The Films of Reason – An Occupation
February 8th – 15th 2021, The Crypt, St. Luke’s Hall, Cork (online exhibition only)
Curated by Maximilian Le Cain
Presented by LUX Critical Forum Cork & Cork Film Centre
Aisling O Connell will stage a week long occupation of the Crypt at St. Lukes Hall. She will inhabit the space alongside The Films of Reason, her latest body of work.
The Films of Reason exist in paint, film and performance. During the occupation, the artist will put herself and the work ‘on trial’. In the absence of live spectators, the work will be the only audience and the camera the only witness. The exhibition will be immediate and shifting, subjected to various live processes. Ultimately, The Films of Reason will be pushed over the boundaries of exhibition, and this process will result in three new film works, episodes, that will be released online as they are completed.
The Films of Reason came about from O Connell recording her dreams over many years, marrying the imagery with classical, biblical mythology, ancient symbolism and Mircea Eliade’s The Forge and the Crucible.
The exploration of occupancy, reason and transformation in the work interrogates this imagery and utilises it to channel the concerns of the body and its relationship to its surroundings, its state.
The body occupied, radicalised. The dependent body, the loyal and the guilty.
Bodies performing rituals, rites and absurdities, chasing reason and recognition.
External conditions coerce or electrify.
http://thefilmsofreason.studio
https://www.instagram.com/thefilmsofreason/
121 is available to watch as part of Triskel Recommends-The Short Film Edition, link: 121 | Triskel Christchurch (triskelartscentre.ie)
Starring: Aisling O Connell and Maximilian Le Cain
The world premiere of a new film by Cork-based experimental filmmakers Aisling O Connell and Maximilian Le Cain. During the first lockdown the two artists exchanged footage that they gradually shaped into a mysterious ‘call and response’ filmmaking exchange. The result is a haunting and immersive collage of personal imagery adrift on tides of obsession. Central to this journey is the idea of ornithomancy, the art of reading omens from the actions of birds.
ABJECT THYSELF!! AND GET OUT OF IT
FREE FOR ALL.
WATER OR MILK and NO SMALL SPOONS available to watch here TUESDAY 22nd of December.
‘Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images- their status as illicit or degraded grants them exception from its criteria.’-
Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image
I am used to going outside now
GROWN THE TONGUE.
NOTHING GETS DONE.
25/11/20
STATE SERVICED PORTRAITURE
SLIP SLIP SLIP
(25/10/20)
STATE SERVICED PORTRAITURE
waiting for the bang
(9/10/20)
More to glean from Rubens… and drawing parallels for The Films of Reason….
Announcing the existence of 121, a collaborative film with Maximillian le Cain..
For the whole summer of 1971, artist Adrian Piper (b.1948) remained inside her New York apartment, fasted, and read and re-read Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
Tomi Ungerer(1921-2019), Leda and the Swan/Francois Boucher, Leda and the Swan, c1741/WB Yeats (1865-1939), Leda and the Swan,composed in 1923.
17/5/2020
https://aislingoconnell.com/2020/05/06/the-wrong-saw/
Notes on new film/work:
Working title: Sparrowhawk (spiorog)..
Don’t be precious with it/ Throw it around a bit.
Give a bit to violence/or a lot.
Get a feel for it. Blues/grey silver occasional flashes pink.
Flashes going back like a FIN or a SLICE
Films of Reason
Animal dreams
Breastmilk
Silver bowl
Elixer, matter, material
Habits, wheel.
Tracks and Figures
Working title: SS2/ SP1
Tin cans
Boxing
Void talking
A few lines from an application for a studio residency
Please outline what you hope to achieve from this residency (maximum of 350 words).
I have a child’s tooth wrapped in paper in the pocket of my dressing gown. In the porch there is a cupboard full of headless dummies, dressed in second hand suits.Two goldfish died because the tank was covered by a stack of pallets and I lost sight of them. All the kitchen is spitting up is more white emulsion and wire.
