Loath to close

Thirteen: Assembly

Art Park, Spencer Dock

****

It had to end somewhere, but that doesn't mean that Anu's ambitious Thirteen project wished to reach a conclusion. Gathering together in the Art Park, a clean, corporate interpretation of a public space, each audience member was given a wrist band and slyly divided into pairs, then invited to hear Anu's large cast recite a text under torch light. This was a letter from Colm O'Gorman, Amnesty International Ireland director, who agitated that we consider what sort of a state we are rebuilding, and advocated for the Constitutional enshrinement of certain human rights to protect the citizenry in the event of future crises.

As a letter, it was neither easy to recite or to absorb, but the real intention here was to get people talking: responding to one of two questions: "Where do you stand?" "How do you begin?" Simple, perhaps, but not reductive and perhaps even quietly effective. In this park, at least two cynics took the questions seriously, and, inspired by the challenge, example and frustrations of Thirteen, resolved to try something different. It's not much, but it's a start.