Amanda Coogan – FIX25

Temporary Linking, Temporary Unlinking, after Sonia Knox

Saturday 22 November, 12-7pm

In 1981 a young woman with Northern Irish roots spins the wheel of a sewing machine and hangs three dresses on a white wall; Sonia Knox’s, Temporary Unlinking performance work. Our evidence of this is a 3-minute section from Stuart Brisley and Ken McMullen’s seminal film Being and Doing (1984). The film is a deeply political work that constructs a viewpoint of performance art as a practice emerging from within the vacuum of social disjunction forced by industrialization, which destroyed rural rituals and traditions. In voiceover Brisley directs us to consider that: ‘Performance behaviors are ghost dances in the dying culture’.

Sandra Johnson and Amanda Coogan will develop a simultaneous action in response to the sparse remnants of Knox’s performance Temporary Unlinking and her audio artwork, Walking Glass. Their action is intended as a reclaiming and re-linking with Knox through embodied acts, and as a respectful tribute to the legacy of the women who have pioneered ephemeral art practice in Ireland.  

Free, no booking required.