Caroline features in latest Bean Feasa video series
The latest in the Bean Feasa series of songs and video has been released.
'Immersed in Boggy Waters' by Caroline Coyle was launched at the weekend on Athlone Family Resource Centre You by Caroline Coyle,Tube Channel.
Watch: https://youtu.be/_Ju7KR9p5CE
"As a writer, poet and artist, I’m interested in utilising art-based mediums to engage the community, so it is lovely to be part of the Bean Feasa Project which provides a space every month for women of all cultures to come together; and with support from Kara and Bianca; write, create songs, collaborate and sing," Caroline said of her involvement in the project.
"Over the past number of years, I’ve been researching the lived experiences of older women, including myself, in contemporary Irish society through communal poetry and collaborative art based mediums such as painting, chant, dance and ritual.
"Those voices and my own work as a performance artist immersing in the bog influenced the concept of my spoken word performance/song," added Caroline.
"Visualising the bog as a liminal repository of the sociocultural heritage, memories and lived experiences, in the landscape of the Irish midlands wetlands, some of us as older women have worked or walked in the bog; and now we are ageing in and with, the bog, layering down of layers of the lived experiences of women within the landscape itself.
"Kara suggested we go out into the bog and I settled into the landscape and the words flowed from there. Later I used the beatbox to drum the musicality of the words and then practiced reciting the spoken word performance.
Caroline said the creative process was also a learning one for me, as a writer, words come first for me, however as I learned through the process, its usually the music that comes first for musicians.
"Kara and Bianca worked their magic musically, I believe it’s an alchemic process. Bianca’s singing backgrounding the spoken word is truly beautiful. My spoken word performance/song explores the use of ritual, to disrupt thehegemonic narrative of what society determines an older woman should be.
"Immersing in boggy waters acts as a transformational rite to strip away the social construction of the ageing woman in Irish society; reclaim the ancient Celtic story of the crone, consequently realising the creation of our new story into the future," concluded Caroline of her involvement in the group's latest video.
This project was funded by the Arts Council Artist in the Community Scheme, managed by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts.