A unique journey and dancing on a Renault 4 at The Dock
CKD* (Completely Knocked Down) at The Dock, Carrick on Shannon. Pic: Brian Farrell
Visual artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons have embarked on a national tour of Ireland in a 1962 Renault 4.
Presenting 22 talks, events and live broadcasts across 11 counties, tour de force is a celebration of culture and creativity in the format of a mapped adventure.
Ingrid and Liliane made a pilot tour last year, live-streaming their journey in Puthod’s late father’s Renault 4 as they drove across rural France and up through Ireland. That leg of the journey concluded with a major exhibition by Puthod, Beep Beep, at The Pumphouse, Dublin Port, curated by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Returning for a second voyage, tour de force is a nomadic museum on a journey into the Otherworld.
On Saturday, August 2nd, the tour de force visited Carrick-on Shannon for a performance titled CKD* at The Dock. CKD* (Completely Knocked Down) refers to an industrial loop hole during a period of high import taxes in Ireland where breaking cars apart and transporting them to Ireland in flat packs to be reassembled provided a solution in making cars more readily available. In an art context, it’s a model to consider the fragmentation and restructuring of physical and mechanical processes and practices.
Inside The Dock, a collaborative performance took place through installation and storytelling with visual artist Liliane Puthod and writer Ingrid Lyons. Objects gathered acted as touchstones for narratives and histories encountered along the way. The Renault 4 went through a car wash and the seemingly mundane or quotidian act of emptying the car, unpacking and cleaning it, allowed for a moment of catharsis and rest at the midpoint of the six week tour de force.
As Liliane and Ingrid’s performance drew to a close a transformation occurred, followed by an otherworldly encounter with Edwina Guckian dancing on the car to the playing of Ultan O’Brien.
Dancer Edwina Guckian hails from outside the village of Drumsna in Co Leitrim. Coming from a family steeped in the tradition of music and dance, her style is greatly influenced by the style of local music she grew up with across Leitrim and Roscommon. To see Edwina dance is to understand that great lightness and wit can be carried forward from a rich and dense repertoire of steps, rhythms and refrains.
Outside The Dock, the freshly spruced Renault 4 set the scene for a meditation on obsolescence and endurance; an embodied response and expression of the dovetailing between old and new worlds of tradition and industry.
