Synaptic Space is the title that we- that is myself and the artist Olivia Hassett- have given the work we made, are making and hope to make together, as a duo. We commenced working together in 2024.
We have known each other as friends and artists for a few years now and have been connecting more of recent over our shared performance ideas and aspirations, and as middle aged performance artists. It’s so interesting to use these words ‘middle aged’- they are so loaded and are so semiotic.
It is less about having no other words to use as descriptive terms and more about feeling repeatedly pigeon holed into this middle aged- not young, not old- space, by society and culture. We talked about our relationship with our bodies and how we are observing them change. Obviously ones body changes constantly, on a cellular level and on an adaptive level. So it is more about noticing the changes to ones skin, your muscle tone, your face, your brain, your task making ability. Deciding how to navigate all this and the hormonal changes that come with this age also. So, looking cultural and social lens, being middle aged is an interesting place to be.
What we agreed about this phase:
Grateful to BE middle-aged and be alive and not sick.
Tired and trying to be all things to everyone who requires these things of you.
Accepting of your multiple roles and understanding they mould who you re.
Thinking about what you want to do and what you can do within your capabilities.
Recognising our considerable strengths and the creative wells we contain which are very mineable.
Understanding what your middle aged experience gives you that your younger self lacked.
We started by making some images together early this year (2024) in Milford House, Live Art Ireland. Olivia is very physical in her approach, as am I, which was where we initially started from- making a series of shapes together against the backdrop of one of the intensely green fields in Milford House grounds. I later took screenshots of the video we took, focusing on the in between screens where our images merged. The resulting images could be 2 forms fighting or two forms dancing.
A few weeks ago, in September 2024, we managed to snatch time together in Dublin and went to Massey Woods, south Dublin, where Olivia had been researching and experimenting. We tried out a few ideas again and as we had only a short time, we made quick decisions and didn’t procrastinate too much. As is often the case within such margins, the work turned out quite interesting.
The image below is a still from You you, a performance about call and response actions and working in sync with each other. We wanted to experiment with boundaries and consider the notion of charged spaces and pared back physical actions.
Still from a second piece from Massey Woods: Trunking. Carrying. Load bearing. Shifting. Travelling. Effort. Ceremony. And the shapes that the movement makes within the frame.
Both video pieces are created and edited by Olivia.
Last week, November 2024 we snatched literally 30 minutes together again and went out to O’s studio with the plan of making some specific mirroring images. The idea was to work against but with each other, mirroring our positions and highlighting our differences while working as one entity. I feel these are expressing a lot of what we are trying to encapsulate in the confrontative nature of these images. I see humour, focus, strength, and energy in these, which is exactly what we drew on to make them.
Our most recent research has been into aging as a state of mind. We asked people via our instagram account to respond to the following:
Synaptic Space are ageing. We are asking for you to send us your thoughts on how ageing is affecting you. How you are noticing it colour your lived experience. How you feel physically, how you feel mentally. The advantages, the disadvantages. The good and the bad. We want to hear from you, regardless of your age. After all, we are all ageing.
Synaptic Space will develop a new body of work exploring the collective responses we receive about your feelings and observations around ageing.
We wanted to continue with the theme of using both our images in some manner to promote our work together- and decided on a layered head effect. Slightly visually confusing but deliberately so.
We have had many, varied, hugely interesting responses. We are currently developing a body of work around this theme.
