Chris Doris: 10 Poets Observe in Silence

For One Working Day : Saturday 22nd May 10-5pm.

The two-fold life of mankind sees us struggling in the concrete and reflecting in the abstract. In the former we suffer and die, but in the abstract we quietly reflect on the plan of the universe as does a navigator on a ship’s chart. When Chris Doris proposed this event to me for the Sculpture Hall he opened up a channel of memory that I had locked away since my time spent in studio practice. Slowing time down through silent observance allowed me to ‘see things’ not by looking but by being in the ‘presence of’ an artwork. My hope in this event is to open up that way of seeing in the context of a museum and its collection of artworks, thus revealing the power of an aesthetic experience that one can perceive each time you visit The Hugh Lane.

10 POETS OBSERVE IN SILENCE is one in a series of public artworks in which Chris Doris utilizes silence as a medium of shared public inquiry. In this case ten prominent Irish poets collaborate with the artist.

Chris Doris enacted 40 Days and 40 Nights as a public artwork on Croagh Patrick in 1999. This opened the way for a series of silence works by the artist which include Silencer-30 days of silence 2007 and WHATSHAPPENING 2009 in Dáil éireann, the Irish Parliament.

Doris’ studio-based and public works are informed by 20 years of academic and practical research in Eastern philosophy, Western psychology and science. He is currently doing an M.A. in Core Process Psychotherapy, which integrates Buddhist psychology and Western developmental psychology.

Michael Dempsey. Head of Exhibitions

For 10 POETS OBSERVE IN SILENCE, eminent Irish poets, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Chris Agee, Paddy Bushe, Kevin Higgins, Rachel Hegarty, Seamus Cashman, Patrick Chapman, Barbara Smith, Eamonn Lynskey, Eileen Sheehan and the artist, sit in sustained silence in the sculpture hall of Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. The participants observe ‘self’ as process, conditioned responsiveness and emergent stillness. Awareness moves to phenomena arising in the local and non-local relational fields and switches to and from self process.

10 poets is informed by congruencies in the research of physics, biology, neuroscience, western psychology and eastern experiential, philosophical practices.

The work is neither performance nor spectacle of endurance – it is an invitation to a subtle & formative mode of observation and communication.

Public participation is invited at the venue and non-locally, by remote attention.