Dr. Saoirse Higgins 2025

Dr. Saoirse Higgins
LoughIne-ology
1 May to 3 June 2025

Studio open to the public on Friday and Saturday

For this residency I would like to focus on the next phase of the ‘LoughIne-ology’ project making and producing from my initial residency research. I plan to develop a series of discrete performative events mapped around the lough at specific points. Following on from my time spent with UCC scientists and the Lough Lappers on the first residency, I plan to produce 3d interactive ‘survival’ tools and text that connect with the rich history of lough scientist experimentation and local lough-ology experts, while also encouraging speculation about our future relationship with the sea as islanders.

‘…We know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it’…
(Okjökull glacier plaque – letter to the future community in the world, writer Andri Snaer Magnason, Iceland, 2021).

I am an artist and researcher based between Dublin and Papa Westray (Papay-local name) Orkney. I have a practice-based art and design PhD researching our engagement with the environment in the specific context of islands, islanders and the Anthropocene. My practice is very much about active, performative, social engagement looking at multiple ‘angles of vision’ and the orbits between people and environment, especially in the context of islands and the surrounding sea. As an islander I have seen for myself first-hand the challenges for island communities in relation to the sea around them – the fragile balance between economic priorities and caring about and for environmental concerns for the future. I am interested in people’s relationship and connection with the ocean in the anthropocene.

I would like to continue on to the next phase of the ‘LoughIne-ology’ project. I plan to create a series of artworks and texts coming from the audio-visual research I developed at Lough Ine during my June residency at Uillinn 2024. This project interconnects with the work that I have been doing relating to macro-micro time scales between island, seas and glaciers. I have been working from 2015 until present with scientists at the Icelandic Met Office and within the Icelandic Glaciological Society, both on field trips documenting the annual expedition to take core samples on the Myrdalsjökull glacier and currently working with glaciologist Oddur Sigurðsson’s stereoscopic slide archive of disappearing glaciers from 1960s – 2000s in the context of interdependent seas with glaciers. My last expedition to Iceland was in August 2024 to continue to film on a western glacier called Drangajökull, and to take part in a public engagement funeral procession for the now recently extinct Okjökull glacier. This trip took place a week before observing and filming at the public engagement Touch Tank day at Lough Ine.

In my work I reveal the connections between our vision of the world we live in, our expectations for the future, and the expertise and tools we use to help us with this. I explore micro-macro scales of time and ‘trickle-up’ action for change. I collaborate with local experts, artists, scientists and rural-island communities. I work with a mix of time-lapse and real-time video, audio field recordings, performance events with playful created measuring and mapping ‘survival tools’. Recent collaborations have been with –
Lough Ine Lappers, Lough Ine UCC scientists, The Icelandic Met Office; Creative Carbon Scotland; Nature Scotland; Icelandic Glaciological Society; British Science Association; Antarctica Heritage Trust; North Isles Landscape Partnership and Papay Development Trust.

My work is a lot about community engagement with the complexity of issues and perspectives involved with key ‘nissological or island-esque’ environments, such as the lough or a glacier. I am particularly interested in activating interested local community connected to the lough –e.g the swimmers, local recent inhabitants and the scientists. I will give a public presentation on the updates about the project together with posting progress on social media channels. I would like to open the studio to the public also to test some of the tools and ideas.

www.saoirsehiggins.org

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of Cork County Council and The Arts Council in making these residencies possible.