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BECKY O'BRIEN & RUTH COREY 'Swaddle'

Across a one hour performance, artists Becky O’Brien and Ruth Corey will perform an act of remembrance to memorialise the bodies of 800 babies and children that became widely known in Ireland as ‘The Tuam Scandal’ after their discovery in 2014.

As the artists perform a range of meditative and ritual actions, their labour, lamented by keening, marks out the sheer scale of the Tuam tragedy, amongst a number of similar historical scandals by the Catholic Church and State against women and children. These all relate to Ireland’s renowned ‘Magdalene Laundries’, institutions run from 18th to late 20th Century by the Roman Catholic church, ostensibly to house "fallen women", some thirty thousand confined across Ireland, and the Mother and Baby Homes (Institutions). Originally set up for sex workers, women who were sent to Magdalene Laundries were often pregnant outside of wedlock, although there are many accounts of women being deemed as flirtatious, or even just considered pretty in the community and therefore needed to be locked up to prevent them from becoming sexually active. Women were locked in these places for years, and some for the entirety of their lives.

Coinciding with the year in which exhumation of the Tuam bodies are due to commence, Swaddle offers a new kind of poetic proximity and re-appearance in which to comprehend the scale of loss and historical injustice discovered at Tuam, and other sites across Ireland since the Laundries closed in 1994 and the Mother and Baby Homes (Institutions) in 2006.

Becky O´Brien: Originally from Ireland, I am a London based Choreographer, Dance Artist, Performance Artist, DJ, Radio Host, Promoter and Curator. My performance work varies from body based performance art to choreographed dance work. I explore themes of gender, identity and sexuality, with a queer/feminist approach, which reflects all aspects of my work in other fields. I use my body as a political force to question the construction of my own identity, and where my female body lies in relation to art and to society. I am particularly interested in sex positive feminism, exploring themes such as online camming and sex workers rights in my work.

Ruth Corey: Ruth is a vocal artist and composer/producer from County Tyrone in Ireland. Her vocal work spans choral, opera, folk, electronic drone and drum and bass. She appears on a multitude of releases as a vocalist. Ruth returned to Ireland in 2020, following a decade in London, of which she spent the last five years as a lead vocalist in the Nyx Electronic Drone Choir and Three Dollar Shoe (folk band). In Ireland, Ruth is a funeral singer at Catholic services.

Having experienced the impact that providing this service has on those in the early stages of bereavement she has now taken a deep dive into the art of keening, and how the voice assists the bereaved in their grief. Swaddle, with Becky O’Brien, is her first keening work. She intends to deliver something beautiful that will cut through the pain and shame felt by the victims of this scandal, and commemorate the innocent young lives and the souls of those who were lost.

DAGMARA BILON & MAGDA TUKA 'Bodies in crisis or How do you feel about wire sticking out?'

Join Magda Tuka and Dagmara Bilon as they delve into the exploration of 'Bodies in Crisis, or How do you feel about wire sticking out?' This collaborative project delves into the realms of early childhood, mythology, and mapping, asking questions like: 'What if my body is a country?', 'What if a country is my body?' and 'Can systems stretch as muscles do?' Through documenting the physical spaces of their upbringing, they seek to recreate a mythological map filled with symbols, exploring the interplay between them. This journey navigates disorientation, joy, fear, and the senses. They examine the impact of trauma on both individual bodies and collective countries, pondering healing processes and the creation of spaces for collective repair. Drawing upon their experimental performance practice, Magda & Dagmara invite you to join them in a conversation exploring co-creation and the search for a common language.

Dagmara Bilon: Dagmara is an artist and trainee death doula based in London since 1996. She doesn’t identify with any nationality, believing we are all universal migrants. She initially trained as a dancer and choreographer (LABAN 2003) and then as a Dance Movement Therapist (Roehampton University 2007). Over the past decade, she has cultivated a multifaceted portfolio, including performance works that incorporate DMT into performance-making and are marked by action-oriented, site-specific, immersive and co-creative elements. Passionate about art as a catalyst for transformation, she also curates socially engaged community projects with The Purple Ladies. Current projects include ‘Purple Wednesdays’-somatic investigation as a catalyst for change and her DYCP funded project ‘The Art of Dying’.

Magda Tuka: Polish performer, theatre maker and theatre art teacher. Her work has been variously supported through a succession of grants, scholarships, residencies, co-productions and festival selections, presented in theatres, galleries, cinemas, churches, and online; in Poland, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA and Germany.

In November 2023, she was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy in Drama: Practice as Research with her thesis, 'Towards a Burning Method: How Might the Contemporary Performer Build on the Legacy of Grotowski's Total Act?'