Ormston House to present late-night screening of artists’ films

ORMSTON House will present a late-night screening programme of several artists’ films.

As part of Belltable Late Night, Under Cover of Night, the events will feature a double-bill: Becoming Plant by British-Kenyan artist Grace Ndiritu and Expulsion by Irish artist Caoimhín Gaffney.

'Under cover of Night' is an idiom used when describing activities carried out during nighttime hours, in darkness, avoiding detection from authority. The clandestine and revolutionary connotations of this idiom frame this programme.

With distinct focuses and subject matters, the films find commonality in their radical propositions for alternative forms of living and being.

Becoming Plant (2022) follows six dancers who participate in a therapeutic group experiment with psychedelics, while temporarily 'living' together on a demilitarised industrial site.

While they are subjected to the plant's consciousness and to each other's presence, they perform a choreography, aligning their naked bodies with each other and with the architectural ruins.

The film serves as a catalyst to discuss wider social and relational issues.

Expulsion (2021) follows a fictional utopian queer state as it devolves from a promised oppositional force into a dystopian bureaucracy.

Interspersed throughout is archival footage of queer activist Joan Jett Blakk, the drag persona of Terence Smith, who ran for President of the USA in 1992. Expulsion navigates through queer history, from the witchcraft trials and the inquisition to current debates about the co-opting of queerness by capitalism.

The screening will take place on Friday, 15 March from 9pm–12am. Tickets are €10 and can be purchased on the Belltable website.

A brief introduction precedes each film, and there will be a DJ in the foyer playing music before, between, and after the films.