Maria Kerin(-Walsh), artist curator choregrapher.


Welcome to my blog. It introduces some of the processes and projects that I have been involved in recent years as an independent, rural based artist-curator and choreographer, working towards sustaining a slower rural based lifestyle, through creativity that also supports autonomy and self organisation within an inter-connective model of collaboration.

My movement-based arts practice provokes and informs a translocal artist-curatorial and choreographic practice, manifesting into peer to peer networks and systems to support collaborations presently in Ireland, Estonia and Sweden, in an interdisciplinary practice without borders.

I am particularly interested in deep listening, sensing time and opening up memories through awareness/presence as an embodied creativity process and ethical inquiry, informed through somatic principles that supports my practice concerned with our relationships with nature and consciousness. For example see blog page 'Post domestic: The future is the forest". Work with Kristina Kvamme, Sweden, since August 2019, in her walking practice that links through image and text live online on Fridays nourishes this. Ongoing explorations with Rachel Sweeney through Articulating Thresholds expands this inquiry.

Since 2018 I've been working on translocal, transdisciplinary collaborations in experimental heritage, with Professor Bodil Petersson of Linneaus University and members of Experimental Heritage network Sweden. This has led to us forming Karum-Creevagh, a group of artists, archaeologists and ecologists from Ireland and Sweden, concerned with our future.
See www.experimentalheritage.com for a detailed archive.

See Outrider Artists.wix.com for more info on local rural networks and cross-cultural sharing.
For other online images, see my kind partner Michael Walsh's documentation of my work:

https://issuu.com/michaelwalsh/docs/10_days_embodied_creative_process_d


https://issuu.com/michaelwalsh/docs/future_domestic_2013_visual_diary


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSYpxRfzKp0&t=4s


Should you wish to contact me for more information please text 00353877711033 or email: kerinmaria@gmail.com
See www.thefloatingvillage.net for collaboration with Dr Rachel Sweeney as part of The Floating Village eco-somatic practice since 2019.

Monday, October 25, 2010

New Media- skype projects




“Site Meetings 170610” 

LIVE broadcast from a sculpture pond outside a library as part of the AbunDANCE International Choreography and Dance Festival,  Karlstad, Sweden on the 17th June 2010. This process of movement inquiry was developed over  a 9 months daily movement practice focusing on inner listening, contact improvisation and authentic movement in response to site by Alexandra Boettcher, Maeve Collins & Maria Kerin.  Performed by Collins and Kerin and shown live to a second audience through Skype new media and video projection in the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co. Clare. 



See picasso album for more images of the performance in Sweden take by Michael Walsh.



Karlstad, Sweden:






Outrider Artists - friendship

Friendship- a sustainable model for supporting a rural art practice to show work abroad has lead to the 
network of Outrider Artists. Formed last October in my kitchen when I invited 6 artists friends to 
come together and offer support for each others individual practices to get work shown abroad. 
Friendship is the common ground between us.

Participatory movement practice: Friendship - a sustainable model for interaction

Political HEARTworks
The heart piece in the river Inagh in Ennistymon resonates with us locally. We are interested in it as a site of contention and wanted to respond to this site though a participatory artwork. We took this opportunity to acknowledge friendship as a sustainable model of our interactive process,  as an integral part of the making of our work. The development of our art process practice has been constructed through friendship and we couldnt create without our friends involvement on many levels. So we invited 12 artist friends to partake in meditation led movement manifesting into performance with mobile phones, taking stills of the site and the movement generated over 3 days exploration.


Out of this process we gathered all the images that were taken in this unusual process- using the mobile phone as an embodied extension of the hand rather than the eye. Maeve and I created a work of photomontage for the Clare People, entitled political HEARTworks. A 2 page spread was printed on the 24th August 2010.

Coalitions

Alignment
A selection of images documenting Alignment from the Mutual Exchange Exhibition in the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co. Clare, October 20-Nov 15, 2009.

This process of  artistic intervention is a coalition: supporting 2 different art practices. Fiona Woods initally intervened in the space by suspending 3 assemblages from the ceiling. In a performative intervention over 4 performance Maria Kerin was invited by Fiona to respond to the sculpture. This time based cumulative research process brought 2 practices into temporary alignment as the work unfolded through the making. As part of the research the work was documented in different ways; through Fiona photographing the moments of alignment, through stationary video from above the space and finally 5 artists were invited in to record video snips on their mobile phones.

Collaborations

Freeze
Freeze is a site specific dance piece that was commissioned by Inis Cealtra Arts Festival, Mountshannon.  
A collaboration between Maria Kerin, Alex Boethcher and Jance Schurrman over 6 weeks rehersal to create a 20 minute piece choreographed many of the individual phrases but not the seqence. Informed by our daily practice of inner listening together in search for awareness and presence through embodied movement, release technique, contact improvisation and body-mind centering, inspired by a visit to the cliff edge at the Cliffs of Mohar. Body movements explored balance, weight shift and groundedness and finding edges within and out.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Biography

Biography
Trans-disciplinary artist Maria Kerin combines embodied movement through dance with process-based visual art practice to create installations, performances and new media body works.

Through body-based art work Kerin explores points of meeting with site, artist and audience in an autobiographical enquiry into sites of contention. Often this response includes working with other artists using the model of friendship to form creative coalitions.

A graduate of Fine Art from DIT ’98 and a Bachelor of Business Studies from UL,’91, Kerin also holds an MA in Contemporary Dance performance from UL ’06. Her work has been included in group and solo exhibitions, theatres, art festivals, public commissions, and reaches audience through alternative site-specific locations, printed publications, the internet, mobile phones and live through skype.

Maria Kerin has also curated and mentored nationally and internationally. Founder member of Outrider Artists her web presence includes danceworkslive.com and sitemeetings.blogspot.com.