Dr. Saoirse Higgins
Where we are is here (working title)
4 to 28 June

Open Studio Thursday & Friday

I have been interested in developing work with Lough Hyne as a focal point, connecting in to the work that I have been doing on macro-micro scales and timeframes between island, seas and glaciers in Orkney and Iceland. How do we fathom or get to the bottom of the issues with our seas? I will be collaborating with the Fair Seas advocacy group creating an embodied, human scale energy map focused on the vertical plane – similar to layers of the earths sediment- above the surface - on the surface and - below the surface – three views/three orbitals. The sea acting as a floating script or score - in the air above, on the surface, and below the surface, exploring several imaginative dialogues – between scientist and sea, the sea and artist, the sea and local community, and the sea in dialogue with itself.

My practice is very much about active, performative, social engagement looking at multiple ‘angles of vision’ and the orbits between people and environment, especially in the context of islands and the surrounding sea. As an islander I have seen for myself first hand the challenges for island communities in relation to the sea around them - the fragile balance between economic priorities and caring about and for environmental concerns for the future. I am interested in people’s relationship and connection with the ocean in the anthropocene. Looking at the sea as an ‘ocean of possibilities’, countering the idea that the sea is an empty space available for colonizing with, for example, industrial sized fish farms, when the sea needs to be nurtured.

Will our efforts as artists, scientists and island community be enough to protect and nurture the ocean as a holistic whole?

‘…We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it’…
(Okjökull glacier plaque – the first glacier officially declared dead from climate change by glaciologist Oddur Sigurdsson, letter to the future world community, writer Andri Snaer Magnason, Iceland, 2021).

Artist Biography: I am an artist based between Ireland and Papa Westray (Papay-local name) Orkney. I have a practice-based PhD from Glasgow School of Art Innovation School researching our engagement with the environment, the expertise and technology we use, in the specific context of islands, islanders and the Anthropocene. I explore micro-macro scales of time and ‘trickle-up’ action for change. In my work I try and articulate between three viewpoints - the local, relational and geological time scales connecting with how we know about, view, care for and act upon the environment. I triangulate positions between myself, particular communities - both expert and non-expert, and the sea in a three-dimensional x, y, z-axis, moving towards and from the depths of the ‘sea-sphere’ up to the ‘land-sphere’ and beyond to the troposphere out towards stars and galaxies above. I work with a mix of time-lapse and real-time video, 360 VR, audio field recordings, performance events with playful created measuring and mapping ‘survival tools’. Recent collaborations have been with – The Icelandic Met Office; Creative Carbon Scotland; Nature Scotland; Icelandic Glaciological Society; British Science Association; Antarctica Heritage Trust; North Isles Landscape Partnership and Papay Development Trust.

instagram: @saoirsepapay

twitter(X): @digitalworld

www.saoirsehiggins.org

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Cork County Council in making these residencies possible.