Super 8mm film (hand processed and digitised), sound
The piece takes as its point of departure an old Irish lament ‘Na Gamhna Gealla’, sung from the perspective of a woman mourning her rural independent life before marriage. The song was passed on through the Irish oral tradition for centuries before it was recorded and preserved by song collector Neillí Ní Dhomhnaill in the 1970s. The piece explores this intergenerational transmission of women's histories through melody. The micro movements and physicality of listening, learning and singing become the focal point - as the melody impresses itself on the bodies of three women, light registers the bodies on film. Meanwhile the melody is translated by the artist onto the theremin which becomes the soundscape, one sound synced with the bodies of all three women.
'Conductor' was commissioned by VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art and Carlow Arts Festival for the programme 'Woman in the Machine'.
