Bones and the aging female body

 The body clock is ticking and I'm very grateful to ongoing research with Dr. Rachel Sweeney that incorporates my changing multitemporal body (see www.thefloatingvillage.net)

In September 2024, for an immersive weekend at the Centre for Moving Ecologies, Schumacher College, Devon, UK, 

I contributed to an invited group sharing our embodied knowledge around bones and the ageing female body. 

Joined Rachel with Anna Harvey, dance artist (UK) and Gail Mahon (NI) ceramic artist specialising in bone in her arts and science PhD research. The synergy produced some golden threads and deep deep inquiry.

I shared my interest in minerals through Margaret Roberts book,  Tissue Salts or Healthy Living and my personal research on herbs, all shared through a sense-based, eco-somatic movement-based process.

Rachel and I expanded on the olfactory research that we did on residency in the Auvergne region this April, as part of our Articulating Thresholds process; embodying site-specific research on Douglas Furs and St . Hilliares essential oils and speaking our findings.

Polytunnel Art- a community wellbeing project for Asylem seekers in Bellharbour, Co.Clare.

 Plant, Paint and Place; Polytunnel Art in the Burren

I was invited by the Burrin Community Group and Donnacha Fahy, polytunnel owner and horticulturalist, to offer an art class that could lift the spirits of the new neighbours in the village of Bellharbour where I grew up. Part-funded by Healthy Clare micro fund. ( I had helped set up Failte Isteach chat club that I co-ordinate in Bellharbour since May so I got to know some new neighbours and their interests.)

 I designed a creative workshop around 6 herbs common to Ukraine and Ireland that grow over the winter in both locations. Working with Donnacha and a group of Ukrainians each week we engage with a specific herb. Coriander & parsley to date. We draw, tell stories, sing, paint, taste, smell, eat and plant new seeds in the Polytunnel that Donnacha will water over the winter. It's a privilege to share such lore and insights across cultures and I'm so impressed how the Ukrainians who are partaking just love to draw and make no bones about it! No complementing but no pressure- no competitiveness, just enjoying the delight of drawing together on a huge sheet of brown paper. I recognise I come from a creative culture of shame, we are never good enough ... so its very healing for all of us there to embrace drawing for drawings sake!

Project Affectionate participate in Common Ground climate community action.

Project Affectionate, eco-somatic movement collective 

In October 2023 Sofia Ananda, Herminia Ayala and I started an eco-somatic movement group, meeting at Teach Ceoil on Tuesday mornings since then. With more than 13 people joining us over the past year and such interest in moving together, through the interconnection of nature and the felt senses with spatial awareness, we set up Project Affectionat as a collective. 

We shared different practices including Contact imrov for the winter and now I offer a Re-Wilding Bodies workshop each week for free -moving through the senses, incorporating Antoinette Spillanes Seasonal Score, Mary Nunans Release technique, Body Mind Centering, Joan Davies Origins, and many more techniques that I've picked up along the way and through an MA in Contemporary Dance UL '06. This mindful meditative process prioritizes restorative movement practice for all abilities, but is particularly suited for burnt-out embodied activists! 

Project Affectionate as a group is presently focusing on our embodied connection to water and our concerns for our drinking water quality and the river water decline in our area and indeed everywhere with climate change, neglect, bad habits and dangerous practices against nature.

We took part in p(Art)y section of HERE and Now, Live Art Festival 10th August, 2024

https://rachelmacmanus.art/portfolio-items/here-and-now-events-upcoming/

We also took part in Culture Night p(ART)y Live Art event in the Peace Park, Ennis.

https://culturenight.ie/event/party-here-and-now-culture-night/

We got selected as one of the community volunteer groups to participate in Common Ground:

Common Ground is a project from Common Knowledge, funded by Rethink Ireland. The project is aimed at bringing rural communities in North Clare together to learn the skills needed to start biodiversity and climate action projects/meitheals in their local towns and villages.

Over the course of the programme, representatives of each participating group have had the opportunity to learn new skills, meet other local communities and enjoy shared meals at The Common Knowledge Centre near Kilfenora, connecting both with Munster’s natural heritage and with each other in a meaningful way.  The impact of this project is that they will take everything they've learnt and share it with their communities through working together in their climate-action meitheals. This project focuses on both positive environmental action, and on social inclusion and building community!' 

