Now in its 24th year, the Dublin Fringe Festival is positively flourishing as one of Ireland’s most prominent multi-disciplinary arts festivals. This year in particular, the Fringe is showcasing a wonderful array of diverse artistic spectacles and installations. The Dublin Fringe Festival will run from September 8th to 23rd in venues all across Dublin city centre. Below are a few innovative pieces to watch out for.
Chilean artistic and architectural collective Mil M2 will exhibit their cross-city exhibition series, Proyecto Pregunta (The Question Project), in association with the Dublin Fringe. This endeavour will ask Dublin’s inhabitants contemplative questions, which will be printed in large letters onto a portable scaffolding. The installation will rove around the city to a different location each day. The piece itself offers a critique of participatory politics in the urban environment. In an era of information saturation, it presents an opportunity to engage communities in discourse while occupying public spaces, and to foster artistic social dissent. The project has been an expansive five-year endeavour that has traversed Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Barcelona and Berlin. It aims to establish a long catalogue of questions posed by cumulative dialogue. Keep an eye out for some thoughtful queries inspired and supplied by your fellow Dubliners.
In photography series Epoch, 18 year-old Ayesha Ahmad documents the tumultuous, exhilarating summer lived by recently-graduated secondary school students on the cusp of embarking on a new phase in their lives. This show is presented in conjunction with Collapsing Horse Theatre Company as part of the Young Radicals strand of the Fringe. Fresh from finishing her exams, Ahmad’s initiative offers an exciting and unique insight into the final breezy school days. Find Epoch at 2 Curved St, Temple Bar.
Dancer Liv O’Donoghue’s apocalyptic art piece, “After”, was first performed in the Project Pop Up series in April and now returns in a full-length production for the Fringe. Using mixed media and live-stream video, O’Donoghue depicts the aftermath of a post-environmental world. O’Donoghue combines movement and humour to create a work that really compels. The end of the world never looked so serene. The piece will be shown at the Project Arts Centre.
“Heed, To The Mound” is a once-off durational performance art piece by Emma Brennan that will be held on September 22nd at The Complex. It is a statement on the ever-changing gender landscape and on women’s role in society, exploring the spaces that are being occupied by women now more than ever before – physically, vocally, politically and economically. The atmosphere of the piece will be shaped and informed by both audience and artist, as Brennan investigates the relationship between producer and consumer.
