‘The Headless City’, TULCA 2016

We’re especially pleased to have a work at GAC by renowned Scottish artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, produced especially for TULCA in collaboration with Pia Maria Simig and Leslie Edge. Also, screening in Ireland for the first time, a 16mm work by the late Patrick Jolley. Video installation, photography, sculpture, drawing and performance help us to unravel the complexities of the Headless City. This year several artists show works in multiple sites – make sure to visit all our venues.

TULCA Events:

FRIDAY NOV 4TH
FESTIVAL LAUNCH PARTY
6 – 8pm
TULCA Festival Gallery @ The Fairgreen
PERFORMANCE
8.30pm
Galway Mechanics’ Institute
James Moran presents his new performance Raffle!!
Even if you don’t win something you can still spend
some time imagining what it would be like to have it in
your life – so just for a while, check out of our age of
anxiety and check your tickets instead.
Booking required, capacity is limited.
10pm
Biteclub
Finally from 10pm to late we’ll be at Biteclub, 36 Upper
Abbeygate St. dancing to the tunes of DJ Graham
Dolan with his night Express Yourself. – A tight mix of
funk soul, Hip Hop, Disco and everything in between.
SATURDAY NOV 5TH
CURATOR’S TALK WITH DANIEL JEWESBURY
2pm
TULCA Festival Gallery @ The Fairgreen
Booking required.
PERFORMANCE:
BLIND SPOT BY TWO RUINS
8pm
Huston School of Film and Digital Media, NUI Galway,
Two Ruins (Jim Colquhoun, Steve Hollingsworth) will perform their new work
Blind Spot. Driving a white Citroën CX filled with fluorescent tubes around the
city, Two Ruins will perform an electro-acoustic improvisation that lasts exactly 8
minutes (the average length of the British sex act) at a variety of sites.
FILM SCREENING:
AAAAAAAAH!
8.15pm
Huston School of Film and Digital Media, NUI Galway,
dir. Steve Oram, UK 2015, 79 mins
Alpha Male Smith, and his Beta, Keith, make a move to take over a local
community. They hook up with restless Female, Denise, igniting a deadly feud
in which emotions run high and deep-seated grudges re-surface amongst the
tribe. Are we not men? Or are we simply beasts?
Shot entirely in a language of grunts and gibberish, Steve Oram’s debut feature
is a celluloid primal scream – an anarchic, hilarious, disturbing and touching look
at the human condition. Starring Steve Oram, Toyah Wilcox, Julian Rhind-Tutt,
Noel Fielding.
Booking required.
THURSDAY NOV 10TH
PERFORMANCE
6pm
Galway Arts Centre
In the context of his TULCA installation Boxes, Martin Sharry has produced a
new live work, What’s The Story?, to be read by an actor three times during
the festival – Thursday 10th, Thursday 17th and Saturday 19th. Martin explores
the vagaries of life, translation and punding.
FRIDAY NOV 11TH
READING / MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
/ SCREENING
7.30pm
Galway Mechanics’ Institute
Acclaimed London author Tony White reads short stories including ‘The Holborn
Cenotaph’ – ‘Super dry, dark and funny. Glasnost for UK cops’ (Tim Etchells). At once
a satirical performance, a protest and an act of radical remembrance, ‘The Holborn
Cenotaph’ proposes a shocking new use for the high-rise tower of Holborn Police
Station in central London. Tony will also be reading from the 1999 ‘avant pulp’ novel
Charlieunclenorfolktango, and a 2014 work ‘High-Lands’, performed here for the first
time with live musical accompaniment from New Pope.
New Pope is a critically acclaimed songwriter dealing in melodic dream pop, and
sometimes folk. Onstage he is joined by Colm Bohan (drums) and Stephen Connolly
(organ/guitar) to create an immersive musical experience.
SATURDAY NOV 12TH
LAUNCH EVENT
12-5pm
Galway Mechanics’ Institute
Art / Not Art (Dobz O’Brien and Fergal Gaynor) will launch their new
project, the Society for the Conservation of Politics and Public Space
(SCPPS). The Society aims to investigate and intervene in the current
shrinkage of public space, and confusion regarding the nature of politics.
It will do this from a position of tension between art and politics, prior to
the engagement of any ideology.
Nothing can be assumed of its programme or how it will choose to
organise itself.
The evening concludes with a screening of Alan Phelan’s 2012 short Include
Me Out of the Partisans Manifesto, in which a suburban couple battle through
