What Is an Island? Panel discussion and book launch

The What is an Island? project was initiated in 2018 by artist and educator Glenn Loughran (TU Dublin / GradCAM) in collaboration with Uillinn director Ann Davoren and former director of Create, Ailbhe Murphy. Developed at the height of the Brexit negotiations, the project set out to explore the significance of islands and island imaginaries in art and education at a time of social, environmental and technological change. Situated within the context of the BA in Visual Art on Sherkin Island, the project was formed around a series of artistic research events that reflected on archipelagic thinking, climate change and the technosphere. Working in dialogue with island communities, locally and globally, What is an island? ultimately informed the development of the archipelagic MA Art and Environment, delivered across the Islands of West Cork since 2020 by TU Dublin and Uillinn: The West Cork Arts Centre.

What is an Island? Towards a Patchwork Pedagogy for a World Archipelago captures each iteration of the project, through the Covid 19 pandemic and the emergence of the metaverse, through community, friendship, loss, and recovery. The publication includes an opening account of the project by Ann Davoren and Ailbhe Murphy, photographic representations of each iteration of the project, a deeply insightful text on the phenomenology of the island of Ireland by Anne O’ Byrne, and a pedagogical reflection by Glenn Loughran.

To support this publication, IMMA has invited Glenn Loughran and Ann Davoren to convene a panel on the relation between islands, art and climate change, on the 21st September at 4:00pm. This unique panel of guests will include: Emer Deane, Asst. Sec. British and Northern Ireland Affairs Division, Shared Island Unit (Ireland); Prof. Gill Perry, Open University, and author of Contemporary Art & Islands, 2024 (London, UK), Ruairí Ó Donnabháin, artist and language activist, based in Oileán Chléire, and Dr. Pippa Marland, lecturer, English and Liberal Arts, author of Ecocriticism and the Island: Readings from the British-Irish Archipelago, 2024 (University of Bristol, UK).

Following this panel discussion, join us for a reception to launch the publication. This panel discussion and book launch are part of Earth Rising 2024, IMMA’s flagship festival focused on the Earth crisis.