 Welcome to this update of my blog outlining my interdisciplinary movement arts practice with special emphasis on community projects here in North Clare 

and well-being facilitation that I share through eco-somatic processes 

as an artist/curator/choreographer

Maria Kerin 

(legally Maria Kerin-Walsh since 2022)

For my professional movement practice please see www.thefloatingvillage.net where I collaborate with Dr. Rachel Sweeney, Head of Movement, Mind & Ecology MA course in Schumacher College, Dartington, Devon U.K.

Updating this blog as the past few years Ive been focused on www.thefloatingvillage.net

 Please call back in early October as I'm scheduled this week to add a lot of local information to this blog 

showing my creative community sharing and facilitation as an artist and wellbeing facilitator based in North Clare, near Ennistymon. Miamrua is my instagram and am Maria Kerin on Facebook.

For the past few years ecology and movement research practice with Dr Rachel Sweeney, Movement, Mind & Ecology MA course lead, Schumacher College, Dartington Hall, Devon, UK

 see www.thefloatingvillage.net

Thank you. 

This has been an exciting month in the Elbow Room as I launch

 ReWilding Bodies

a participatory creative movement practice, 

embodied through the senses, guided by ethics and eco-somatic principles, for ur future.

First ReWilding Bodies Workshops will be at The Elbow Room, Burren Artists Studios @The Gentian Press, Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare on Tuesday nights starting in September.  

  ReWilding Bodies Research  has commenced with Rachel Sweeney and  Tara Mooney in the Elbow Room this summer with Abi Ighodara coming this weekend and Russell Brown in September.

Skying - a course in embodied colour and painting

January -February 2021 SKYING

Constable termed 'skying' as a verb; lying on the ground looking up at the sky. While we didn't actually lie on the ground, we did connect through movement practice to being grounded as the portal to this experimental creative process.   

I developed an 8 weeks live participatory online course working with 6 participants exploring colour through an embodied creativity process; a sensorial inquiry, exploring our embodied relations to the sky as our subject matter through water-colour painting- Sounds, textures, smells, colours and our imaginations.

Redefines our relations with the space around us, focusing on cloud-watching, a great distraction from the shifting ground of the pandemic.
 

Tidal Welly Walking 1st October 2020 onwards

On the1st October 2020 on Lahinch beach I invited a group of local friends/artists to partake in an embodied pilot 'walk,' a somatic movement based exploration experiencing the conditions of the space between high and low tide on the beach.  Exploring the possibilities of sensorial walking through somatic insights from Body-mind Centering, Origins (Joan Davies) Traditional Chinese Medicine integration, contemporary dance techniques and Antoinette Spillane Still Point method. 

This process of inquiring is an experimental, open-ended, art and movement-based creative research practice being explored between Rachel Sweeney and Maria Kerin and co-aligners under the umbrella title ARTICULATING THRESHOLDS through a transdisciplinary, translocal, post site-specific lens.

This practice developed over the Autumn/Winter when possible with different participants. 

Thanks to all who participated. We will return to the beach after the lockdown.

Articulating Thresholds- collaboration with Rachel Sweeney

As part of our collaborative process through Karum-Creevagh research framework, Rachel and I are exploring a movement-based research approach to cultural heritage research through 'adaptation' and weaving back and forth through timelines, in a tanslocal, post-site specific inquiry,  supported by somatic principles: 

Articulating Thresholds - an afternoon of tea, talking and moving around questions of how we dance with change.

We had a two-week residency at the Burren College of Art (February 2020), which included 2 open studio invites to artists, dancers, environmentalists, archaeologists, and community elders to join us in a participatory multi-disciplinary inquiry, including storytelling, drawing, materials sharing (bone), movement and dance.

"Consciously striving to dance at the thresholds and slippages of artistic and environmental disciplines, we ask how adaptation might act as a strategy to inform our conscious encounter with radical change. Looking back as we move forward, our work maps timelines of Irish cultural heritage practices, particularly around water rituals in sacred sites that inform both metaphoric and real-time understandings of body-place relations".

We have facilitated 3 local sharings this year and continue our research process together through weekly movement practice sharings online.

Burren College Residency, 9 Dec- 22 Dec 2019

The road that leads nowhere.

In December 2019, I spent 2 weeks daily driving an inspirational route, passing Poulnabrone dolmen and others, passing the road that leads nowhere, as I made my way over Ailwee mountain, to the beautiful Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare. The journey of about 40 minutes from my home outside Ennistymon set the atmosphere for my studio work, pulling me back in time, playing with the multitemporal.

