An audio description by Soso Ní Cheallaigh

“De mo neamhthoil a thánaig an crith orm”

“How does it feel to never truly be still?”

Part of Bounce Festival 2024 at CCA Derry~Londonderry on 5 October 2024 where Soso performed in CCA's Project Space amidst their installation.

Responding to the essential tremor and involuntary contractions that convulse through their own body, this work is part of Soso Ní Cheallaigh’s ongoing study on the chaos and disorder of their rare nervous system conditions. This new site specific work combines video installation with live intervention to explore self-documentation, bodily isolation, and our inherent human need to understand ourselves.

De mo neamhthoil was supported in part by the European Dancehouse Network Carte Blanche Travel Award.

Proud part of the Bounce Arts Festival 2024.

About Soso Ní Cheallaigh

Soso Ní Cheallaigh (they/them) is a disability-led multidisciplinary maker from Derry. Their work spans poetry, essay, theatre, visual art, and film through both the English and Irish language. Recent credits include Burkitt (TG4/Little Ease Films), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lyric Theatre), and SHIFT (DU Dance & Southpaw Dance Company). A graduate of Seamus Heaney Centre and Inclusive Dance Cork, Soso was a previous recipient of University of Atypical’s DDASF award, Arts Council of Northern Ireland funding, and a Theatre and Dance NI INVEST artist for 2024.
ohbysoso.com

About Bounce Festival

Bounce Arts Festival 4–6 October 2024 - This is a festival created by and for disabled, d/Deaf and neurodivergent people through the University of Atypical. This year it is taking place over three days in Belfast, Derry~Londonderry and Limavady. Transcending barriers, celebrating ability and disability; disturbing myths and illuminating the creative practice of disabled artists on a professional platform: Bounce is our showcase where every aspect of diverse identity is celebrated. All are welcome.
universityofatypical.org/bounce

Supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Derry City & Strabane District Council, University of ATypical, European Dancehouse Network Carte Blanche Travel Award.

Niamh Seana Meehan

Dreamers, 2024

Part of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival 2024 and National Drawing Day 2024.

This year CCA invites artist Niamh Seana Meehan to design an activity for NIMHAF 10–19 May 2024 and National Drawing Day 18 May 2024.

In Dreamers Niamh invites you to listen, float, and linger with an audio coastal walk. Walking along edges of liquid space this audio will explore moments to find stillness, to feel how our skin touches seawater and how we can reimagine the desire path. A desire path is a path created by animal traffic, or a path taken as a short-cut. For this coastal walk the desire path will present listeners with the space to reimagine what they desire to find on their own coastal path.

Listen to the audio, pausing to draw or write anything that comes to mind. Alternatively you can listen to the full audio, then begin to draw what you feel, think or imagined as you were listening. You are also welcome to sit comfortably and listen to the audio.

Suggested materials are pens, pencils, colouring pencils or whatever you have to hand or prefer to draw with. You can collect materials from CCA, 10-12 Artillery Street, Derry~Londonderry, BT48 6RG from 10 May 2024.

You can download or listen online to this specially created audio with intentional pauses to give you space to reflect, draw or write. Headphones are preferred. You can tag your drawings with @CCADLD, @nimhaf, #NationalDrawingDay

Read more about the work at: ccadld.org/public-programme/dreamers-an-activity-for-nimhaf-and-national-drawing-day

And visit the artist's instagram at: @niamhseanameehan

This project was supported by:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

Arts Council England

Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Derry City & Strabane District Council

Northern Ireland Mental Health Festival

CCA Introducing continues with a takeover by R Talitha Samuel, an independent cultural producer and editor based in New Delhi, India. R's takeover, entitled Samuel, meaning 'God Has Heard', takes place on CCA's Instagram and Spotify on Sunday 24 March 2024.

Below, you can find a description of the takeover:

'I had a totally different plan in mind for this visual and audio project when I initially started out. However, just before I was all set to hit record, my grandfather got very sick and passed away. This was during the month of December 2023, and it naturally changed the course of not only my life and understanding of myself but also of this work. I wanted to explore why I do what I do in terms of my approach to audio as a medium, mediated through the literal voices of members of my community and my family. Now, my takeover, Samuel, meaning 'God Has Heard', composed of audio recordings, old Tamil hymns and voice notes will dive into the warp and weft of grief, collective prayer, sound as infrastructure, recording as witness and what it means to be a man.'

CCA Introducing is made possible thanks to Art Fund, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Derry City & Strabane District Council.

Welcome to our latest Round Table from CCA Derry~Londonderry. We bring together artists to talk about their work and experiences.

Sound and Vision connects this episode's speakers: Peter Glasgow, Susan Hughes and Ryan Vail. Recorded during Susan Hughes' solo show, 'Stones From a Gentle Place' at CCA, each artists' practice spans music and visual art. Susan is a fiddle player using music to barter for stories, Peter experiments with slide guitar and participated in CCA's Digital Residency 'The Honkey Tonks and Me⁠' in Autumn 2023, and Ryan Vail won the NI Music Award for Best Album with Elma Orkestra in 2019 as well as working with Visual Spectrum Studios creating audio-visual installations.

You can find out more about CCA at ⁠⁠CCADLD.org⁠⁠.

