“There were days and nights when I really thought I could feel the whole island shaking” recalls Philip Fogarty of his month long residency at Áras Éanna in February. “The storm waves were that powerful, there was this continuous roaring coming over the hill from the south western shore.” Fogarty admits, though, that such thinking is very likely more a product of his mindset as musician, sound artist and multimedia practitioner. “I’m naturally going to be on the lookout for the ways in which sound extends into our lived experience, so of course with that kind of drama around, I’d be there almost literally with my ear to the ground around Cill Ghobnait, a mile or more from that shore, wondering if I could pick up some thrumming. I wouldn’t bet against a seismograph not registering something, though.”
Fogarty was immediately struck by conditions on Inis Oírr in the wake of the notorious Storm Éowyn which had just passed through, causing unprecedented structural damage right across the country – in the face of this, the island’s iconic stone walls stood largely unperturbed. “That spoke to me straight away,” he reflected. “That in many cases if we just look at our traditions, we’ve already got the knowledge to deal with the challenges we face now. It’s what Lillis Ó Laoire has remarked on – innovation is fine as far it goes, but we mustn’t forget to mine the skills and knowledge we already have if we want to forge ahead – I think cultural awareness can tip the scales in our favour in a very real sense.”
This was the jumping-off point for his stay on the island, and he found it didn’t take long to connect, at least at some level, with life there. “When it’s that early in the year, there’s nothing between you and the place as it is, and the community as it is. It was just us creatures, the landscape, the last roar of winter, and the North Atlantic.”
Even so, the setting was a very different context for Fogarty to pursue his work in, this though his normal points of reference are hardly far-flung from Inis Oírr: he is an erstwhile denizen of Clare now living in Galway city. But life on an island is simply different. “It’s like that old Rachel Field poem. And I’m just another mainlander that had to learn to adjust. Say you’re missing a particular tool, and you just want to get on with whatever you’re doing and not hang around waiting for it to come in on the boat, you’ve got to find a workaround.”
Cultural awareness as a survival trait, in the sense previously alluded to, was an important theme in Fogarty’s residency work on the island. He used the creation of short audiovisual collages as a way to help him explore an understanding of place in the human sense and how this links into the natural world. “Very often the process is one of thinking out loud, so to speak; you generate pieces of work, and hopefully they talk back to you and show you what the next steps might be.”
Such work feeds into his current interactive multimedia explorations which seek to push the boundaries of music-making and art engagement. Fogarty’s work has centred on the creation of spaces in which members of the public themselves become the artistic agent. “Kind of like a cross between a concert and an installation,” he remarks. “I want to include people, and break that fourth wall between the piece and the visitors. The whole thing becomes much more immediate. Before the arrival of mass media, there used to be much less of a difference between the so-called performer and the audience. I think it’s good if you can create work which can make that connection happen.”
Deploying live and recorded audio and visual materials alongside live-generated music, sound and imagery, visitors’ movements and sounds are taken up and responded to sonically and visually through the use of motion and audio sensing, and visitors find themselves immersed in and participating in the work. The approach means that a piece unfolds in a manner personal to each person experiencing it, thus creating a unique synergy with every visitor.
“I like that this sort of form can be approached on any level, by anybody, regardless of age or cultural references. You can make what you want of it – it could be for reflection, or for an exploration of sound and visual processes, or just having a bit of fun.”
He makes a point of praising the facilities at Áras Éanna and thanking Dara McGee and Aisling Nic Craith for their support. “I had such a wonderful stay. I felt like royalty. Dara and Aisling were so helpful and supportive. Anything I needed, they were there.”
Not that he spent all his time trawling through lines of programming or communing with the landscape; there were music sessions, chance encounters, a studio visit from students of Coláiste Ghobnait. “Our music sessions in Tigh Ned were a bit eclectic,” he recalls, “they were great craic. There’s something special about sessions in a place like that in the middle of winter. Stuff happens with the music, when there’s less through traffic, that would never happen otherwise.”
The same holds for interactions with people. “A stay in a Gaeltacht is always a very special event for me. But it has to be longer than a fortnight for it to really count. And after a while, with the place being so quiet in the off-season, the conversations start, usually on a running basis over days. One guy nearly managed to sell me a litter of pups. He had a good pitch, it was hard to say no to him.”
A cure for sea-sickness? Seeing that Fogarty had a button accordion with him, a boat crew member encouraged him to play on the crossings. This worked. Not only that, he was occasionally joined by some of the younger locals on board who would bring out their own instruments. “You’d get through maybe three longish sets of tunes crossing from Inis Oírr to Inis Meáin, and then maybe three times that again from Inis Meáin to Ros an Mhíl…”
“Áras Éanna is such an incredibly important place,” asserts Fogarty in closing. “Apart from what it does for life locally, it’s a first-rate demonstration in how the cultural power of a remote locale can be leveraged. The place is an absolute catalyst for the arts at their best. What they’ve achieved here is extraordinary. In a time when the arts seem to be increasingly on the back foot not only nationally but globally, Inis Oírr is bucking the trend. It really is a place to look to for inspiration.”
Images © 2025 Philip Fogarty