An evening of discussion and live artist gestures to rub-up against and lean into Y O U N G F O S S I L, the bespoke seating and convivial gathering structures by artist collective Forerunner at IMMA this summer.  

Artists-in-Conversation
5 – 5.45pm, Front Lawn Pavilion
Collaborative arts practice Forerunner, with founding members Tanad Aaron, Andreas Kindler von Knobloch and Tom Watt, in conversation with Nathalie Weadick.

Join collaborative arts practice Forerunner, with founding members Tanad Aaron, Andreas Kindler von Knobloch and Tom Watt, for a conversation on their project Y O U N G F O S S I L commissioned by IMMA. A conversation with the artists is led by Nathalie Weadick curator of architecture and spatial practice based in Dublin, and director of the Irish Architecture Foundation. Hear directly from the artists who share their ideas and thinking behind Y O U N G F O S S I L; the inspiration behind the materiality and making-process that is so specific to Forerunner’s ongoing practice, and the ways their timely project prompts us to reflect on for wider issues on the politics of housing, ecology, consumption, the environment and indeed challenges of public art commissioning for historical sites such as IMMA / RHK. 

Performances
6 – 7.30pm, Front Lawn and Meadows
Forerunner, with live artist additions by Stéphane Béna Hanly, Fiona Gannon, Matthew Lenkiewicz and Pauline Payen, and drawings online by Life Focus.

Artist Stéphane Béna Hanly’s performance, Shape Making by Space Shaping (2021), invites you to join him as he sheds some light on the worlds assigned to the mysterious young fossils peppered throughout the Meadows at IMMA. Some of these worlds are visually apparent while others require some encouragement, offered via Hanly’s unique piece of debris, which shares a link with these worlds from one time or another. As the artist states, this performative walk and talk – accompanied by an interjecting intercom – “embraces the ability of the imagination to transform the role of a physical space to the individual’s desired function”.  

With a live reading of Fiona Gannon’s new text, The Case of the Missing Subject (2021), the writer and researcher presents an investigation of the strange circumstances of something that is not quite a body. Among the tectonics of Forerunner’s Y O U N G F O S S I L, red marks have appeared on some of the platforms. Unsure of their origins, Gannon has subcontracted Private Investigator Nim Pseudo to analyse the scene. Over the coming month, Pseudo will continue to investigate, compiling their notes and evidence. Using the approach of the carrier bag theory, á la Ursula Le Guin, Investigator Pseudo will analyse a variety of sources and compile their findings, weaving different possibilities of how this young fossil came to be and what kind of a fossil it is. To share the knowledge acquired, Pseudo will bring all persons of interest and interested persons together on 1 October to lay out a number of threads pursued. 

The series of sound compositions by Matthew Lenkiewicz and Pauline Payen, “Can-You-Hear-Me? “Is-It-Better-Now?” “Depth-In-A-Flatspace” (2021) have been created from layered Internet field-recordings, vocal synthesis and semi-musical arrangements. Using both the artists’ connections and means of connection to each other, to Y O U N G F O S S I L and to its Dublin home as raw material, the works attempt to react to a growing codification of intimacy, bureaucracy, life, work and nature into a shared, increasingly complex but familiar, technological (flat) space.  

Working at a distance with awkward, alien fragments, found, synthesised and recorded across video calls, internet archives and other non-places, the artists reflect on contemporary day-to-day artificiality in nature, emotional landscapes, intimacy, relationships with work, friendships and humour. Distributed across the site and integrated into the platforms, visitors are invited to lay down on the wood and listen in to an endlessly looping, long-distance call with reality. 

This set of three live activations onsite is accompanied by a set of three commissioned drawings online by Life Focus, titled Vision, 1, Vision, 2, Vision 3, 2021. Life Focus explores works through nature, self-help and directionlessness.  

Please note, as this event takes place outdoors on some areas of uneven ground, please be sure to wear suitable clothing and footwear, and pack an umbrella in case of wet weather.