With under two weeks to go to this year’s festival, we announce details of our fringe programme – Movement. Featuring a host of wonderfully eclectic indoor and outdoor events, installations, highlights include Idir, an audio trail and zine specially commissioned for this year’s festival edition and the first Irish screenings of the work of Jodie Mack.
Idir, is an audio trail and zine in which musicians, writers, and artists will guide attendees on a walk to the outskirts of Sligo, taking in sights and sounds not often noticed by tourists or by locals. Along the way they will meet the Garavogue river and its cast of birds and mammals, alien motherships, memories of those gone and mysterious frog people.
The trail features audio pieces by Clíona Ní Laoi, Fulacht Fiadh, Dreamcycles, Katie Kim, Olivia Furey & Natalia Beylis tapping into the history and ecology of the area which can be accessed via QR code along the route – bring your own headphones to listen along. While stories from Alice Lyons & Paul Corrigan, essays from Mary Looby & Sean Hickey and narrative visual work from Kim Kennedy & the Faerie Lord collective cast Sligo in a new light and capture it’s soggy beauty at the close of the year.
Launching at 8pm at the Blue Lagoon (located in Doorly Park across the road from the walking trail) Idir runs throughout the weekend. The zine will be available to purchase from Bookmart on Bridge Street, where the trail begins, and includes a map to find the audio pieces. Remaining copies will be available on Bandcamp after the festival. Alternatively, the trail map and links to the audio pieces can be followed from the Spilt Milk Festival website.
On show at Pulled Screen Print on Riverside (viewing from the street) over the weekend will be two installations. ‘Our World in a Window’, a window exhibition featuring the animations and mechanised artwork produced by 49 children in 18 counties in Ireland as part of Helium Arts remote ‘Distance Creates’ programme.
In Spring 2021, children aged 9-12 living with long-term health conditions have been exploring the world of animation guided by Helium Artist Chelsea Canavan.
From tinfoil and claymation characters to foam sculptures and hand-drawn illustrations, the children’s stories have come to life in unique and imaginative ways, showing persistence and creativity in the face of adversity.
‘Footfall’, a live installation by the BaHa visual art collective will occupy the other window space at Pulled. It will fill a creative work space in an occupied building with music and sculpture, built during a live atmospheric installation. Reflecting on the spaces and places we work, live and spend time in, the installation is improvised and involved, set to the background of the unpredictability of the inhabited vs the uninhabited. BaHa aims to highlight the energy and movement returning to these spaces, after a prolonged closure. Times are 7-7.30pm Fri) (Live installation) and 10am – 6pm (Sat & Sun)
The work of film animator, Jodie Mack will be presented across a film screening and a looped installation. Filmmaker Jodie Mack is a firm favourite amongst the SMF crew and we’re delighted to present her 2013 ode to pop-culture, Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project from Serious Business, one of Sligo’s newest social spaces. The screening takes place on Sunday 21st at 7pm and will be followed by an after-party marking the end of the weekend’s activities with live DJs and good vibes.
Dusty Stacks of Mom is many things rolled into one: an experimental animation, an extravagant rock opera, a film about a mother and a daughter and the documentary about the changing tides of culture. To the tune of a unique rendition of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Jodie Mack animates the contents of her mother’s poster and postcard wholesale business, mish mashing decades worth of pop cultural detritus and the ins and outs of this little factory of personal and collective memories.
In addition to Mack’s feature film, Spilt Milk is also proud to present four of her short films (Unsubscribe #2: All Eyes on the Silver Screen (2010), Razzle Dazzle (2014), Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant (2017) and Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty (2019)) which will screen in an installation format in the Blend Cafe window. This looping showcase will be available to view throughout the festival and will provide a window into this singular artist’s work.
The screening is at 7pm and the closing party is at 8pm. Tickets available here
