‘I hope it can further unify us within our grief to take action’

CLIMATE GRIEF Ancient castle to perform lament at environmental loss

“If these walls could talk,” people wistfully say of the memories imbued in a particular place.

Alan James Burns suspects if Cloghoughter and its broken walls could communicate, it wouldn’t speak so much as keen. The Cavan artist will dramatically bring this concept to life through his immersive piece called Waking Walls. Unique is an over used term in journalism, but this truly does promise to be a unique experience this September.

There will be just four performances at the Cavan landmark over two days in September - some viewing from the shore, more from boats.

“The castle is going to perform a lament of ecological and climate grief,” Alan says leaving the Celt wondering if he really said it will be the castle that performs. The Whatsapp line is broken, and drops out frequently because while we chat, Alan is actually on a ship called the Celtic Explorer in the North Atlantic, half way between Ireland and the southern tip of Greenland. He’s returning from an epic one month research trip alongside scientists to the Arctic Circle.

“We got up beyond Svalbard Islands - we couldn’t get any further, there were floating ice sheets all around and it was becoming too dangerous.”

The ship belongs to the Irish Marine Institute and Alan is travelling with scientists who are collecting single cell planktonic life forms called foraminifera from the sea surface and sea bed.

“By studying [foraminifera] we can tell climate patterns throughout time - going back hundreds and thousands of year,” he explains noting the scientists hope to extrapolate from these findings how climate change will impact these most vulnerable of environments.

“The Arctic is the place heating up faster than anywhere else on the Earth, so it really requires study to see how climate change is affecting it.

“I’m learning, studying, watching, documenting what they are doing to inspire an artwork that I will create - I don’t know what that project will be yet.”

While this Arctic fieldwork is not directly informing the Waking Walls project at Cloughoughter, it’s certainly of a theme.

As the interview blows back on course, it is apparent that it is indeed the castle, once captured as a last stand by Irish rebels before Cromwell’s canons pummelled it, that will be keening, or caoineadh in Irish.

‘Echoing from the walls of Cavan’s Cloughoughter Castle the stirring cries of an Irish caoineadh reverberate over the rippling lake water,’ reads the artist’s description. ‘Together, gathered on boats and at the lakeside, we absorb this iconic monument’s lament for the environmental and biodiversity losses the castle has witnessed over its lifetime.’

Through such a dramatic spectacle, Alan is drawing the viewer in to consider the idea of “climate grief” and the environmental degradation that’s already being felt here in the lakelands and across the nation.

“Climate change is affecting the way we live, it’s also affecting the biodiversity in the region, it’s affecting the landscape and ecology. With all change comes grief.

“It’s a new type of grief that people are starting to experience as ways of old, and the environments that we live in change and bring on these feelings.

“So I started looking at traditional ways in Irish culture - keening and lamenting - to process contemporary grief - in this case climate grief.”

While keening would usually be used today in the context of a grief inspired crying, Alan explains that back through the centuries in Ireland it was regarded as an art form.

“It’s a kind of cry singing. It was traditionally performed by women who would travel around to wakes across Ireland and perform keening.

“A keening is a lament, where you lament the person who has died, the circumstances, in some keens they curse the people or situation that were responsible for the death. These women were paid to keen at people’s wakes for them. It’s a really old traditional artform,” he says admiringly.

“It died out due to numerous reasons, one of them being the Catholic Church who didn’t think it was worthy of church standards.”

To create this new caoineadh, Alan collaborated with respected writer Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan for a poetry element. Interestingly, among her many notable achievements, she is currently the Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics Ireland.

Alan has also enlisted musicians from the Nyah collective including Martin Donohoe to compose an air.

An artist’s residency at the Irish Hospice Foundation at the outset of this project first allowed Alan to explore grief and caoineadh. Crucially to develop the idea accurately, he has also worked alongside caoineadh expert Marina Caulfield.

In an interesting spin-off from the arts event, Marina will return on October 14-15 to the county to run a two day workshop at which the public will be helped to create their own caoineadh in response to the climate emergency.

The castle with its breached walls lit up should make for a memorable spectacle. It is central to the experience as the caoineadh will emanate from the crannóg. He says the grieving edifice goes through different emotions in light of the environmental loss.

“Within the keen the castle is aware of itself - it’s aware it was built upon a crannóg. It’s aware it doesn’t come without its own complications - its own implication within the timeline of climate change - the colonialism, industrialisation and late capitalism that led to the climate emergency.

“The castle is aware that it is a symbol of these power structures that is damaging the planet.”

While it is likely to be a sombre experience, it could also stand as a life affirming rallying cry.

“In the castle’s keen, towards the end it performs a kind of call to arms for us to fight against our own inaction in the climate emergency.

“I hope this can give some people language to deal with climate grief, and context, and understanding to deal with climate grief. I also hope it can further unify us within our grief to take action in the face of the climate emergency.”

Alan experiences a complex range of emotions: “Some days I feel like I’m really doing something and helping, and other days aren’t like that at all and I’m crushed by it too.”

But his over-riding emotion is one of hope.

“I am scared, and I do have a lot of fear and grief within me, and anxiety for sure that I process a lot through my art, and by working with other environmentalists and people who try to make a better world - that gives me hope: the people who I work with and the people who come to my artworks, and the conversations that are ignited from people coming to my work.”

Waking Walls takes place on Friday and Saturday, September 8 and 9 with performances at 4pm and 7.15pm each day. Booking is essential and is through the Townhall Cavan from where transport is provided.

To create an event of this magnitude required support from a lot of groups, including The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Traditional Arts Project Award, Creative Ireland, Cavan Arts Office, Co-operation with Northern Ireland Scheme, Cavan Adventure Club, OPW, One Resilient Earth, Architect Jessica Lange and Cavan heritage and biodiversity experts Heather Bothwell and Fergal Connolly.