DEEP—SEATED (2016)
The project started with an invitation to artists whom I respected and felt would be open to say and share what’s under the professional mask of their art in a confessional and critical framework called Deep—Seated. It took a year to tease the artists out. The motivation to talk with them in what was, in essence, a psychoanalytic framework, came from a personal frustration with the dry, academic, self-serving, institutionally cradled discourse around art. I wasn’t being seduced anymore. Art was over-protected by the institutions that were both saving and suffocating it. I wanted to know what deep-seated desires and instincts lay behind this legitimising discourse. I wanted to create a context wherein artists would feel at ease to talk about their desires and instincts, fears and irritations with the world without footnotes. I wanted to be seduced by artists and art once again. I wanted to propose an alternative art scene; or at the very least imagine an art scene within the existing art scene that was its inverse, critically and sensually. The rest is memory. No recordings were made of the three public events, just memories that will redescribed by those in attendance. I supplied the artists with readings (primarily by Semiotext(e)) for each session. Fuck all people attended, and even though I was disappointed at first, after two public sessions without an audience per se, I decided that the third and final session would be private. It was the best outcome. Because what was said and shared in all three sessions—the desire of the project—would not have been said or shared if we had an audience. The whole project gave me an appreciation of the audience as a positive absence. I believe artists are isolationists, but like all deconstructive binaries, artists desire to be exhibitionists, even though they end up hating themselves for it when that desire comes to fruition.
Deep-Seated artists were: Alan Butler, Conor Mary Foy, Teresa Gillespie, Breda Lynch, Ian Black, Vicky Langan, Alan Phelan.
DEEP-SEATED: ORGY OF SCARY
ORMSTON HOUSE, LIMERICK : 1 APRIL : 6PM
ALAN BUTLER : CONOR MARY FOY : TERESA GILLESPIE : BREDA LYNCH IAN MC INERNEY : (CURATED BY JAMES MERRIGAN)
DEEP-SEATED is an experimental art project which takes as a starting point the psychoanalytic promotion of the ‘talking cure’. Something that psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips said in conversation resonates throughout the project: “In your mind you’re mad... whereas in conversation things can be metabolised and digested through someone else.”
DEEP-DEATED is split into 3 public events in 3 cities at 3 art venues: Limerick, ? + ? For each conversation there will be approximately 5-8 participants. James Merrigan will ‘loosely’ chair each conversation around the themes: orgy of scary (Limerick); orgy of talk (TBC); orgy of naughty (TBC).
For each conversation each participant will briely describe an artist, an artwork, an everyday object, thing or feeling that is a source of influence, fetishisation or frustration in their art or life. Analysis and critique of described personas, artworks, things and feelings will be drawn out by the group of participants and audience in an open forum. Each participant will be asked to read a text that contextualises each conversation before each event.
Depending on availability, some of the participants will be asked to be present at 2 or 3 of the events to create a sense of continuity and the potential for elaboration on the previously ‘unsaid’ in the tradition of psychoanalysis.
Although the theories and language of psychoanalysis undergird DEEP- SEATED this project is, above all else, a conversation around art. For Merrigan psychoanalysis is all about activating deep discourse and relationships between people + people, subjects + subjects.
Psychoanalysis clings to other subjects like a symptom; it corrupts and challenges interpretation and insight; it seduces with its imagistic and linguistic base; it sees pathology in everything and anything. Art is invariably perverse and base through the psychoanalytic lens—but also revealingly and fundamentally human.
It is a chance to discuss and listen to art being discussed through an alternative discursive lens, one that can be seductive and fun.
Acting as documentation and an elaboration of what was discussed during the public talks, a booklet of confessional texts under the working title Madder Lake will be launched at Halloween 2016.
Deep-Seated was split into two public events and one private get-together:
Deep-Seated #1: orgy of scary, hosted by Ormston House, Limerick, on 1 April, 6pm.
Deep-Seated #2: orgy of naughty, hosted by Crawford College of Art, Cork. on 14 April, 6pm.
Deep-Seated #3: orgy of shame, hosted by Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, 7 July, 6pm.
