Caoimhín Gaffney

All at Once Collapsing Together was a commission of new work by the Butler Gallery which toured to the Highlanes Gallery and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, curated by Anna O’Sullivan. An installation of film, medium-format photography, audio, sculpture and printed texts, the work used fiction to explore possible ways of coexisting with the more-than-human world amid the climate crisis

Images and text unfurl across the two-screen film, with fragmented depictions of the human figure trying to become part of the ecosystem again. Characters share sublime encounters with previously common birds like the corncrake and golden eagle, and speak as the voice of the earth itself to conjure a more-than-human perspective. The potential for the characters to become more-than-human themselves is explored further when the native carnivorous round-leaved sundew consumes one of the women into a bog. After she dissolves, she emerges as a new multiplicitous entity that spreads across the land.

Medium-format photographs capture diverse colour in the Irish landscape and try to reflect the respite it offers us. People rest on rocks and among trees, as if suspended, and as the text pieces zoom in and out of narratives, the photographs move between details of cuckoo spit and towering sea-stacks. The abundance of some sea bird populations flying off the coast of Rathlin Island offers a soothing image- but what remains unphotographable is the decline in Fulmar, Razorbill, Black Guillemot and Puffin. An image of Lough Neagh lapping against a reed bed was taken in 2022 -before the toxic algae growth that is overwhelming the lake’s ecosystem- acting as a memory of what was considered a stable part of our landscape but now is threatened to be lost.

Text pieces in the form of fictional prose and short stories reflect on the relief from trauma that immersion in the natural environment can bring but, because it is in distress itself, questions are raised for the protagonists about their sense of self and their place in the world around them. Strands of queerness disrupt the familiar form of nature writing along with surreal fantasies where characters describe travelling to the centre of the earth before they find themselves floating above the solar system. The film and texts are without traditional narratives or character arcs, aiming to create an unsettled terrain that reflects the uncomfortable emotions and sensations they discuss.

This project was funded and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Cavan Arts Office, Arts Council of Northern Ireland (through the National Lottery), and developed through research grants from Platform 31 and University of Atypical.