‘Home’ is focus of MAC public arts project on outbreak
THE MAC Belfast is calling on the public to show what home means to them to capture the experience of what life in lockdown has been like.
As part of a specially commissioned series of short films entitled ‘Home’, the MAC is gathering images and words from across Northern Ireland to capture different experiences.
The project is inspired by the words from the final text sent from Seamus Heaney to his wife Marie — ‘Noli Timere’, Latin for “don’t be afraid”.
The films should reflect the positive, comforting elements as well as the negative and perhaps challenging aspects of what we have faced at home, and the more mundane things we associate with home life.
They can encompass items, places, people, the relationships you have built and anything that represents the feelings you have towards them.
Simon Magill, creative director at the MAC, said: “During the crisis and without access to our theatres, galleries, music venues and concert halls, many of us have still turned to reading, listening to music and creating art to find comfort, strength and hope.
“We have engaged closely and intently with our friends and family — together and online — to create beautiful things in the downtime, at home.
“This new video project will produce a collective artistic response to our lives in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic and we want to include as many interpretations as possible.
“That’s why we’re asking the public to submit photos or words that capture their experiences of lockdown.
“The MAC
is asking for images that represent ‘home’, but also welcome poems, song lyrics or passages from a book or play that people associate with home or Northern Ireland.
“These extracts will accompany the videos and will create the soundtrack which will be performed by people from all walks of life.”
Mr Magill added: “We’ll be working with a team of video and photographic artists, actors and musicians to bring the series together.
“However, this project belongs to the public so we urge everyone who has taken comfort from the arts or from being at home to get involved.
“We want to celebrate all the moments that have given you discomfort, joy and reassurance over these past few months, fusing them together to create a unique communal perspective of our experiences.”
To submit your images or verses, send them via email to home@themaclive.com. The venue has also been asking the public to save the rainbows that young and old created as a symbol of hope which adorned windows.
They will be displayed in a special exhibition as part of the MAC’S reopening programme once restrictions are lifted.
The MAC is asking children to save their drawings and present them as their artistic response to the lockdown.
Their work will be displayed beside that of professional artists across the MAC’S three galleries.
For more information visit www.themaclive.com.