Peter Glasgow peterglasgow.co.uk | @peterglasgow

Susan Hughes cargocollective.com/susanhughesartist | @susandorothyhughes

Ryan Vail @ryanvail | @visualspectrumstudio

With thanks to:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

Welcome to our latest Round Table from CCA Derry~Londonderry. We bring together artists to talk about their work and experiences.

Episode 9 welcomes SEAMS artist Laura Wilson who talks with writer Kerrí Ní Dochartaigh and weaver Claire Whelan about linen, family, history, motherhood, nature and the colour indigo amongst other topics.

You can find out more about SEAMS at ⁠CCADLD.org⁠.

Laura Wilson laurawilson.me | @wilsonlaurawilson

Kerrí Ní Dochartaigh @kerrinidochartaigh

Claire Whelan @whelansweaving

With thanks to:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

Welcome to our latest Round Table from CCA Derry~Londonderry. We bring together artists to talk about their work and experiences.

In  this episode artist Tom O'Dea and Frank Sweeney talk with Pirate.ie's John Walsh about the Irish Pirate Radio Archive, cross border broadcasts and country music.

You can see documentation from the exhibition Ballads of Rhinestones & Newcomers, which featured work by Frank Sweeney and Tom O'Dea at CCADLD.org and you can read more about the artists at the following links:

Frank Sweeney

Tom O'Dea

John Walsh

With thanks to:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

Welcome to our latest Round Table from CCA Derry~Londonderry. We bring together artists to talk about their work and experiences.

In  this episode artist Bojana Janković invites Justin Kuoame and Vukašin Nedeljković to talk with her and Director of CCA Catherine Hemelryk. They discuss how they came to art, life as a migrant and navigating the various hostile environments they have encountered through the different systems operating across the UK and Ireland.

You can see documentation from the exhibition Ballads of Rhinestones & Newcomers, which featured work by Bojana Janković at CCADLD.org and you can read more about the artists at the following links:

Bojana Janković

Justin Kuoame

Vukašin Nedeljković

With thanks to:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

Welcome to our latest Round Table from CCA Derry~Londonderry. We bring together artists to talk about their work and experiences.

In  this episode 2022 DeMo Reciprocal Residency artists Mark Buckeridge and Ona Juciūtė talk with artist Hrefna Hörn Leifsdóttir and curator and  Director of CCA, Catherine Hemelryk. They talk about the past, the present and the role materials play in their practices.

You can see more by Mark Buckeridge and Ona Juciūtė and their solo shows at ccadld.org as well as more about the artists at the following links:

Mark Buckeridge

Hrefna Hörn Leifsdóttir

Ona Juciūtė

With thanks to:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

This podcast was made possible by Lithuanian Culture Institute, Arts Council for Northern Ireland and Art Fund.

Oisín Roberts
Fool's Spring, 2022
Audio reading, 4 mins 45 sec

Part of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival 2022.

Oisín Roberts is an artist and poet originally from our city and a recent graduate of the Slade School of Art in London. This new installation is centred around a new piece of writing entitled Fool’s Spring and consists of a bicycle rack, yellow light and poem installed in CCA's Project Space and the poem is available to download in this podcast.

The title of the long form poem comes from the nick name of a fake season, naming the week of warmth that comes after winter and before ‘second winter’. It is, for the artist, a false start, a brief and urgent movement between periods of stagnancy. Oisín is interested in repeating fleeting human interventions in their environment, whether seeing a person absent-mindedly moving something from one place to another, noticing a sticker stuck on the side of a wall, or screen-shotting the bike ebay ad when noticing a butterfly on the frame.

Oisín writes referencing the tone of the New Narrative movement way of writing poetry, creating auto-fiction texts that sound like they could be talking about their life, but the content comes from a wide range of sources. Adopting the idea that all sources are as valid as the other, Oisín practices a way of making in which no hierarchy exists.

Fool’s Spring is on view in the CCA Project Space for the duration of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Festival from Monday 9–Sunday 15 May 2022.

About the artist

Oisín Roberts (b.1994) is originally from Derry~Londonderry. They moved to London to study at The Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 2018. A Pisces, a poet and an artist - they went on to read in public and exhibit sculptures, now scattered across various defunked and hard to find web-links. Their current exhibitions include, catch Fast Glass, a group photography exhibition at Set New Cross, 15–16 April, Carpeted Stares, a group show in AMP Gallery 15–19 June and 07803178250/07531313883, a two person show with Lowri Heckler at Set New Cross 2–9 August.

Read more about the work at: CCADLD.org/public-programmes/fools-spring

This project was supported by:

CCA Derry~Londonderry

Chinasa Vivian Ezugha

This first practice-as-research project by CCA Research Associate  Chinasa Vivian Ezugha seeks to examine the question: ‘What kind of  documentation can be derived from glossolalic speech and its  presentation?’ It does so through the development and creation of an  audio performance, realised in collaboration with the artists' sisters  recorded in everyday mundane spaces such as the kitchen or bedroom. This  project examines the practice of glossolalia within family  relationships and the everyday, and the way in which spoken glossolalia  can  be used to further discussions around our relationship to the voice as a  form of connection to our bodies and others.

This is the first iteration of this research project, exploring  glossolalia and the differences in speech and sound between the  diasporic Nigerians in the UK and the Pentecostal Nigerians across Nigeria.

Read more about the work at: CCADLD.org/public-programmes/tongues

This project was supported by:

CCA Derry~Londonderry