In 2005 the preserved bones of a young woman were discovered tangled in turf cutting machinery in County Roscommon. ‘Cloonshannagh Woman’ – her label in the records since – had all her clothes preserved and she was carbon dated to the 7th century. Her next journey was to Dublin, where she has waited in storage at the National Museum ever since.
After 1400 years in a bog and now 20 years in a basement, artists and researchers at University College Cork and the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics at UCC and the Tyndall National Institute felt that it was time for ‘Cloonshannagh Woman’ to have a name and story.
Jools Gilson is Professor of Creative Practice at the Department of Theatre at UCC. Insight investigator Dr Brendan O’Flynn is head of group for Wireless Sensor Networks Research at the Tyndall National Institute. Together they applied to the Insight Strategic Research Fund to bring this woman’s story to vivid, visceral life; using dance, textiles, electronic sensors, scent and sound.
First they named her: Saérlaith. Meaning ‘Free princess’, the name was chosen because the fabrics found with Saérlaith’s body were of a quality suggestive of wealth. The fact that these fine cloths were buried with her denotes misadventure. Saérlaith probably should not have ended her days in Cloonshannagh bog.
Jools Gilson wanted to bring an immersive story to contemporary audiences using a range of media that would reflect the many layers of Saérlaith’s journey; her resting place – its textures of moss and turf; the sounds of the body’s final resting place, the finely woven textiles that were preserved with her for 1400 years and the bog itself, wounded and plundered in the intervening generations.
Prof Gilson’s own background; grounded in dance, writing and textile arts; meant that she could create a rich telling of Saérlaith’s story but she wanted to bring a digital and high-tech dimension to the project.
‘We wanted to use technology to elaborate the story and to evoke a ‘haunting,’’ Gilson explains. ‘Brendan O’Flynn brings an engineering dimension with wearable electronics and sensors integrated into the textiles and the performances.’
The ‘haunting’ Gilson describes is Saérlaith’s warning from the past to the present about the value that we lose when we drain, dry and destroy our wetlands, which are powerful carbon sinks and home to a diversity of flora and fauna.
‘Saérlaith is a trope, an amulet, to talk about the climate emergency,’ Gilson explains.
The project has many components- musical composition by Ben Burns, sensed data and CO2 emission displays, bowls of live moss enchanted by audio, textiles by artist Veronica Sanctorum fitted with accelerometers and touch sensors, embraced in soundscapes of snipe, looms and horns. There are scents and tactile objects and choreography performed – all woven together to bring about a collision of past and present through the channel of this ageless woman.
‘We are seeing more collaborations between arts and science researchers in recent years but often the arts are enlisted to support or communicate scientific research,’ says Brendan O’Flynn. ‘One of our roles in this project is to use the science and tech to support the arts research. What the artists are doing here is telling a very powerful story and we as scientists and engineers are working to amplify and enrich that.’
This combined energy, driven by artistic practice, is as important to the researchers as Saérlaith herself, says Prof Gilson.
‘I design evocative spaces with clear intent and framing,’ says Gilson. ‘To do this in partnership with engineers is a kind of research that we want to explore and foster. Engineering research is often framed as market-driven while the arts are considered by some as ‘airy-fairy’. Artists are often interested in science – we just bring a different methodology that’s poorly understood. We’re looking to get everyone out of their comfort zone and exploring how other disciplines work.’
Dr O’Flynn is excited about this uncommon approach. ‘We are focused on the experience, the creation of a third space,’ he says. ‘For the audience, the complexity and multisensory nature of the project will help to build an ‘enchanted space’ and an opportunity to experience the curiosity of not immediately understanding’.
These artists and engineers have come together to help Saérlaith haunt us, and ultimately help us. ‘Saérlaith is angry,’ says Gilson. ‘Her story has been buried with her for over a thousand years. She is part of the bog and she wants to defend it. We are giving her a voice.’
