Doireann O’Malley | Prototypes, (I & II Quantum Leaps in Trans Semiotics through Psycho-Analytical Snail Serum & The Institute) | 2018 | HD Video, 2.1 Audio | 104 mins
Watch Prototypes (Single Screen Feature) on Vimeo
The Arts Council has a proud tradition as part of Culture Night of showcasing a selection of exciting artworks recently added to the Arts Council Collection.
While this year it will not be possible to share these works in person with audiences on the night, we have decided to highlight the excellence and diversity of visual arts practice in Ireland today by inviting a few of the Collection’s most recently
acquired artists to give some insight on their works.
For Culture Night 2020 works by artists Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Salvatore of Lucan, Áine Phillips and Doireann O’Malley will celebrate the Arts Council Collection’s continuing history of purchasing ambitious work that engages with and reflects
contemporary Irish society.
Here, Doireann O’Malley tells us more about their featured artwork, practice and what it means to have Prototypes included as part of the Arts Council Collection.
Explore this and more from the Arts Council Collection at https://www.instagram.com/artscouncilireland/
Doireann O’Malley’s multidisciplinary, research-led practice encompasses film installation, video, virtual reality experiences and performance. Their works stage an immersive, world-building that captures new modes of subjectivity beyond the narrow gender
binaries and rigid role models that have been inherited from a Western-centric scientific, philosophical and epistemological legacy. Their most recent body of work is a series titled Prototypes, encompassing film installation and VR experience. The
first chapter of this series (Prototypes I: Quantum Leaps in Trans Semiotics through Psycho-Analytical Snail Serum, 2017), explores new perspectives on trans identity through the lens of post psychoanalytical methodologies, entangling rhizomatic
forms of thought, systems theory, consciousness, machine learning and quantum transformation in scenes set within the modernist Interbau housing development in the Hansaviertel area of Berlin.
Prototype II: The Institute for the Enrichment of Computer Aided Post Gendered Prototypes (2018) introduces the viewer to a fictional institute in which the protagonists set about to unlearn their binarized gendered identities with the guidance
of a holographic host. As in Prototype I, the actors develop their performances by employing the techniques of live action role plays (LARP) to develop the rough plot outline in directions of their choice, often drawing on personal experiences,
interjected by psycho-analytic settings, evading diagnostic techniques in favour of explorations of dreams, memories and the intersections of experience, theory and embodiment.
In Prototype III: New Maps of Hyperspace_Test01 (2020), the viewer is transported into a virtual environment where a text to speech disembodied voice leads you through the space as you follow a ball, borrowing the mechanism from computer games.
New Maps imagines a world after climate disaster destroys biological life. In its place, artificial intelligence has built a crude simulacrum.
— Doireann O’Malley
Since 1962, the Arts Council has been buying art from working artists. The Collection that evolved tells the story of modern and contemporary Irish visual art in a unique and fascinating way. Today the Collection continues to grow and its more than 1,100 paintings, sculptures and other works are on display in public spaces all over Ireland for people to experience and enjoy first hand. You can find out more at: www.artscouncil.emuseum.com