Abstract:
St. Patrick’s Day in Ballybeg (2023) is inspired by the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade; perhaps the world’s most ostentatious show of Irish identity. The project takes a somewhat détournement-esque approach, adopting banners from the parade and reconfiguring them using snippets from its source archive. These personal reflections, on the state of Ireland and its recent history, contrast the platitudes of pride that usually accompany such pageantry. In doing so, the work questions how Irish national identity is defined and who it is that gets to define it. Ireland is a country whose diaspora wildly outnumbers its meagre population; with some of its most famous traditions originating in the United States. Taking all of this into account, one may very well question as to where the point of origination for ‘Irish’ culture truly lies.
Photography:
Chin, D. (date unknown) Portfolio. Available at: http://www.omegaphotostudios.com/portfolio(Accessed: 16 May 2023).
Reference:
Debord, G and Wolman G.J. (1981) ‘A User’s Guide to Détournement’, in Situationist International Anthology. Translated from French by K. Knabb. Berkeley, Calif. : Bureau of Public Secrets, pp. 14-21.