EFA

Ciaerán Ó Dochartaigh

Sub-Arctic Expedition, 2010-2011

Video

Courtesy of Ciaerán Ó Dochartaigh, London, UK

The footage in Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh’s Sub-Arctic Installation – Irish Canadian Transatlantic Site-Specific Piece was shot in two parts, the first made in Ireland and the second in Canada.  In Ireland, Ó Dochartaigh filmed at the mountain lake Lough Fad, where fish are purported to be the Arctic Char, a rare post-glacial colonizer – so rare, in fact, that this claim has never been proven.  Ó Dochartaigh challenges the story by embarking on a fishing trip.  The video was shot onboard a hybrid of traditional Irish and Canadian canoes, which had been adapted for fishing with the addition of trawling accessories. It depicts the crew re-enacting a voyage of discovery as a staged Arctic expedition. The second part of the work is footage of the importation of a paper boat, folded into a suitcase, that the artist reconstituted at The Forks in Winnipeg, Canada, a site with a long and storied history of industrial and aboriginal tribal importance, with a number of interesting fish stories of its own.