“Becoming Tallaght” is the third in a series of annual performance art festivals organised by Rua Red South Dublin Arts Centre. The ambitious four-day event will showcase the work of eight selected performance artists: Emma Brennan, Tara Carroll, Austin Hearne, Mariya Hoyin, Rachel MacManus, Shiro Masuyama, Katherine Nolan and El Putnam and will include three bespoke workshops. On the final day of the festival there will be an artists’ symposium followed by Xchange, a new improvised open performance jam which will take place outside Rua Red every two months. The inaugural Xchange will be part of the festival and will also feature guest artists from Bbeyond, the performance art organisation based in Belfast.
The curators of “Becoming Tallaght”, Olivia Hassett and Paul Regan explore “…the state of ‘becoming’ as a transformative process — just as live performance often involves a transformation though embodied action, both at a specified site — and in the presence of the viewer — so too — Tallaght continues to undergo a cultural flux, of its people and urban landscape.” To explore the changing landscape of Tallaght and in preparation for the festival, Rua Red invited local historian Tomas Maher and artist / researcher Michael Dignam to give presentations to the artists. Tomas shared his extensive knowledge of Tallaght’s early history, which dates back to the Bronze Age and the artists attended site visits to St. Maelruain’s Chapel and St. Mary’s Priory, which deepened their understandings of the vast history of religious influence in the area.
Michael drew on his local knowledge to discuss Tallaght’s recent history, highlighting how rapid industrial growth affected his family and the wider community. He also addressed the substantial consumption of energy and water by Tallaght data centres for server cooling, emphasising their subtle impact on the local community while pointing to the potential for future concerns that have yet to be identified.
As Tallaght continues to evolve, the curators, alongside the community of invited artists, find deep inspiration in both its history and its dynamic present. At its core, Becoming Tallaght seeks to engage with this place, its community, and rich history, while thoughtfully responding to its contemporary realities. The performances will take place around the centre of Tallaght and in Rua Red. The diverse group of artists, pushing the limits of their practice, explore themes of identity, memory, belonging and the human condition.
Emma Brennan will lead “Thresh / Hold”, a site-responsive performance rooted in the grotesque as a methodology of excavation, disruption, and transformation. Set within the Losset at St. Maelruain’s Church, the work stages a charged encounter between Tallaght-born poets Katharine Tynan and Alice Furlong.
Through live action, text, and ritual, it explores entangled legacies of empire, faith, land, and gendered voice. Tara Carroll’s performance at St. Mary’s Priory, “Dis/Embodiment of Wholeness”, explores the ways that sacred, disability and transgender embodiment(s) are all structured by reference to notions of wholeness, perfection and cure.
Austin Hearne’s “Priory Pansy” will revisit St. Mary’s Church, the site of his own baptism, with a determined mission to dust away the cobwebs. Mariya Hoyin’s “Geographies of Grief” deals with the ongoing war in Ukraine and “…how war leaves its marks — in the geography of cities and the geography of the human body… and in the silence that echoes across generations.”
Rachel Macmanus will present “Keep Fit Tallaght – The middle way”, a participatory, performative durational exercise class where the Buddha instructor invites participants to consider; who do we worship and what brings us joy? Shiro Masuyama will present his “Borderline Project” in which he will be present in his caravan outside Rua Red to share discussions of cultural identity and Anglo-Irish complexities.
Katherine Nolan performs “Mother Load”, a processional performance about motherhood, “…visceral and absurd, the performance asks viewers to consider what it is like to bear the weight of care.” El Putnam’s “Hot Air”, is a roaming performance tracing data centre heat output and “…asks what happens when we attune ourselves to the invisible flows of our computational infrastructures, drawing attention to our unacknowledged entanglements and complicities with these systems.”
Becoming Tallaght is a celebration of the ephemeral and transformative power of live art to challenge, inspire and connect using profound and unexpected ways. From intimate to large-scale interactions the performances will seek to connect, evoke emotion and provoke thought about contemporary cultural issues.
“As a performance is an action, viewing it is a kind of stopping — an observation in stalled time. Perhaps, a becoming is also a be-going. Ultimately, we are all becoming… and going… in a way; we are being going.”
Image Credits:
Katherine Nolan (2021). Images from Fluid Flesh, performance to camera. Image credit: Aoife Giles.
Priory Pansy by Austin Hearne (2025).
Performance by Mariya Hoyin. Photography by Plockie Towarzystwo Fotograficzne, I Międzynarodowy Festiwal Sztuk Performatywnych Opowiesci, Plock, Poland (2023).
I plead, I beg by Tara Carroll (2024). Photo credit: Léann Herlihy.
