LACUNA (2016-2022) is an audio/visual work that considers the physical and psychological impact of partition on young people of the Irish borderlands.
LACUNA documents the Irish frontier as a post-conflict space, challenging the fixity of the territorial border by providing a counter-narrative through the experience of youth. Born after the Good Friday Agreement, they have never experienced a ‘hard’, militarised border. In the centenary of partition and in the light of Brexit, the border is invisible to them. In their daily life, moving freely between the North and the South is a given.
In this project, space is given to these, usually overlooked, middle spaces whose destinies are irremediably determined by politics, through photographs, audio-visual pieces, testimonies, archival footage and contemporary visual materials. Thus, facilitating a space for the young people of the Irish borderlands to write their own histories. Through a series of composite archival pieces the past and present is compressed, proposing new relations of timelines and voices.
LACUNA transcends the Irish case and appeals to all histories of division. Its invitation to listen to the young people in the borderlands embraces the act of ‘listening’ as a firm political position. It employs myth and imagination to explore and conceptually, represent the affectively and territory visually.