BY JOHN FITZGERALD
A former bacon factory in Callan played host to a most unusual artwork last week.
The Quickening by Artist Deirdre O Mahony drew a capacity audience to the Power House on Mill Lane. It’s a film that conveys a heart-felt plea to change our ways as we arrive at a critical phase in the ever-worsening ecological and climate crises.
The nationwide exhibition of the project opened at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin in March and further screenings will be held in the months ahead.
Availing of stunning imagery, voiceover, and words set to music, The Quickening hones in on the primacy of food production and land use in this time of great fear and uncertainty over where we’re going as a species. We’re reminded of how central the soil is to all our lives and treated to a visually stunning close-up view of nature at work in the countryside: We see dung beetles breaking down manure, and further activity deep within the soil where bacteria and microorganisms turn organ matter into plant nutrients.
The unavoidable truth looms large on screen that a small thin crust of soil controls the existence of every creature. From this intimate contact with basic natural processes, the film provides snatches of chatter and commentary about trends in agriculture, about how, sadly, in this industry; “the only line is the bottom line.”
We hear static-like macabre allusions to the ongoing polarized debates over food. The voices of frustrated farmers break through. For years they were advised to produce food by one method (a highly intensive one) and now have to change tack and do things differently, even as they confront extreme weather…drought, floods, and erosion…and multiple threats to their ancient and now heavily modernized way of life.
At times, I felt I was watching and listening to a re-run of the Citizen’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, this time put to music and rendered as an artwork.
It wasn’t all cosmic doom and gloom, thankfully. The ineffable beauty of nature and our world is also emphasized and the film has a message of hope: that there’s still time to change and save the planet, or at least our own little patch of it.
The Power House, formerly a building where local pigs breathed their last before being converted into sausages, was ideal for the showing. Apart from its state-of-the-art facilities, no trace remains of its previous life as the bacon factory.
Patrons remarked on the uncanny transformation…and the possible aptness of the venue for a screening of O’ Mahony’s ground-breaking film: It might be seen as a kind of metaphor for changing times and attitudes as we battle to salvage what remains of our biodiversity…
