Burgeoning liminality: artistic interventions in visual culture from Northern Ireland post-2016 EU referendum.

My research will analyse how artistic collectives in Northern Ireland are creating spaces and practices
where solutions to the tensions reignited by Brexit can be imagined and trialled. I contend that artistic
collectives should be analysed as virtual spaces wherein communities can engage in prototyping radical
public discourses which oppose the reignition of historic political tensions in NI.
It has become clear that artist-led organisations are having thoughtful, nuanced engagement with
difficult conversations which have not been possible in political discourse because of sectarian
antagonism. The success of 2021 Turner Prize-winning Array Collective raises the question of social
reform through the lens of collaborative action, activism, collectivity, and artistic practice.
I will take Mark Fisher's text "Acid Communism" (2018) as a theoretical departure point to argue that, by
recalling radical forms of collectivity from the '60s social revolution, the neoliberal hegemony can be
contested through a process of 'unforgetting'. This would preposition NI's '68 , for example, converging
with the post-Brexit social environment. The 'acid' of acid communism, then, implies a divergent and redirecting
social imaginary recognising that "the material conditions for such a revolution are more in
place in the twenty-first century than they were [in the '60s]" (Fisher, 2018).
In remembering such 'lost' aspirations of the public, Fisher returns to Herbert Marcuse for his "Aesthetic
Dimension" (1977) in which the critical value of the arts is located in its detachment from, and discontent
towards, the hegemonic reality. This understanding of artistic practice then extends to Antonio Gramsci's
'organic' intellectual (1971) as a social agent functioning with a counter-hegemonic, organisational capacity.
This leads me to the following questions:
1) What evidence of 'acid communist' practice can be extrapolated from post-Brexit collective art
practices in NI?
2) How are artists trialling collective, radical approaches that can oppose hegemonic narratives?
3) How does NI's contested history impact contemporary artist-led organisations and their collective
practices?
These questions will guide me to pursue timely and relevant investigations into the cultural influence of
artist-led organisations, as the current stagnation of devolved government in NI causes wider public
discontent. Not since events such as the 1968 NI civil rights movement or 1998 Good Friday Agreement
have such conditions arisen in public discourse. The only divergence being that NI's '68 moment was
subsequently marginalised by the atrocities of the Troubles. My third proposed supervisor, Prof Chris
Reynolds, recommends that the contemporary context "provides the grounds for a recalibration of the
memory of this time" (2018).
Accordingly my research will offer an innovative transdisciplinary approach between visual culture and
wider cultural studies. The research will offer contributions to cultural policy and public engagement
through curatorial outputs, exhibitions, workshops, symposia, and semi-structured interviews, where
viable meeting points will be facilitated for broader engagement with my findings. My pursuit of
placement at Derry/Londonderry's Void Gallery will engage with the theoretical nature of this research
project on a public level.
Research and development of draft chapters will take place across three full years with redrafting,
manuscript finalisation, and thesis submission at Year 4.
Year 1 will see research into artist-led organisations including Array Collective, Catalyst Arts, and Platform
Arts; examining their organisational structure, arts programming, public engagement, and artist
representation through the 'acid communist' methodology, culminating in two draft chapters.
Year 2 will see research conducted through semi-structured interviews with representatives of
aforementioned organisations including co-dir