representation, using Frederick Douglass’s life and use of photography. Our youth focussed sessions are geared for over-12s.

Please note – anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and this requires 2 tickets (min), one the young person and one for the adult. If you have not booked these, please do so.
During the workshops with young people, we will ask that no social media is used.

Kieran Murray’s photography evokes nostalgia from the off.

The rich palette of worn colours; the textures of paint, rust and plaster, take us to a time way back in -or slightly before- our memory, where things are familiar, but distressed; recognisable, but transforming. His affection for the subject seeps in to the work and we find ourselves clamouring to find a memory we can attach to that ewer, that horseshoe or that Christmas envelope. Here, Kieran helps us explore the world he is showing us in his images, by talking through some of the digital exhibition images and taking us thorough his image finding and story building.

This is a live online event, hosted on Zoom. People will book via an Eventbrite link (available here shortly) and Zoom details will be sent closer to the date with links to join. Zoom is free to use, but users will have to have downloaded and installed the software ahead of the event.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Family and Heritage work strands. ❤️?

Event recording