Interventions on the Blaskets: The Photographic Documentation of Françoise Sullivan’s Irish Performances

In 1978, the Québécoise artist Françoise Sullivan went to the Blasket Islands and made a series of performances for the camera. Sullivan (1923– ) is relatively unknown outside of her native Québec and Canada, but in an exceptionally long and experimental career, she has made work as a painter, dancer, sculptor, performance artist and conceptual artist. This article focuses on the photographs of Sullivan's performances on the Blaskets and the broader, complex relationship between photography and performance itself. I trace the archival presences of these photographs, which documented Sullivan's interventions in abandoned cottages on Great Blasket Island, as reproductions in catalogues and monographs since 1981. I argue for the historical, material and affective dimensions of these images, foregrounding the complex and distributed dynamics of affect that circulate around and through the photograph. The malleability of the performance photograph, as document and documentation, along with its archival potential to be repositioned or remediated in the future, is fundamental to this account. I compare the still and the moving image representations of Sullivan's Blasket performances by incorporating analysis of her 8mm film, Dégringolade, in order to produce a more expansive, multi-modal reading of what I understand her to be proposing with this Irish project. What brought Sullivan to the Blaskets, a site with deep resonance in Irish cultural memory and a hold on the imaginary of Irish and non-Irish artists alike? And how can an affective reading of Sullivan's performances and photographic documentation in the context of transhistoricism expand such concerns?