Liberation at the Back Lane Parliament

What does emancipation mean today, as we mark the 250th anniversary of the Liberator’s birth? A night of storytelling and song will explore the idea of liberation today within the potent space of Tailor’s Hall, one of Ireland’s last standing guildhalls, where the merchant tailors of the city met in the same space that generations of activists and leaders fighting for freedom planned their struggles, from the United Irishmen to the Irish independence movement.

While the legacy of Daniel O'Connell is celebrated, his concept of liberation and the Catholic state he helped usher in is important to interrogate. Join us for an evening exploring the futures we hope for across this island and our own understandings of liberation.

Through song, poetry, storytelling, shadow puppetry and performance, new voices explore the ideas of liberation within the Back Lane Parliament.

Featured Artists: Day Magee, Osaro Azams, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Clodagh O'Leary, Tuqa Al-Sarraj

Day Magee is a performance-centred multimedia artist based in Dublin. Since 2011, they have performed as part of live art organisations such as Livestock and the Dublin Live Art Festival, before pursuing a BA in Sculpture & Combined Media in Limerick School of Art & Design in 2017, during their time there staging group live art events with the collective Evil, and by their third year exhibiting work as part of Galway’s Tulca Festival 2019, group shows in Dublin and Manhattan, as well as being put forward for the Future Generation Art Prize 2020 by its Irish partner platform Pallas Projects Studios, and shortlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Awards. They are most recently commissioned by Arts & Disability Ireland and Live Art Ireland in 2021. Magee’s work concerns the grieving of futurity as per the subjectivity of a queer sick body - queerness navigated via fundamentalist Christianity, and illness as manifest in chronic pain. Taking the form of performative multimedia, from live performance to image-making, the written word and music, they manifest and chronicle a self-mythology.

Osaro Azams is a multi-award-winning audio-visual artist with a fascination for West African mythos. Her recent work delves into the literal Black arts of lonesome prayers, sensual poetry and guttural vocal chords which she infuses in her live performances during the spring and hermit seasons. Founder of the Fried Plantains Collective , Osaro celebrates the melodious voices of African and Irish artists through her event 'Black Jam' which took place at Abbey Theatre, The Complex, Bello Bar and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in France.

Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award for best first collection in Ireland and for the 2018 Julie Suk Award in the U.S.A. Her publication history includes Poetry Ireland Review, The SHOp, The London Magazine, Agenda Poetry Journal and The Stinging Fly. Ní Churreáin has been awarded literary fellowships by Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, The Jack Kerouac House of Orlando and Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She is a recipient of the Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council and a co-recipient—alongside poets Kimberly Campanello and Dimitra Xidous—of the inaugural Markievicz Award. Ní Churreáin is a member of the Writers In Prisons Panel co-funded by the Arts Council & the Department of Justice, Equality and Reform. In 2020, Ní Churreáin was an Artist-in-Residence at Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris. BLOODROOT is her debut collection.