Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Art: Design: Performance: Northern Ireland. A drawing representing the security cordon (aka Ring of Steel) that once encircled Belfast’s city center, appears on the sidewalk as passersby stop, look, talk, remember and speak to the journalist/performer recording comments and stories. The event initiates an overdue public discourse about the past in Northern Ireland that has forestalled personal recovery, hampered trans-generational understanding and overshadowed future plans. Since the end of the conflict/Troubles, 1969-1998, Belfast has seen extensive redevelopment and become a desirable destination. Traces of the past are absent and the city center has become an increasingly uncanny place for many who lived through the period. Evidence of the conflict remains, however, in the cultural, political and psycho-geographic landscape. Contested notions of identity, and divergent perspectives on history still polarize the population and no effective mechanisms exist to collectively mark, or discuss the past. This study, a performative redrawing of the Ring of Steel, a series of creative workshops to engage communities in the process, an exhibition/publication and a legacy website that houses documentation of the performance, relevant research and an interactive GIS mapping of the Ring of Steel (1972- the present), addresses this absence.