WABASH CANNONBALL - Granite, Quartz, Iron

Wabash Cannonball: Granite, Quartz, Iron.
Impact Study / Tall Tale of the Mourne Mountains

A pata-perceptual exploration of materiality and culture.

Shipsides and Beggs Projects 2019
Performance; spoken word, image, audio and video.
Approx 70 min.

Audio visual, spoken word performance in the T5 Field Cinema format at Bouy Park, Belfast commissioned by Bbeyond in 2019 as part of the Citizengage programme: International Performance Art Festival, Feb 21st, 2019


WABASH CANNONBALL video edits:
Video documentation edited into new video works:
This gives a good sense of the performance but works better as four short stand-alone edited artworks. The live material has been edited with rehearsal material and full images to generate a coherency that mitigates the sound issue with recording a live performance.

Credits: Live video and audio footage: Bbeyond
All other footage, audio and editing: Shipsides and Beggs Projects or as listed or open source /public domain.

Part 1: Impact Study / Tall Tale. 13.08min
Part 2: Granite Intrusions. 24.41min
Part 3: Crystal Fallout. 18.15min
Part 4: Gravity Accounts. 14.13min

The starting point for the exhibition is a rock-climbing route in the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland called the Wabash Cannonball. The route is rarely climbed but is a classic of Irish climbing – 80 meters of steep, hard granite climbing in the beautiful and remote setting of Slieve Beg near to the notorious gully of The Devils Coach Road. It was first climbed and named by the noted Belfast climber Calvin Torrans in 1974, who had and has a passion for the politicised folk music scene of the 1960’s to which the Wabash Cannonball connects as the title of an American folk song.

The nomenclature of this route and its setting sets us on a journey from Irish landscape and mythology to and through American Folk tradition and music, particularly of the Appalachian Mountain areas, and the history, politics and culture of the American railroad expansion and then back to the cultural and topographical landscape of the Mourne Mountains (which in turn mark the eastern end of the UK / ROI border).

The narrative of the performance from here then explores other links and material connections reflecting a twisting and, at times, strange journey through techniques of pata-perception lateral practice (Shipsides 2011) and makes up four distinct sections which deal with different materials found or encountered in the Mourne Mountains.