Louise Manifold is based in Galway, and most recently co-curated Wildscreen, a two day film screening event, with filmmaker Una Quigley in Connemara. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally. Through sculpture, photography, text and film, the artist is repeatedly drawn to the margins of society and place, often combining scientific research with myth and story to present an alternative vision of reality to the viewer. Throughout all of Manifold’s work there is a persistent sense of disconnection and distance from the world of which one is living in, in favour of the creation of individual realities. The artist was familiar with Kevin Barry’s work before they met; “I really like Kevin's style of writing and he has a brilliant way of describing interior thought which I was very drawn to, also he has dealt with similar subject matter so it was both really.” She adds; “My work is very much about visual forms of storytelling, I work with language and text both as material and content for my work - I am drawn to written experiences that almost feel visual or sculptural, to a language of symptoms of ailments of an esoteric nature.”
The artist was working on some footage of a derelict theatre being torn down, filmed while she was on a residency in the USA. She was finding it difficult to come to a decision on what the finished artwork should be. It became clear that if the footage was to become anything, she would have to work in a different way than usual: “I didn't know Kevin before making this film, but I really thought he would be an ideal collaborator. When you approach someone you don't know and want to work in a creative way on something new, things tend to be a bit more structured. This structure really helped the work. When I did the initial filming in New Jersey, I didn't really know where it was going. I find the beginning of any work to be a bit like moving through thick fog, you know where you need to be but just not completely sure how to get there. It became clear that in order to get ‘there’ – to a finished film, it needed to move beyond being singular creative effort.”
The resulting short film, In Death and Fiction, was very much the result of delay. Says Manifold of the process; “I had been working for a while between 2011 and 2012 with transcripts of patients suffering from an illness called Cotard’s Delusion, an illness in which the subject is convinced that he or she is dead or immortal.” Manifold also cites Samuel Beckett as a clear influence on her methodology for working on In Death and Fiction. It was Beckett's research on Cotard’s Delusion that made the visual artist want to explore how language was used in the patient files to reiterate their conviction that they were dead amongst the living. This medical condition was also something that interested Kevin: “I was very interested when Louise told me she was researching Cotard’s Delusion, the psychological condition where a person believes him or herself to be dead. Imagining oneself into such a condition gave the opportunity for a strange little monologue. I was also inspired, I guess, by Samuel Beckett’s The Calmative, which was apparently prompted by his reading about Cotard’s Delusion.”
Read more at
http://humag.co/features/louise-manifold-and-kevin-barry
The artist was working on some footage of a derelict theatre being torn down, filmed while she was on a residency in the USA. She was finding it difficult to come to a decision on what the finished artwork should be. It became clear that if the footage was to become anything, she would have to work in a different way than usual: “I didn't know Kevin before making this film, but I really thought he would be an ideal collaborator. When you approach someone you don't know and want to work in a creative way on something new, things tend to be a bit more structured. This structure really helped the work. When I did the initial filming in New Jersey, I didn't really know where it was going. I find the beginning of any work to be a bit like moving through thick fog, you know where you need to be but just not completely sure how to get there. It became clear that in order to get ‘there’ – to a finished film, it needed to move beyond being singular creative effort.”
The resulting short film, In Death and Fiction, was very much the result of delay. Says Manifold of the process; “I had been working for a while between 2011 and 2012 with transcripts of patients suffering from an illness called Cotard’s Delusion, an illness in which the subject is convinced that he or she is dead or immortal.” Manifold also cites Samuel Beckett as a clear influence on her methodology for working on In Death and Fiction. It was Beckett's research on Cotard’s Delusion that made the visual artist want to explore how language was used in the patient files to reiterate their conviction that they were dead amongst the living. This medical condition was also something that interested Kevin: “I was very interested when Louise told me she was researching Cotard’s Delusion, the psychological condition where a person believes him or herself to be dead. Imagining oneself into such a condition gave the opportunity for a strange little monologue. I was also inspired, I guess, by Samuel Beckett’s The Calmative, which was apparently prompted by his reading about Cotard’s Delusion.”
Read more at
http://humag.co/features/louise-manifold-and-kevin-barry