PhD on hold

Year 2 of my PhD research into decision making through somatic principles for transdisciplinary collaborations is on hold once again.

in search of the eel...

February 2019 when starting my explorations with Danny Burke for Karum Creevagh Experimental Heritage process connecting with Kilshanny,  I had a dream that was to be a point of departure : inside a box were eels coming out of the belly of a body.

For the past 9 months Danny and I have regularly met and discussed art and archaeology of the area, starting with Kilmakreehy on the estuary and going upriver to Kilshanny.

See Creevagh- Kilshanny Research blog for photos.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1189041774148222894#editor/target=post;postID=7531734188535431696;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname

interdisciplinary movement based arts practice, Ankor

Ankor, a European interdisciplinary movement based arts practice constellation established in Sept 2017 in Cavan, Ireland

A European interdisciplinary 

movement-based arts practice constellation focused around peer sharing that aims to research and create platforms to support our art practice and processes (visual art and/or contemporary dance) 

This grew from the initial concept by Maria Kerin, an interdisciplinary artist-curator, in response to her own needs to link with a creative like-minded community of movement based artists and her desire to support and share movement based research and knowledge horizontally. 

During 2017, from meetings with artists Alexandra Rafferty, IRE, Helle Kvamme, SW, Mairead Vaughen, IRE, Russell Brown US, and Dr. Eleftheria Rapti, Greece, the urgency to establish a community was apparent. 

In September 2017, Maria Kerin invited Russell Brown, Daire Skuze (radio producer/folklorist) and Alexandra Rafferty to a sharing of practices over 3 days in her studio and home in Ennistymon. Co.Clare.

In response to an invite by Cavan Arts Officer Catriona O’Reilly offering a residency in her home in Cavan and create something for Culture Night 2017, Maria Kerin curated Cavan hothouse research residency, inviting a gathering of movement based artists in a peer to peer sharing week.

4 O’Clock TEAS as part of Culture Night….Belturbert, Cavan.

Participants: Helle Kvamme, artist-curator from Yellow Box, Oland, Sweden, Russell Browne, USA, dance artist and scholar, Dr. Miread Vaughen, IRE, contemporary dancer/choreographer and international visual artist Patricia McKenna from Cavan. On route we had an introductory meeting and brief movement based sharing with limerick-based Irish artist Isolde Donohoe. 

Maria Kerin and Russell Brown are researching the potential to form Ankor into a legal identity through the structure of an integrated authentic organisational model, that could host many artists participating at any level and any way they want, based on their own needs but with sharing at the heart of the connection. 

Helle Kvamme invited Patricia Mckenna to make work for “The Forest” an ongoing research exhibition/process in Kalmar and she exhibited Mairead Vaughen’s film at the opening with Maria Kerin giving a participatiory performance/preseantation at the opening. 

Both Maria and Patricia did movement based research in the forest over the week in Sweden and the ongoing conversations on methodology and process continue between Maria with Helle.

Sept 2017- April 2018 will be updated by Friday 20th April

Apologies to all who want to know about;

Ankor, a European Movement based arts practice collective I founded in Sept 2017 in Cavan, Ireland

Performance 4 O'Clock TEAS, Culture night, Belturbet, Co. Cavan

My ongoing work with Helle Kvamme, Yellow Box, Oland, Sweden; my presentation performace in Kalmar Art Museum and workshop in the forest in Oland with Kristina Kvamme. Oct 17.

Ankor second meeting to research "creating space" invited by Dr. Mairead Vaughan and selected by Uilleann West Cork Arts Centre, West Cork, Ireland for a weeks long residency with Swedish guests Helle Kvamme and Anna Lindtal

My ongoing research into receptivity and body listening: invited Ulo Vihma on residency to my home, Mrua Studios, Luisne, Monreal North Ennistymon. He gave 2 free workshops on Receptivity, Body listening and conflict resolution. Feb 2018

Curating a week long interdisciplinary arts practice sharing between Burren based artists and Oland Think Tank, researching processes and arts practices informed by artists living and being in place, in this instance the karst Burren region, focusing on embodied creative knowledge of there.  March 2018

and ongoing PhD research through my arts practice

This blog is in the process of being updated and should be completed by Friday 20th April.
Please call back then! 

