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Exhibition Notes

Ecology is not a specific part or form of crisis. It is a way of seeing themanifold expressions of the crisis today Where does the socialproblem end and the ecological problem begin? -Jason W. Moore

Launching Cultr Labs new Eco series, and in conjunction with the

World-Ecology, World-Economy, World Literature symposium at UCD,this cultural evening explores artistic representations of theintertwined contexts of economy and environment, showing howcultural production can create new understandings of the lived,everyday experiences of ecology and crisis. The photographyexhibition sets out to challenge stereotyped ideas of landscape andenvironment as pastoral nature, presenting instead images of urbandereliction, Namaland, and the housing collapse, alongside pictures ofsocial protest against the consequences of austerity, unevendevelopment, and resource extraction. As activist photography, theseimages also foreground power: the use of surveillance and force todiscipline resisters, but also the potential of social movements to fightfor the kind of environments they want to live in: environments of

equality and plenitude, not austerity and scarcity.

Similarly, McCormack and Lordans writing is acutely attuned to thechallenges of contemporary life in recession-Ireland, whether thehardships and absurdities of post-Tiger life in working-class Dublin, orthe isolation and black wit of rural communities on the western coastof Ireland. Both photographers and writers powerfully map socialtransformations of the environments in which we livefrom theurban-scapes of Dublin to the fenced-off beaches and fields in Mayowhere Shell has enclosed the commons and built pipelinesand ask usto seethese landscapes in a new way.

I would like to thank my co-organizers, Treasa DeLoughry and Michael Paye,alongside Marisa Ronan (Cultr Lab) and Ruair OCuiv (DCC, The LAB), forenabling this event. Thanks also to UCD Humanities Institute and DublinUNESCO City of Literature for sponsoring the writers readings.Sharae Deckard(School of English, UCD)

Biographies of PhotographersAndrew Flood first took up photography after giving a talk on the1980s pro-choice movement. He writes, When the other speakersreacted with excitement to my pictures from that time, I realized theimportance of documenting protests and movements. What began as aproject to archive and report from within struggles quickly blossomed

into a love of the lens as a way of telling our stories to audiences thatmight not otherwise be reached. His activist photography can be seenat www.facebook.com/WorkersSolidarityMovement and his artistic

work can be viewed at www.500px.com/andrewflood.

William Hederman

has been practicing photography since the earlynoughties, when he first became involved in radical social movements.Since 2005, he has been documenting resistance to Shell's Corrib Gasproject. He observes, Such conflicts tend to be presented andrecorded in a way that suits the need of corporate power. It isimperative that these stories are told from the perspective of theresisters, and photography plays a powerful role in this. Imagesoutlive the spin.

Aileen OCarroll believes in the importance of photographs asmemory, as the documentation of ordinary and extraordinarystruggles against power and domination. She writes, As an organizer,I first became aware of how perspective shapes the narrative of thestory. Is a photograph taken from behind police lines, looking atprotesters or from within the crowd looking at the police? Do you onlysee angry young men or do you see joyful middle-aged women?Mainstream media represents protesters as the Other. I am interestedin the We. Aileens photography can be viewed atwww.aaocarroll.org.

Paul Reynolds first

began taking photographs around the age of 12.He explains his motivations as a photographer as a mixture of theartistic and the political: Composition fascinates me. I'm still trying tounderstand what makes a good picture 'good'. The camera often lies.But Im interested in what it can reveal as well. In street anddocumentary photography I try to find contradictions or contrasts anduse them to express my objective. A gallery of his work can be viewedat flickr.com/photos/paul_reynolds.

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Biographies of WritersDave Lordan is a writer, editor, and creativewriting workshop leader based in Dublin who hasbeen shaking up the Irish literary scene since theearly noughties. He is the first writer to winIrelands three national prizes for young poets: the

Patrick Kavanagh Award (2005), the Rupert andEithne Strong Award (2008), and the Ireland Chairof Poetry Bursary Award (2011), for hiscollections The Boy in The Ringand Invitation to a

Sacrifice, published by Salmon. In 2010, Mary McEvoy starred in hisdebut playJo Bangles at the Mill Theatre, directed by CarolineFitzgerald. His acclaimed short fiction First Book of Fragsdebuted withWurm in 2013, and he edited the New Planet Cabaret anthology of NewWriting from Ireland.Alongside Karl Parkinson, Lordan makes up theperformance poetry duo Droppin The Act and is a passionateperformer of his own work. He is contributing editor for The StingingFlyand teaches contemporary poetry on the MA in Poetry Studies atthe Mater Dei Institute, DCU. He blogs ferociously atwww.davelordanwriter.com and tweets@davelordanpoet.

Mike McCormack is the author of twocollections of short stories, Getting it in theHead and Forensic Songs, and two novels,Crowes Requiem and Notes from a Coma.In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prizefor Literature and Getting it in the Headwas chosen as a New York Times NotableBook of the Year. A short film scripted

from a story in that collection, was longlisted for an Academy Awardin 2003. In 2006, Notes from a Comawas shortlisted for the Irish Book

of the Year Award; a new edition was recently published by SOHOPress in New York. He was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in2007 and has been the recipient of several bursaries from the IrishArts Council. He currently teaches on the MA in Writing at the NationalUniversity of Ireland, Galway and on the MFA in Creative Writing at theAmerican College in Dublin. He was visiting professor at WillametteUniversity, Illinois in 2001 and recently he has taught in the IrishWriters Centre in Dublin. He currently lives with his wife in Galway.

Landscapes of Crisis

An Evening of Photography and Literature

25 October 2013 Cultr Lab &The LAB