Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The Cillini spread across rural Ireland, dotted along margins in the corners of fields and the interiors of circular fairy forts, each of its rocks a marker, each stone a grave. The Cillini take up root as traumatic sites of oppressive religious practices. They are the sites of unconsecrated burials, of suicides, and mainly of unbaptised infants. Based to the concept of Original Sin in Catholic doctrine as construed by Augustine of Hippo, unbaptised children were banned from consecrated ground. They were assigned to wander in perpetual purgatory, taken from their mothers at the dead of night and hidden from sight. The fairy fort offered a ring of protection, of curses to keep out intruders and destructive farming practices and the potential for a different afterlife to keep these children safe. My current film and visual material with Cillini as subject matter will be discussed in this paper. Harrowing spaces are explored using drones to create an emotive sense of place, an eerie encounter between worlds, the contemporary and the ancient, the world of the living and the world of limbo, of fairy lore and tragedy in a landscape embedded with sorrow. Whilst these sites were intended to foster exclusion, trauma and being forgotten, my work Is to aid in remembrance. In evoking new memory spaces, there are opportunities for stigma to be removed and communities to be able to grieve and begin the process of healing, free from the constraints of doctrine.