A person without a soul friend is like a body without a head. - St. Brigit

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Building on from Living but a Day: Women’s Words, we turn to another pivotal female figure, St. Brigit, as a source of inspiration.

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In cohesion with Brigit: Dublin Celebrating Women 2024, Chloe Austin facilitated a performance-led workshop with invited artists Day Magee, Lauren Kelly, Emer Lyons, curated by Emma Brennan.  Through movement, speech, and performance-based art, the workshop combined individual voices into a collective narrative that reflect on mythic time and queer kinship. Using feminist and queer archival material (Women's News Magazine from HERe NI and Identity Magazine from IQA) as a starting point, the artists engaged in writing, drawing, and improvisational movement to develop performative works in collaboration with each other. At the end of the workshop, the artists opened the space to the public, inviting an audience to witness them occupy the space through a collaborative performance influenced by the activities during the workshop.

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We are filled with language. Through constructive conversations and ‘live’ experimental approaches to the material, each artist introduces a new method of working with and through the text. Embarking in writing experiments, drawing exercises and listening, how can the materiality of the text inform new understandings of the past? How do we capture the process of exchange and reflexivity in the act of reading, writing and movement?

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Anamcara (‘soul-friend’) is someone you confess everything to, you trust completely, someone that you have a bond with that isn’t affected by time, distance and separation. 

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