BALLYMUN SEQUENCE
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BALLYMUN SEQUENCE
Digital Video Pal
Year : 2007
Length : 11 minutes
Conception/realisation
Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly
Original tower footage
Eamonn Elliott
Music
«Phrase for Goran Zivadinovic» Composed by Andrew Hamilton,
Performed by The Ensemble Ascolta.
Ballymun Sequence is a commission of the Dublin Health Service Executive.
This musical piece is the result of a unique participative art project, concieved around the urban renewal of Ballymun, a housing project to the north of Dublin built in the 1960’s, with social problems common to many urban housing projects worldwide: poverty, crime and alienation.
..a jubilant celebration of metropolitan life, a woven fabric of choreography, juggling, and music set against the background of a city in reconstruction.
This 11 minute musical piece is the result of a unique participative art project that took place in Ballymun, a suburb of Dublin, from June 2006 to June 2007. The Ballymun Housing Project, built in the 1960’s, experienced social problems common to many urban housing projects worldwide: poverty, crime and alienation. The area is now undergoing renewal. In August 2006 we were asked to carry out an art project related to health for the local Health Care Facility. We chose to focus on what was most essential in terms of health, movement.
We installed an interactive video installation in the foyer and throughout the year worked with people of all ages to explore movement using contemporary technology. As our project developed we became more and more involved in the place, its past and its future. The themes and processes that we were exploring became indissociable from the place itself, to the extent that the act of moving and the act of remembering became interchangeable.
June 1963, buildings collapsed spontaneously all over the city of Dublin. A wave of urban migration followed as homes and entire streets were evacuated. Over the following decade thousands of people flooded from the city to take up residency in Ballymun, a “ideal new town” built on the edge of Dublin, containing over 3000 dwellings of many shapes and forms, including seven tall tower blocks. For the next thirty years the story of the Ballymun Housing Project, oppressed by poverty, followed closely in the footsteps of similar high-rise housing developments worldwide. Migration became an everyday experience, as people passed through and moved on in search of a better life.
Ballymun has long been a theatre to migrations of all sorts, the constant flow of residents in search of a home reflected in the constant flow of airplanes to and from the near-by airport, ferrying thousands of Irish emmigrants to a new life abroad, and, more recently, thousands of new arrivals of all nationalities come to find a better life in Ireland.
Forty years later the seven towers of Ballymun crash to the ground as the curtains are drawn on a 20th century urban experiment. As we watched the first tower crumble we were struck by the sight of thousands of birds scattering in panic. Their forced migration became a metaphor for migrations of peoples worldwide and set the tone for this tribute to the modern city.
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