The Satellite artistic programme combines new pieces especially produced for this meeting (marked as Artistic Programme below) and a mix of existing pieces, kindly made available by Galway 2020 and the Galway International Arts Festival (marked as On demand below).
We have suggested screening times in the online programme, which we believe will enhance the experience of the meeting, but all performances are available to watch on demand and it will still be possible to watch them after the meeting.
Artistic programme
Hope it Rains | Soineann Nó Doineann Programme
Turning our bad weather to good use, Hope it Rains | Soineann Nó Doineann will make Galway the place to be because it rains and blows! We want to effect a cultural change in our relationship with weather, and use it as a source of creativity and communality.
Artist introduction
Ríonach Ní Néill, the project’s creator and curator, talks about how the weather activated surprises that have animated Galway city and county, effecting a cultural change with weather and climate.
Duration: 25 minutes
Created and curated by Ríonach Ní Néill, produced by Ciotóg and commissioned by Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture.
Drowned Galway
Galway City walls become backdrops for photo-montages by Joe Lee, visualising life in an inundated city, when yet another abnormal has become commonplace. Artists imagine how we might cope with this enormous and imminent change. How close does the future have to come before we care enough to act?
Duration: 15 minutes
Photomontages by Joe Lee, designs by Emily Ní Bhroin, Arran Murphy, Deirdre Kennedy, Ríonach Ní Néill, Jeni Roddy, Sohail Salem, performance by Róisín Tyrell, Una Valaine, Aoife Delaney-Reade, with community participation by Gliondar, Athenry Community Arts Group, Blackrock Babes, directed by Ríonach Ní Néill, produced by Ciotóg, commissioned for Hope it Rains | Soineann nó Doineann by Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture.
DruidGregory
Druid in a tribute to, and an animation of, the life and works of Galway’s Augusta Lady Gregory. DruidGregory includes five of Lady Gregory’s one-act plays with some of her poetry and other writings, as well as music, dance, and the work of her great friend, the poet WB Yeats.
Duration: 2 minutes
Directed by Garry Hynes, DruidGregory is a Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture Commission.
Sruth Na Teanga
Sruth na Teanga is an immersive theatre event that imaginatively realises the evolution and life of the Irish language. Branar has created a unique experience that brings audiences on the epic journey of our native language.
Duration: 10 minutes
Branar Téatar do Pháistí presents Sruth na Teanga a Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture Commission.
Aerial/Sparks
Aerial/Sparks, created by Irish artist Louise Manifold for Galway’s European Capital of Culture 2020, invites you to connect in person and online with one of the last unknown spaces on earth, the ocean wilderness. Seven artists, writers and composers from across Europe have produced a series of compelling standalone artworks for exhibition and radio broadcast, inspired by their experiences of joining research expeditions on board the Marine Institute Ireland’s RV Celtic Explorer.
Louise Manifold, curator of Aerial/Sparks, introduces this project, talks about the artworks inspired by ship life and scientific exploration of the Ocean and presented with Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands, positioned between the relative calm of Galway Bay and the wild Atlantic.
Duration: 15 minutes
Aerial/Sparks by Louise Manifold in partnership with the Marine Institute Ireland is presented Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture. The three artworks below are part of Aerial/Sparks.
East-West: Where Morning is the Sea - Ailís Ní Ríain
A meditation on time spent at sea where music and imagery allude to the grasp of the sea, lives beyond our imagination and the favour of viewpoints. When you are living on a working ship, your cabin - if you do not share one - is your sole place of privacy. Yet, even there, the sounds and movements of your fellow ship crew and scientific colleagues drift in through the slight cabin partitions. Your port-hole becomes your solitary viewpoint to a world where everything often appears to remain the same, for it is always water. I was instantly captivated by the subtle and sometimes violent changes perceivable through this limiting, yet, limitless ‘viewpoint’.
The film is one long take from the port-hole on the RV Celtic Explorer on a sunny August afternoon in 2019. The artist composed the piece to the film’s timeline, closely shaping the sounds in parallel with the visuals. The musical composition includes snippets of hummed songs together with a wide variety of sounds created inside a grand piano – percussion, slides, plucked strings, snippets of melody and keyboard sounds. All sounds – apart from the voice – come from one piano.
