Limerick, Ireland
Siobhán Tattan, The Play: A Meeting of the Storytellers, the raconteur and the seanachaí, 2004, installation, dimensions variable

Siobhan Tattan

b. 1980, Ireland

My practice is derived from the play scripts that I have written. This is then actualised into staged events, where the set props, projecting images, etc, are built up and out from the scripts that I have written. However, the characters fail to show, and all that you are left with is the evidence of a failed scenario. I am dealing with the role of the director and the audience in a failed event/performance.

The sound piece is a reading of the director’s script, played on a continuous loop. The time lapses between each of the director’s notations varies between ten seconds and 2.3 minutes, as it corresponds to the original narration of the absent storytellers. Through the director’s notations the narrative is revealed – of the storytellers; of their would-be commencement, practising their oral bardic tradition for each other and the audience; of how their understanding of their relationship and methods align; of how, finally, their comprehension for the other’s methods mature and develop to an appreciation; of how the alignment of their traditions all too quickly falters as it disperses into the parochialism of their language.

The influences in my work extend from literature, from Samuel Beckett, who introduced waiting as a principle in his practice of creating the theatrical experience, to Henrik Ibsen’s use of parochial tongue. I wish to further interrogate the role of the ‘native voice’ in art and language, and deal specifically with the function of parochialism in language, of the oral bardic tradition.

(Text: OPEN e v + a catalogue, 2005)

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