Thoughts on ‘Things Like That’ film, and installation. Written by the Artist.

When I first entered the archive at Belfast Exposed, I felt completely overwhelmed. I was struck by the wall of folders and the lack of catalogue or logical retrieval system. Accessing the material relied on the first-hand knowledge of the archivist, who had also been present at most of the events depicted therein. The sense of being entombed by the closing sliding doors that formed the entrance, left a deep impression.

The Belfast Exposed archive is unique in so far as it contains images of historical importance, (beginning in the second decade of The Troubles), alongside an ever growing documentation of community events and projects. Indeed, the genesis of Belfast Exposed is as a grassroots community enterprise, initiated by amateur photographers from Falls Road and Beechmount around 1979. Frustrated at the way Belfast was being portrayed in the media, this group wanted to depict ordinary people of Belfast, doing ordinary things. The aim was to be uplifting and inspiring, despite the difficult and violent political situation.

Far from being a neutral trove of facts, an archive is a slippery, unstable construct. It is shaped by power, subjectivity, and the perpetual tension between what is preserved and what is lost. Archives do not hold fixed truths; the materials are always vulnerable to misreading and transformation. It seemed that finding anything in the Belfast Exposed archive involved first-hand knowledge of the event and a bit of magic rather than logic.

I was commissioned to make a performative response to the collection, but I did not feel that the complex history of the people of Belfast was my story to tell. Being from Dublin, I am both too close for it to be exotic and too remote for it to be personal. The events and stories within the Belfast Exposed archive are so vast I needed to find my own little corner to work in. It was the archive room itself that became a character in my thoughts. I pondered on the motif of the white gloves common to the archivist and the magician.

I became obsessed with hands and gestures of conflict, sorrow, sympathy, accusation and triumph within these files and boxes. I began by isolating out the hands from the rest of the image. By removing them from their context, this universal language of signs that crosses age, religion, culture and political beliefs became democratic. Depicted in my selected images are the hands of politicians from both sides of the divide along with children, men and women. Displayed along the walls these form a choreography of signals.

The script for the film ‘Things Like That’ is based on an interview with Mervyn Smyth, archivist and one of the founders of Belfast Exposed. Footage I made of myself performing as an imaginary overwhelmed archivist was intended as initial research, but became the back bone of the film, the sliding doors at the entrance becoming a kind of punctuation.

In the film there are three main characters; the archivist, the magician and the archive itself. There are subtle references to political events, for example, interviews with certain politicians and activists from 1988 to 1994 were voiced by actors to deny them (in the words of Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister at the time) ‘.. the oxygen of publicity’. But in fact it became farcical, with the actors more effective delivery being dubbed over the original. The eye motif that appears from time to time refers to the constant surveillance, watching, spying, both from the authorities and within communities themselves. Conspiratorial whisperings, almost like a series of incantations allude to the atmosphere of secrets and lies that dominated Northern Ireland society in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Humour is used as a disarming device. The voice over is interwoven with sounds of historical riots, birdsong and contemporary recordings made in Belfast city centre.