This piece was initiated by Suzanne Mooney during The Space Programme*, at Castletown House. It was then through conversation with sound artist Linda O Keeffe that the idea of a live soundtrack came about.

There are three elements that make up this performance. The video, which is pre-edited, the sound, which is constructed live during the performance and the spoken text, which is performed live. The sound is being constructed in response to the video imagery and consists only of recordings of the sound of breath. The text is also partly improvised as the structure and order of the script is determined in response to the sound.

Set in a room in Castletown House in Kildare (built c.1722), this piece uses the physical architecture of the building to question our perception of space. The window acts as the site for an action, in which the performer explores their limited space within what we have already been shown to be a large spacious room.
I invited sound artist Linda O Keeffe to come up with a way to use sound to add a sense of ephemerality to this piece and this evolved into the idea for a live soundtrack. The sound of breath and the fleeting spoken thoughts that make up the script of this performance attempt to draw us into a personal, internal space. The improvised nature of the sound means that the piece is never repeated exactly as before, again adding to the sense of uncertainty that builds during the piece.
The window space we are looking at is not entirely an internal or an external space; it is a potentially transient space. The window presents the possibility of moving from the interior to the exterior, or vise versa, but it is rarely used in this way. More often than not the journey through a window is merely a visual one, as we see inside or outside without necessarily journeying through, imagining what exists beyond our limited view through the frame. This imagined journey is a metaphor for the actions or inactions that we are faced with in our daily lives; the desire to take action, the desire to change or simply the desire to remain as we are.
I am hoping to share with you a glimpse of an internalised conversation, an internal space which is something that we all share to some degree. How much time we choose to spend in our own thoughts and places that our consciousness creates varies from person to person.
So how often are we truely living in this moment?

_{[*Residency programmce run by The Performance Corporation, 2008.]
CREDITS:  Video: Suzanne Mooney (video performance by Aine Stapleton)
Sound: Linda O Keeffe (live sound performance by Linda O Keeffe & Suzanne Mooney)}