Duration: 10 minutes
Type: Video and sound composition
Palace of ships — David Stalling
Palace of Ships is an immersive audio-visual soundscape developed between 2018 and 2020 during David Stalling's investigation into the sonic, seismic, and cultural milieu of the Celtic Sea. The work uses field recordings and videos captured during rough seas aboard the RV Celtic Explorer research vessel, as well as seismic data recorded in the Celtic Sea by a large array of 14 ocean bottom seismometers. Making long records of seismic activity audible to the human ear involves manipulating their pitch and duration. In this domain of listening, geological time becomes tangible and the naturally occurring micro seismic tremors and human made sounds take on musical qualities.
In turn, excerpts from the 8th century old Irish poem Anbthine mór ar muig Lir, describing a perilous journey during an ocean storm, are slowed down and become sonic strata of historical artefacts.
The work was realised in collaboration with Prof Sergei Lebedev and Dr Maria Tsekhmistrenko of the Geophysics Section at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. It includes reading of text by Paddy Sammon, based on a pronunciation guide by Prof Liam Mac Mathúna, as well as additional readings and vocalisations by the artist.
Duration: 10 minutes
Type: Multichannel sound, moving image
Island Time - Kevin Barry
‘Early in the spring morning ... I’ll find myself, sometimes ... kind of becoming an absence to myself ... in a nice way ... and travelling ... travelling far across the fields of the sea.’
Long, long ago, a melancholy lighthouse keeper on Inis Oírr dreams of a different life and of distant lands... and of a woman in Ennistymon.
Island Time is a multi-media monologue with elements both of radio play and digital theatre, a tragi-comic tone, inspired by its unique location, the Inis Oírr lighthouse.
Island Time is written and performed at Inis Oírr Lighthouse by Kevin Barry. Sound design and foley by Jean McGrath and film by Louise Manifold.
Duration: 10 minutes
Viriditas
Viriditas is a song cycle composed by acclaimed Irish artist and singer Ceara Conway in response to an extended process of engagement at Galway University Hospitals. Including newly composed contemporary songs and traditional European healing songs and rhythms from Georgia and Italy, Viriditas takes the listener on a journey through songs inspired by conversations with staff and patients, and recordings of hospital equipment, plants, and the tools of sound healers.
Viriditas is introduced and performed by Ceara Conway, accompanied by Anna Mullarkey.
Duration: 25 minutes
Saolta Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present Viriditas as part of The Deepest Shade of Green.
On demand
Galway International Arts Festival: First Thought Talk with John Gerrard - Mirror Pavilion
The Pavilion is a beautiful and striking structure, with three sides and the roof clad in a highly reflective mirror and the fourth wall a high–resolution LED wall.
This structure will host two new artworks Corn Work and Leaf Work which unfold on the LED screen presented in two locations; Corn Work at the historic Claddagh Quay in Galway City and Leaf Work at the spectacular 4,000–year–old Derrigimlagh Bog in Connemara. The works reflect and respond to the landscape of both locations.
Before watching Galway International Arts Festival's First Thought Talk with John Gerrard by clicking the button below, you can watch Introducing Mirror Pavilion by John Gerrard here.
Duration: 50 minutes
Mirror Pavilion by John Gerrard was commissioned by Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF) for Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture.
Galway International Arts Festival: Mirror Pavilion | Reflections on Landscape: John Gerrard in conversation with Paul Fahy
Mirror Pavilion is a response to the escalating climate crisis and fearlessly pushes the boundaries of digital art using simulation. Gerrard has taken digital technology, usually employed by the commercial gaming industry, to create virtual worlds that simulate extremely detailed and authentic landscapes. The characters and landscapes we see on the LED screen may look like video or film but they are not; they hover in what the artist describes as the ‘slippery space’ between the real and the unreal.
These two astonishingly real virtual worlds are meticulously constructed by digital means by the artist, a team of modellers, and programmers. This world unveiling will be a dazzling moment on the Irish landscape.
Duration: 55 minutes
With thanks to Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF).
Galway International Arts Festival: First Thought Talk with Mary Robinson - What can we do about Climate Change?
Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and now head of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, discusses what is possibly the single most important issue facing humanity.
She is introduced by Professor John Sweeney, one of Ireland’s best–known experts on climate change.
Duration: 90 minutes
With thanks to Galway International Arts Festival (GIAF).
Our Planet: Our Business - WWF International
A short film taking a business approach to climate action, building on a recent Netflix production.
Duration: 40 minutes
