THE CRITICAL DRINKING CURRICULUM

The Critical Drinking Curriculum is a public program coordinated by Hannah O’Flynn and Vita Buivid under the politics of food research group IMBISS. The program takes the form of a series of public events that look at alcohol as a political substance, as well a place of intersection for the relationship between the body and the State. The curriculum thinks this history from the scope of race, gender, class and age, between others. It considers how the historical production, trade and consumption of alcohol, together with the cultural codes surrounding these practices, entangle themselves with global politics. The public program opens up this entanglement by doing an artistic enquiry into some of the different histories of alcohol production, trade and drinking. The program will make public appearance in the forms of a pop up bar, performances, an exhibition, lectures, a podcast, a publication, film screenings, round tables or a supper club.

SMASHED: Talking Drunk Stories / Singing Songs of Riot and Revolt

As a part of the Project Space Festival 22

“SMASHED: Speaking Histories of Insurrection” is an audio piece by Hannah O’Flynn that forms part of “The Critical Drinking Curriculum”, a series co-curated by Vita Buivid and Hannah O’Flynn on the political history of alcohol. The piece enquires into the Irish pub as a political space for community building, transmission of oral history and anti-colonial organising within the context of the long British colonial occupation of Ireland.

The work shown is a sonic collage of conversations with Michelle Turley, Pádraigín O’Flynn, Ian Nolan and Niall O’Flynn on the space created around the practice of collective drinking, and its relation to the disavowal of and organisation against an oppressive colonial regime. The research on the collective memories of Ireland’s colonisation and resistance is approached through storytelling and the re-telling of personal and family histories deeply entrenched in this history.

The space of the pub becomes the prism into this research due to drunkenness’ close relationship to the transmission of oral history. This is of particular importance in the Irish context due to its long history under colonial rule, where official written history was controlled by the British — drunk oral history becoming, thus, a possible space for insurgency.

What place does the pub occupy within the social fabric? In what ways can the pub be a space of learning? How do the voices of the oppressed move through and around a system of violent silencing? In what ways does drunk speech escape discipline? What are the ways in which one listens? What does contagious singing have to do with collective political activation? Is there a direct relation between higher alcohol consumption and political despair?

An audio installation by Hannah O’Flynn interviewing

Michelle Turley, Pádraigín O’Flynn, Ian Nolan & Niall O'Flynn

Sound post-production by Pablo Giménez Arteaga

As part of The Critical Drinking Curriculum,

co-curated by Vita Buivid & Hannah O’Flynn