Kennedy Browne
island affinities 2020
Kennedy Browne is the collaborative practice of artists Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne, based in Ireland. Kennedy Browne seeks to address the supposedly eternal narrative of neoliberal capitalism as a fiction, and to do so by generating Other, competing fictions. They work mainly with moving image, working with collaborative processes of scripting, editing, and re-staging in locations they identify as significant within the plot of global capitalism – such as the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, at the Whiddy Island Strategic Oil Reserve in Bantry Bay, and in Silicon Valley, California.
In 2018 Kennedy Browne presented The Special Relationship at Krannert Art Museum, a survey exhibition of work since 2009. Their solo exhibitions include The Myth of the Many in the One, Wilfried Lentz Gallery, Rotterdam (2014); How Capital Moves, Limerick City Gallery of Art (2011) and 167 at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2010). Group exhibitions include Liquid Assets at the Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, Austria (2013); the Bern Biennial, Switzerland; Zero1 Biennial, San Jose (both 2012) and L'Exposition Lunatique, Kadist Foundation, Paris (2010). Kennedy Browne co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne.
RV Celtic Explorer
Kennedy Browne have mainly worked with video installation to date, though in their recent project, Real World Harm, they used 360º video for Oculus and the voices of online content moderators in a spatialized audio composition.
For Aerial/Sparks, Kennedy Browne were excited to work further with methods of audio recording and with the medium of radio as a form of transmission. Coupled with this, Kennedy Browne were interested in developing a composition relating to communications and the sea in the digital internet age that works with traditional forms of the sean-nós, sea shanty or work song to respond to the contemporary 'attention economy'.
Kennedy Browne’s video work stages an encounter between a destroyed US military vessel, washed up on Inis Oírr, with Sean-nós improvisation in music and dance, performed by brothers Colm and Gearóid Devane.
Dancer: Gearóid Devane
Accordion player: Colm Devane
Cinematographer: Tom Flanagan
Sound recordist: Bob Brennan
Editors: Kennedy Browne
Colourist: Michael Higgins
Sound mix: Seán MacErlaine