‘The Irish Room’ closing performance will be shown in Donegal County Museum

Donegal County Museum will show the closing performance of ‘The Irish Room’. For the past month, Canadian artist Jo-Anne Velin has been growing her work in the Donegal Museum and has built a special, cosy sound lounge for compositions that use as their main material, a rare cluster of 93-year-old recordings of 20 Irish women and girls speaking and singing samples of Irish dialects for wax recordings in 1930 and 1931. 

The five from County Donegal came predominantly from the west and north. The closing event, this Thursday, December 7, from 6 - 8 pm, will include new pieces and live interventions by invited collaborators.

“It is a little cheeky, but we are re-shaping a feeling for the early sounds of recorded voice and what has been missing in aural history - starting with an exceptional cluster of 20 rural Irish women,” Jo-Anne informs us. 

“We are putting this exceptional cluster of 20 rural Irish women symbolically at the centre of audio recording history, to become part of a lived, in-person experience.”

The installation will then travel to Montreal in January, returning to Europe next spring, as the installation seeks the oldest female-voice recordings (not Irish) in each host location, and builds this world with the Irish voices at its core.

“So do come along on December 7 take your shoes off and get comfy! I’ve combined and distributed these voices in all sorts of ways. The point isn’t what they say, here, but how they sound saying it. Very few recordings of female voices from anywhere at all exist from that time (or even much later). The space is set up so you can stretch out on the floor pillows or linger a while in one of the big chairs.” 

After her first self-funded research trip to Ireland in March 2020 was cut short by the Covid quarantine, the Canada Council for the Arts agreed to further Velin’s work on the sound art project, The Irish Room and awarded her a grant in winter 2022. By the end of 2024, it will have travelled to at least four countries. 

The Irish Embassy in Germany contributed the means for her to continue her field research across Ireland in November 2022. Numerous other partners have also supported this project in kind with their knowledge, access, and collections. The Royal Irish Academy has graciously allowed the digital versions of spoken and sung recordings to be used creatively within the sound installation itself. 

Admission is free. There will be one or two performance cycles, depending on the number of visitors. Donegal County Museum is part of the Culture Division, Donegal County Council.