A Drowning Melted Persistent Memory (2023)
Single channel video projection with stereo audio
14m 37s
The work weaves moments of time and myth, notions of progress and explores materiality within the physical landscape to illustrate the impact agriculture, colonialism, architecture, climate and the quest for knowledge has had on the relationship of the human and non-human, of nature and technology, and of culture and science. The piece aims to suspend the viewer in alternate temporalities of life on earth, exploring the elements, minerals, animal and plant life, the preservation of information in permafrost and glaciers and the theory of the first land plant, an ancient moss that migrated from water to land. The film and the rest of the exhibition explores human and non-human methods of extraction, attempting to decipher historical narratives by disassembling the concept of ephemerality, colliding relics of culture, forms in the landscape and material processes – a past, present and future melted, crystallised, eroded, corroded, calcified and deposited. The soundtrack for the film A Drowning Melted Persistent Memory has been made with contributions from with three international composers, Clíona Ní Laoi, Masaya Ozaki and Banu Çiçek Tulu, who produced sonic responses to Skehan’s 2022 sound works made using plant data collected in Ireland and abroad.
Commissioned and exhibited at ‘A Future Distant Memory Calls’ at Roscommon Arts Centre, October 2023.
Image credits: Graham Coogan