Arts practice, embodied timelines and experimental archeology in the Burren 5-10 March.

Following on from Patricia Mckenna and my visit to Kalmar and Oland, (thanks to the creativity and kindness of Helle Kvamme as part of our ongoing arts practice together,) and Bodil Petersson's experimental archeology cultural heritage reserach group with Oland Think Tank,

a return visit to the Burren was called for! 

Helle Kvamme and I devised and curated the following week: 

Puicead:

Arts practice, embodied timelines and experimental archeology in the Burren
 5-10 March 2018.

In a week of interdisciplinary arts practice sharing, from puppets appearing on Wedge tombs with poetry readings and faith healing in Corcomroe Abbey to somatic movement practice deep in the dark of the Ailwee Caves, 13 artists and archeologists from Öland island, Sweden, got a unique taste of the Burren. The week’s research of a karst landscape is part of the experimental cultural heritage project lead by Associate Professor Bodil Petersson, Archeology Department with artists, archeologists and researchers of Öland cultural think tank with bases in Öland and Kalmar University. Öland Is an island off the East coast of Sweden and has a world heritage site, ALVARET. This interdisciplinary exchange was initiated by Helle Kvamme, artist curator at Yellow Box, Öland, Sweden and myself Clare artist curator Maria Kerin who has been working with them giving movement based arts practice workshops in Öland.

From being served Wlid Kitchen seaweed soup as they exchanged arts practice gifts with local artists in the Courthouse Gallery,  with thanks to Una O'Dwyer for the delicious meal and the kindness and generosity of Anne Mulle Curator of the Courthouse gallery for hosting it.

To hearing Patricia McKenna, Danny Burke and Patrick McCormack connect site specific arts practice, embodied timelines and experimental archeology in the Burren at a conference in the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon:

poster design thanks to Michael Walsh, emajoe disain

To visiting archelogical dig led by Dr. Ros O'Maolduin in Kilnaboy with some surprise guests popping up!

They went home with St. Brigid’s dolls, thanks to Daire Skuce who gave us the experience of a visit to St. Brigids well, Liscannor. 

They also made bog prints thanks to Fiona O'Dwyer who invited them into her studio in Ennistymon and gave a presentation on how her work is informed by place 

Got insights in to burren healing landscape, thanks to Ailish Hayden and Brid Keeley, poetry and cultural heritage stories of place, hanks to Frank Golden and of course thanks to the interdisciplinary nature of this exchange we all made new friends. 

Ailish Hayden giving her presentation about arts practice reserach process and Mauri methods in Corcomroe Abbey, Bellharbour, Co.Clare. photos thanks to Patricia McKenna

A special big heartfelt thank you to all involved who gave of their expertise for free and Jane at the Ailwee Caves who facilitated my somatic movement based practice in there with the group; 10 minutes in total, complete damp darkness, a km deep into the belly of Ailwee mountain!

Helle Kvamme in Ailwee Cave, photo compliments of Patricia McKenna

Dr. Eamon Doyle gave a presentation on the Burren GeoPark and world heritage site in the Courthouse Gallery. Seen here talking to Patricia Mckenna.

Oland Think Tank final evening drawing in the Courthouse Gallery:

time to go home...

                                                       until we meet again...

Glad to announce Patricia McKenna, Dr.Eamon Doyle, Danny Burke, Dr. Ros O’Maoldoin, Dr. Mary Nunan and Deirdre Carr are invited with myself on a reciprocal visit to a symposium in Sweden in Septermber 2018 to continue our research. 

Artist curator peer to peer gifting at Puka- Head over Heals

Practice based shared processes at Head over Heals

Live skype connection with Nick Bryson, contemporary dancer/choreographer and curator IRE
during dinner gathering, Russell Brown and Rowen Gillis 

Estonian dancer Heli Kohv gives a demonstration of folk dance

Evelyn Griznich leads us through a weaving in the forest process

and then we unweave what we have created...

Sven Eric Stamberg introduces Vedelik's printed edition with Michal Walsh and Marge Laast

Erki Kasemets, Russell Brown, Kaarina and Michael Walsh

Tanel Rander, John Griznich, Jaan Ulst, Evelyn Griznich, 

Russell Brown bringing us on a walking presentation

Sven Erik, Kaarina and Jaan participating in Russells participatory presentation

Participants in Head over Heals, artist curator peer to peer gifting

Participants in Head over Heals, artist curator peer to peer gifting

Irish, Baltic and Nordic States:

Sven Erik Stamberg, Marge Laast and Erki Kasemets, artist curators, members of Vedelik, Tallinn, EE

Russell Browne, traditional Irish dancer, vogue and trapise artist, US/IRE

Jaan Ulst, folk and contemporary dance artist, choreographer and curator, EE

Nick and Signe Bryson, IRE and LV (Skype connection)

Rowan Geddis, UK,  based in Stockholm, Sweden

Evelyn and John Grizinich, MoKS, artists and arts organisers, MoKS, Mooste, Estonia 

Kaarina , Huuto gallery, Helsinki, Finland

Tanel Rander, artist and curator, EE

Signe Pucene, SERDE, Latvia, will arrive for the weekend before the event and start the research sharing then..

Host: 

Michael Walsh, graphic designer/photographer, IRE/EE

Curator:

Maria Kerin, IRE

Others interested via internet connection:  Helle Kvamme, Yellow Box, Oland, Sweden

Trudi Van der Elsen, Clare, Ireland

____________________________________________________________________________

Russell Brown and Michael Walsh were intrinsic to the formation of Head over Heals and helped develop the schedule with insigthful contribution from Signe Pucena, artist curator at SERDE, Latvia.

Signe Pucena curator of SERDE, Latvia, here with daughter Trine, came the weekend before the event to start the gifting process with a focused walk in the forests picking mushrooms and herbs and preparing a meal

Signe finds herbs from the land to prepare a tea mix for the group to inspire us!

Signe Pucena and Trine have a time for reflection in Puka on the raft.

Drawing our way into the weekend structure, Michael Walsh, Russell Brown and Maria taking photo

Visualising the forthcoming weekend, Michael Walsh with Russell Brown

Researching a new artist led curatorial process for peer to peer sharing through gifting

Long afternoons were spent in MoKS researching approaches to arts based organisations and dialogue that stems from arts practice methods. I focused on the authentic, integrated organisational structure defined by:

Frederic Laloux in 'Reinventing Organisations', 
the essay ‘On Dialogue’ by Dr David Bohn,  
and a book that actually just jumped off the shelf at me here at MoKs,  
'The Gift' by Lewis Hyde.

Out of this specific research evolved the structure for an event entitled 
Head over Heals, a gathering of 15 interdisciplinary artist curators, artist organisers and artist programmers from the Irish Nordic Baltic States interested in creatively exploring the possibilities of sharing through gifting. 

All these artists curators I had worked with before and knew their methodology so I proposed that we met for a weekend of arts practice sharing, co-hosted by Irish graphic designer and photographer, Michael Walsh, in a cabin by a forest in Puka, Estonia, 26-27th August 2017.

(Over the past 20 years, I have met many artists who have become curators of their own practice and for others, to meet their own creative needs of autonomy and freedom as well as site specific and artistic needs, (as reflected in my own interdisciplinary arts practice). Such artist curators often work in isolation and outside institutions with little support and community. Sensing that a supportive, sharing community could exist within this arts practice from my experience of working with you all, I invited them to help create  RAFT. )

Funding yet to be received. Intentions are to gather, offer and see where this sharing and gifting leads...) 

The Curatorial Format for the weekend: 

Head over Heals

a gathering of interdisciplinary artist organisers and artist curators from the Irish Nordic Baltic States interested in creatively exploring the possibilities of peer to peer sharing and gifting through arts practice processes

with a view to forming RAFT, an arts practice community

Saturday afternoon, 26th to Sunday afternoon, 27th August 2017 

So come be head over heals with us and explore, play, talk, laugh, share, gift and create.

here at Sacred Oak Hill, Puka, Valgamaa, Estonia

Saturday afternoon, 26th to Sunday afternoon, 27th August 2017 

Conversations and mentoring with Russell Brown

Russell Brown, American Irish award-winning traditional Irish dancer, trapese artist and Vogue teacher joined me in MoKS for a week at the end of August 2017 and we spent some time researching embodied arts practice processes. I had the privilige of watching him rehearse for his PhD arts practice first performance and give some feedback, basing my mentoring on awareness of presence and visual/spatial sensitivity. Always thought and senses provoking conversations with Russell around topics such as artists as curators and to how we can be more present in our performances.