'...the lives we live' 2015 - 2020

The Possibility of an Archive was a special commission
for Culture Night 2015, a large outdoor video projection
on the covered stairwell of a utilities building on
the emerging TU Dublin Grangegorman campus. The
piece became visible after dusk on the perforated
metal sheeting enclosing the stairs, with animated
words moving up and down the four storey structure.
The text was culled from historic records, as well as
current education and health professional glossaries. 1
The piece was planned as a monumental projection for this large blank surface which
would eventually be closed off by adjacent new structures. As a services building,
it looked like an anonymous records storage facility, possibly even an archive, as
they are often blank and windowless. The utility of my descriptive artwork seemed
appropriate and yet this location proved uneasy. There is a new mental health facility
2 nearby, which may be walled off from the university campus but some patients
watched from balconies during the set up. The line of slight prevented them from
seeing the work later that evening however, so again remaining problematic because
of exclusion.