the apparent obliteration of their shared experience as their DVD collection
is painstakingly broken up and recycled. The film is based on a short story by
White that was originally commissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art as
a fictional response to Phelan’s art practice.
Tickets €5, booking required.
Its chief concern will be with the conditions of existence of art and politics, which
overlap in the space of appearance, that is, in public space.
O’Brien and Gaynor will be present at the Institute for the day, to answer queries,
and to assist readers at the SCPPS Library, a collection of texts on art and politics,
all readable in an afternoon, suggested by the Society’s Irish and international
affiliates.
PERFORMANCE
2pm
Galway Arts Centre
Michelle Hannah presents OUTOFTHEBLU_, a durational work formed from a
sung vocal performance over a composed synth soundtrack, based on a lyrical,
collaged appropriation of the Roxy Music song Out of The Blue, and Giacomo
Leopardi’s ‘Dialogo della Moda e della Morte’ (‘A Dialogue between Fashion and
Death’). Leopardi’s text reveals the relationship between consumerism, morality
and the deathly aesthetics of the pursuit of the ‘individual’.
You are free to come and go during the performance.
PUBLIC LECTURE
5pm
Galway Mechanics’ Institute
Writer and lecturer Angus Cameron presents Capital City. All too often our
understanding of the city lacks memory. The frenetic, forward-looking, excitement
of the city makes it easy to forget the antiquity and embeddedness of its practices.
Even if we accept that the city is always a palimpsest, it is the upper layers that catch
the eye and provide the impetus for engagement. This intervention will excavate the
foundations of the ‘capital city’ – specifically the urban situation and disciplining of
money, trade, metal, spatiality, spirituality and, above all, people that appear from the
very start. The capital(ist) city is both firmly historical and thoroughly trans-historical.
But it has a point of origin in a specific place, a specific time and a particular name –
one that used to be synonymous with wealth and power: Potosí.
Booking required.
THURSDAY NOV 17TH
SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE INSTALLATION
Various times
Various venues
From Thursday 17th to Saturday 19th November, Conlon O’Reilly Ross’s
commission will loiter and skulk across Galway city as part of the TULCA public
programme. You are invited to join part of this performative structure at
irregular intervals, for a series of divergences. Please see the festival website
and social media for time and locations.
PERFORMANCE
6pm
Galway Arts Centre
Martin Sharry – What’s The Story? (see Thursday 10th for details)
STARGAZING EVENT / VIDEO SCREENING
6pm
The Twelve Hotel, Barna
Aisling O’Beirn has been working with groups around Galway on a speciallycommissioned
new work, Light Years From Here. All of the stars in the
night sky are at different distances from the earth, ranging from the nearest,
Proxima Centauri, at a mere 4 light years away, to early generations of stars,
billions of light years from us. Depending on where we look we can see light
ranging from the start of the Islamic Hijri calendar (622) to the launch of
Sputnik (1957).
For Light Years from Here Galway residents from various ethnic and cultural
backgrounds contributed dates and related anecdotes that have a special
significance for them. Join TULCA and Galway Astronomical Society to find
the stars that match these dates, and watch two of O’Beirn’s recent video
works.
Meet in the car park of the Twelve Hotel. Buses 414, 424 and 524 go regularly
from Galway City to Bearna.
NOTE: This event is dependent upon clear skies. Please check the website
for updates as poor weather may change the location or time.
Booking required.
SATURDAY NOV 19TH
PERFORMANCE
3pm
Galway Arts Centre
Martin Sharry – What’s The Story? (see Thursday 10th for details)

Galway Arts Centre
Address: Lower Dominick Street
Phone: +353 (0) 91 565 886
Website: www.galwayartscentre.ie
Email: info@tulcafestival.com

Opening Hours: Monday – Thursday 10:00 – 17:30 | Friday 10:00 – 17:00 | Saturday – Sunday 10:00 – 17:00
Accessibility: A wheelchair ramp provides entry to the ground floor. No elevator access to second or third floor.
Parking: Street Parking