Reports to an Academy - 2015
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This series takes its title from the Franz Kafka short story, ‘A Report to an Academy’. In the story an ape recounts his deliberate acquisition of a human identity as a means of survival in the aftermath of captivity. The work takes this idea of identity as performance and explores it through multiple locations: an archetypal west of Ireland landscape, a natural history museum, an artist's studio and a library. It questions the assumptions around authenticity and representation suggested by these locations, with each setting ultimately revealed as being equally mediated. Using film and computer-generated imagery, landscape, museum, library and studio are reimagined as stage sets in which identities might be constructed and false realities forged.

Reports to an Academy is staged as a four-screen installation. The four films are looped and of varying length, creating a changing set of image combinations. A single soundtrack links all four screens.