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For this month’s Saothar ITMA invited artist, flute player and composer Barry Kerr to contribute his video ‘Fuascail’. These compositions sit alongside previous works submitted by Barry in his 2023 blog ‘A stone upon a stone‘,
‘Fuascail’ is a creative contemplation by visual artist, musician and composer Barry Kerr. Underpinned by a series of original tunes, the film is a window into the artist’s mind and gives an engaging, ungaurded view into his creative practice. Kerr uses a combination of his musical compositions and visual artistry to portray an abstract reflection on the revolutionary period of Ireland’s history. The concept of ‘Fuascail’, and its layered meaning, is central to the film. Translating as release, redeem, resolve, Kerr uses these three pillars to tease out his own feelings around history, conflict and commemoration. The film is set in Connemara where Kerr spent much time among the rocks and stones, drawing inspiration from the landscape and its history, composing new music and painting new work.
Produced and directed by Barry Kerr and Síle Denvir, this endeavour breaks new ground for Kerr and is an introspective and innovative personal approach to commemoration and rememberence of the events of our troubled past. The film is tied together by a poetic narrative, a stream of consciousness, conveying thoughts on Kerr’s creative practice, his music and continuity of tradition within the context of our history. As Kerr himself articulates ‘I want the feelings between the notes and the colours and shapes on canvas to draw out emotion, to let the frequencies of sound and colour connect us with our past. A meditation really, a moment to think on what went before, what is happening now and what is to come. An intimate resolution.’ ‘Fuascail’ features musical performances from Kerr and Denvir, alongside highly acclaimed traditional musicians Éamonn de Barra and Daire Bracken. Kerr’s original haunting compositions act as a perfect counterpoint to the stunning vistas of Connemara captured by Aldoc Productions.
I have always been aware of the relationship that art and music have had with war down through the ages. It has been a way to portray ones “truth” – whatever that may be – art has often been appropriated by politics and has had a role in both condemning and promoting hostility. Having been brought up in a conflict, I have seen intimately the emotions at work both for and against and here I explore some of those feelings to create this work but now from a very different place.
Being in Conamara in this place among the rocks and stones, I can feel an energy.
I believe the landscape itself tells its own story. There is memory in this land and it overwhelms me sometimes. I often think on what the Irish philosopher and mystic John Moriarty spoke so eloquently of, about walking through a “darkness” in the landscape that you can’t really explain, his esoteric thinking drawing from the well of myth and legend. He was excited by these ideas and I think as an artist I understand why.
There is an energy in trauma and it is held in the genetic memory of people and in the elements of place. It moves through time and space and is released in music and song, art and poetry. We draw from it and feed ourselves with it, it has a sense of belonging to us and is part of our identity as Irish people. Not in any Nationalistic sense of the flag waving variety. But because we are of this particular island, on the fringe of Europe and have experienced these things. I’m sick of flags, flags are sick … pieces of cloth tattered in the wind, hawker of false promises, omens of death and suffering.
2. Redeem
‘Dinnseancheas’ is storytelling about how land came to be, the shaping of the land in myth and legend. I wonder will the place names associated with the events of the war of independence and the civil war – Killmichael, Soloheadbeag, Ballyseedy, Béal na Bláth – take on these narrative qualities in future myth making – in the same way that we still delight in the legends of the Fianna and Cúchulainn, and how their ghosts whisper to us from the landscape? Where do myth, reality, history and landscape intersect? For me, they merge with and emerge from the music and song, the poetry and paintings of the people. What is our collective memory of conflict? How do we interpret it? A historian will remember in one way, a soldier in another. As an artist and composer I am consumed by the feelings and emotion involved. I think on those times, approaching remembrance by working with my own frame of mind on a collective experience. The timeline involved, the ideas of imperialism and proud nationalism (and all of the negativity that can surround both of those realities), moving in to what we did to one and other during the civil war then the implications of that with partition of a land and all the pain that followed – and then the question of what now?
Sometimes the creative processes are laboured and difficult and at other times automatic and free, perhaps a metaphor for the very theme itself. I return on occasion to archetypes – often raising their heads in my subconscious, the Badbh or Bean sídh – fairy woman with her prophecy of battle and death, the keening woman mourning the loss of a loved one and the feminine goddesses of Banba, Éiriú and Fódla representations of Ireland itself. I use these forms as guides to create the work their influence shining through in both sound and colour. Redeeming the art from a heavy price paid.
3. Resolve
The landscape is in constant change, it never looks the same from one day to the next. As a young man growing up in conflict it is difficult to imagine change, and particularly one’s outlook being sure and set in your ways but like the landscape change is inevitable. For conflict to end change is inevitable, something has to give. People change the more they experience. What conflict is is someone or something unchanging, solidified or imposed – set in its ways against the flow of nature. The land is restorative, when left alone, it heals itself from the burning flames of summer and from the icy cold of winter.
In Ireland the names of those who passed in conflict are often invoked and channelled for political gain, whatever the cause or the cost. It is a dangerous kind of magic and on this journey I choose not to travel that well worn road. I want the feelings between the notes and the colours and shapes on canvas to draw out emotion, to let the frequencies of sound and colour connect us with our past. A meditation really, a moment to think on what went before, what is happening now and what is to come. An intimate resolution.
