SacrumProfanum

SacrumProfanum is a multi-media work (music, film, texts) based on ancient stone carvings found in Ireland called Sheela-na-gigs: naked and abject female figures that prominently depict oversized vulvas. A feature of the Irish landscape for a millennium, I situate the Sheela as ‘witness’ to Ireland’s history of colonization, the disintegration of its Gaelic culture, church and state patriarchy, its integration into global-Capitalist networks, and a current phenomenon I coin ‘self-racialization’ (fabricated cultural narratives such as Riverdance and Celtic Woman, which are not only ahistorical but further airbrush over actual histories of oppression and destruction). The profound damage done to Gaelic culture forms the basis for artistic methodologies employing elements of fragmentation, disintegration and abjection, as central tenets of composition (including collaborators’ work in text and film) created through an ‘aesthetic of damage’. These are implicitly built into compositions (disintegrating processes, fragmented melodies, distortions) and audible through explicit use of distorted sounds, deformed samples of traditional instruments, aggressive vocalisations, abject language, etc.). These counterpoise current modes of traditional Irish music that nurture nostalgia for idealized pasts through aesthetically pleasing modes. In various movements, the distortion of uillean pipe music (being deeply representational of Irish landscape and myth) recalibrates that memory and myth towards a postcolonial music of witness and exposure. The ‘voice’ of the Sheela—heard in HAG—represents an explicit and abject retort to forces of patriarchy and institutional abuse conducted upon women in Ireland. In creating a project that accounts for itself politically (channelling feminist and postcolonial theories), SacrumProfanum seeks to conduct autopsies on received historical narratives and ideologies of power. Comprising multiple modalities, SacrumProfanum has been performed, exhibited and published in Spain, Ireland and the UK.

SacrumProfanum is an hour-long multimedia work for amplified ensemble, tape, text and film that explores the enigmatic stone carvings found in Ireland known as Sheela-na-gigs. Benjamin Dwyer spent ten years traveling across Iereland (and parts of Britain) researching, photographing and sketching these mysterious figures. Responding artistically through the Sheela, Dwyer has created a multimedia work exploring themes such as feminism, colonialism, identity, religion, symbol, rite, sexuality and the disintegration of Gaelic culture. In a score that combines contemporary music interfacing with traditional Irish forms, instruments and sean-nós singing, SacrumProfanum explores these themes through raw, visceral and often abject music. The work includes a collaboration with the American filmmaker Dylan Griffith. In the film Gierador (with music by Dwyer) Griffith has created visual meditations on landscape, the female body (and its objectification), and rite while offering perceptive critiques of contemporary exploitations of Irish culture and abstract visual responses to the central themes. SacrumProfanum features internationally renowned performers: violist Garth Knox, flautist Emma Coulthard, early Irish harpist and sean-nós singer Siobhán Armstrong. Poet Jona Xhepa has written a specially commissioned poem. The composer also performs on harp and bowed guitar.