Tomasz Madajczak

Unseen

© Tomasz Madajczak

There’s a line early on in Unseen, the new dance piece by Tara Brandel and Stacey White of Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company, where the voice-over says that plankton are so tiny that they are invisible to us. But sometimes, the voice continues, they bloom in such vast quantities that they can be seen from space. 

This dance piece explores the role that plankton – in plant form (phytoplankton) and in animal form (zooplankton) – plays in the life of our planet. It underpins all life but is fragile and threatened  by the effects of climate change. We remain oblivious to this existential danger because plankton does not cry out for our attention.

© Tomasz Madajczak

That disconnect, between the vital nature of this organism versus how aware we are of it, proves to be an apt metaphor for how we depend on our bodies – taking them for granted until they force us to forge a new relationship with them. 

Stacey White is a Californian artist who now lives here in West Cork. She has partnered (in life and in art) with Tara Brandel, who has created this choreographed event, three years in the making. I have written about Tara’s dance before – in Bridge and in Dancing Cappaghglass. Tara is one of the people (more common, she tells me, than we all know) who was injured by the Covid vaccine. It was catastrophic for her, leaving her profoundly debilitated, unable to walk, with difficulty breathing and a racing heart. Her recovery and rehabilitation have taken three years so far and is ongoing. The irony is striking – Croi Glan specialises in an integrated approach to dance, working with both able-bodied and physically- and intellectually-challenged dancers. Up to now, Tara has been the dancer we would describe as ‘able’

© Tomasz Madajczak

The dance begins with Stacey painting in a corner and Tara asleep on the floor. Projections and voice-overs run throughout the dance, introducing images of plankton, water and tides. There is no music per se, and yet there is a sense throughout of an elemental soundtrack. 

© Tomasz Madajczak

As Tara slowly comes to life her hand movement echo the pulsating and twisting movements of the plankton we have seen on the wall behind her. We see her coming to grips with the challenges of rediscovering the body her illness has given her,  and hear her compare it to putting together a 3D jigsaw, as she strives to heal and to compile the disparate pieces into a coherent whole again. Stacey’s voice also gives us an insight into the profound disconnect that  epilepsy, or rather the drugs she has taken to address it, has created between mind and body. We see them support each other, Stacey (literally) guiding Tara’s faltering steps. 

© Tomasz Madajczak

Besides the projections, Stacey’s small plankton paintings fill the wall space behind the dancers, hung to echo the Gulf Stream and Atlantic currents. At one point during the dance she strews them about the floor and Tara carefully makes her way among them before seizing larger pieces of drawing paper to wrap around her body, as if drawing strength from a medium other than the physical.

© Tomasz Madajczak

As someone at home, away from the world, slowly trying to recover from profound weakness, Tara shows us that she feels unseen, locked away from our sight. Sufferers of vaccine injuries have to contend with the neglect of their plight by governments and health systems, who start by ignoring them and then throw enormous burdens onto already-ill people to ‘prove’ that what has happened to them is the fault of the vaccine.

© Tomasz Madajczak

But this is not a pity-me piece, it’s a profound meditation on what it is, and how it feels, to be unseen, and to have the very foundations of the life we take for granted – whether we are talking about our planet or our bodies – suddenly under threat. And ultimately it’s about the healing power of art to help us face those challenges.

© Tomasz Madajczak

I have no doubt this piece will have an afterlife after the two current scheduled performances. Uillinn’s (The West Cork Arts Centre) dance season, now in full, er, swing, reminds us that art comes in many forms, including dance. Like plankton, art blooms where the environment encourages it. Hardly surprisingly, given the quality of what we saw in Unseen, all the dance performances seem to be well subscribed, so run don’t walk if you want tickets for any of the other events over the next week or so – it goes to November 5th.

Thank you to Tomasz Madajczak for allowing me to use his outstanding photographs.

Getting Into the Art!

Uillinn – the West Cork Arts Centre gallery in Skibbereen – has just opened its first exhibition of 2020. It’s a riot! I have seldom seen such enthusiasm in an art show from the lively crowd who had gathered for the launch event, billed as an indoor picnic.

We went along, and were delighted. It’s advertised as an exhibition for children: take no notice of that! Just go and join in the fray – we all have a child in us. And it is a fray, in that it’s totally participatory. You can’t avoid taking apart everything you see, and putting it all back together however you want to. How amazing, to be encouraged – no, commanded – to get involved and act out the child. I wish I could show you the expressions of delight on the faces of all the ‘real’ children who were there, but today’s privacy laws mean that we can’t publish those. Instead, through some skilful juxtaposing and a little bit of PhotoShop, we hope that we can get across the sheer exuberance of all the activity.

The ground floor gallery was full of shapes – many recognisable, some abstract – all brightly coloured, attractive and tactile. Each one could easily be a piece of ‘modern art’. The fun comes when you realise they can all be taken apart and put back together in unlimited combinations. There are no restrictions: everything has hooks, slots, sockets. This is your chance – everybody’s chance – to build sculptures, make murals, hang things on walls (or on each other!). There’s not a single Do Not Touch sign anywhere . . . Imagine the excitement!

If you wanted to, you could enter the exhibition through a tunnel – it looked invitingly organic, if not somewhat anatomical. You were disgorged into a forest of sweets hanging on strings. Towards the end of the afternoon there were lots of empty strings and very few sweets. But, surely, that’s what it’s all about: consuming the art; embracing it, encountering it, making of it what you will.

It was interesting for us to note tidy-minded adults busily untangling the hanging strings, while their offspring revelled in getting them as muddled as possible. Meanwhile, we overheard a fraught parent exclaiming “I can’t believe you just ate the art!”

Art in Action is the brainchild of a group of Polish artists, and was first curated at the Municipal Art Center, Pomorska, Gorzów in 2019, with the intention of travelling on to Skibbereen. One of those artists, Tomasz Madajczak, has been based in Ireland since 2003, and has contributed to previous exhibitions at Uillinn. He provided the liaison between the two arts centres which resulted in this collaboration. He seemed completely at home among the exhibits:

I need to persuade you all to visit this exhibition, so I won’t give away too much in this little preview. I will just mention the upstairs galleries, where some ingenious devices are available to ensure full interaction between art and spectators, including a modern take on the epidiascope (remember those? – you will if you are anywhere near my age!), pop guns for shooting down technological detritus, and over-aweing human voice amplification. Here are some further images to whet your appetites . . .

Don’t be shy about coming into this show and being part of the action! That’s exactly what it’s there for. All the better if you can bring along a group of children – or aim to be there when there are children in the gallery: the Arts Centre has a continuing programme of involving schools and other community groups. It’s the children, particularly, who will show you what being uninhibited means.

Art in Action is on at Uillinn, Skibbereen until 22 February 2020. It is curated by Bartosz Nowak, with work by Basia Bańda + Tomasz Relewicz, Ewa Bone + Ewa Kozubal, Tomasz Madajczak, Krzysztof Matuszak, Aleksandra Ska and Hubert Wińczyk. Open Monday to Saturday, 10.00am to 4.45pm daily. Special thanks must go to Uillinn’s Director, Ann Davoran, and her technical team for bringing this show to fruition, with special mention to Ballydehob’s Stephen Canty – who solves every problem! Uillinn receives financial support from the Arts Council and Cork County Council.