Allegories of The Metropolis was an online residency which invited two early career artists to consider the process of ruinology as a creative, embodied act with which to explore the heritage and geographical legacies of urban cycles.
Media theorist Jason Parry describes ruinology as “the study of the speculative reconstruction of ruins.” Taking place online from September to November 2024 through a series of virtual gatherings, this residency culminated with an exhibition of artworks at Beta Festival 2024.
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Allegories of the Metropolis is about injecting urban histories with contemporary imaginaries. The work in this exhibition tells social stories for a new epoch that perhaps are not new at all - just retold, repaired and intimately re-positioned.
Both Aindriu Ó'Deasún and Mel Galley’s work hold the slipperiness of data and breathe mortal life into its artefacts. Building archives of sustenance from legacies of ruin and decay, Bog Logic and Valerian take stock of the past, unearth the untold and re-tether latent narratives - decompressing and laying bare the stratified debris of past and present rituals. Through personifying, holding and fictionalising imaginaries that emerge from their sites of inquiry (historical data of the city and the ancient use of ground itself), they decentralise institutional narratives and place a focus on allegories of lived experience; scaffolding stories across historical timelines.
These works remind me that through looking back, finding within the ruins, and asserting one’s own story, we can learn to love a better, more equitable future.
-Nadia J. Armstrong, curator.
Valerian, III (2024), speculative landscape, board, paper, stone by Mel Galley
Adrift, Frances haunts a future city, five years out of time. The fabric of the streets flickers around her as proposed building plans fall in and out of existence, disputed and discarded back in the present. As places suspended between being-and-not waver, it is the loss of a favourite street (where the cathedral tower aligns between the rows of terraces) that shakes her. Where do these places go to when they cease to exist? There is no ruin, just a new site, blanketing over memory. The first model she builds, of this street, is the unintentional centre of her city; a series of places that once were, or almost were, or will be in the future. Lost in time, she asks; how do we choose which places to remember?
This work was developed as part of Data Stories; a four year project mapping the property and planning data ecosystem in Ireland, with case studies divided over actors who create, process or use this data. From this research a series of 'data stories' are being created, both with and about the data. The project is based at Maynooth University Social Science Institute and led by Professor Rob Kitchin.
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Through writing and visual work, Mel builds speculative places which hinge on the concept of palimpsests to question ideas of the city, ownership, housing, vacancy and land. Through speculative storytelling she offers a path into academic, political and archival materials which scaffold these themes. In January, 2023, Mel completed her MA in Art and Research Collaboration at IADT, continuing on to join the teaching staff as a tutor in digital fabrication and visualisation. Currently on residency at Maynooth University with Data Stories, a project on data and housing, she has shown and performed work across Ireland and the UK, including at the LAB Gallery (Dublin), Barnavave (Carlingford), the Institute of Art (Carlisle) and Pink (Manchester). Mel participated in collaborative group projects around queer ecologies (the Balcony Project, Project Arts Centre) and cities and archives (Art and the City, Dublin Fringe). Her artworks are held in the collections of the Bodleian Library (Oxford) and, more importantly, on the walls and bookshelves of strangers and friends.
Bog Logic (2024), video, wood, oil paint, by Aindriú Ó’Deasún
Bog Logic (2024) explores a fictional explanation of our peat lands and their archaeological contents. Exchanging the process of plant matter decomposition with our individual processes of grieving and heartbreak. In the text, turf itself is composed of our thoughts and feelings of misery and longing. Bog findings such as the bog bodies, butter and farming equipment are instances in which sadness itself has built up, similar to processes of stalactite or fossil formation.
For example the bog bodies themselves are theorised to be ex-lovers which couldn't be let go. This process of dwelling on an ex for such an extended period of time forms a warped memory of a lover’s body deep in the bog.
Bog Logic is a speculative telling of events told through a video installation. Displaying a visual collage of bog finds at different stages of formation, alongside a text based video explainer.
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Aindriú Ó’Deasún (b.2000, Dublin), is a visual artist living and working in Dublin. Having recently graduated from NCAD’s Fine Art Media department, Aindriú’s practice combines sculpture and installation with new media practices. His work navigates intimacy and memory, with reference to thinkers and theorists such as Paul B. Preciado and Tiffany Sia. Recent achievements include receiving the Digital Society Award (2023), exhibiting at the Creative Factory in Turnhout, Belgium and a 6 month residency at the Fabrica Research Centre in Treviso, Italy. Aindriú’s practice has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland since 2023.
Nadia J. Armstrong (curator)
Nadia J. Armstrong is a visual artist and funded PhD researcher with NCAD, the National College of Art & Design, Dublin and CONNECT, the Science Foundation Ireland's Centre for Future Networks & Communications. Her creative practice incorporates performance approaches, digital poetics, speculative worlding, storytelling, 3D composition and AI collaboration - typically culminating in expanded video installations and experiences.
She treats machine learning processes, data accumulation methods and computational systems as creative and cultural material with which to explore the conditions of our existence. Her artworks have received multiple awards and have been exhibited internationally and across Ireland. Armstrong regularly delivers artist/researcher talks, participates on panels and residencies and has lectured in Visual Culture with the CFA programme at NCAD. Her research is situated within the field of STS and explores the cultures, jargons, histories, imaginaries, myths and belief systems that drive the development of communication systems and in turn build the social fabrics of our futures. For more visit: nadiajarmstrong.com
Curated by Nadia J. Armstrong and facilitated by screen service in partnership with Beta Festival 2024.
Visual design of poster and pamphlet by Cian Pawle-Bates.
Installation photography by Hannah Bloom.
