Twinsome Minds: Recovering 1916 in images and stories

Twinsome Minds (a phrase taken from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake) is a multimedia performed talk with text by Richard Kearney and moving images by Sheila Gallagher. The performance re-imagines a series of micro-narratives surrounding 1916 in Dublin and the WWI battlefields of Belgium. The stories and images of eclipsed history concentrate on ‘twinned’ pairs - family members, neighbours, school friends, lovers - who ended up on opposite sides during this time of great upheaval in British-Irish relations. The various poignant scenes explore crossings of memory and imagination, anecdote and legend, history and myth - as well as loyalty and love. They are framed and retold by writer and philosopher, Richard Kearney, with screen projections by the artist, Sheila Gallagher, and original music score by Dana Lyn.

Through an interplay of storytelling, animations, music and poetry, Twinsome Minds: Recovering 1916 mines what is often lost behind official historical accounts and acts of commemoration, and proposes a transformative work of interpreting the Rising for a new generation.