To mark the presentation of Mammary Mountain (VR experience) at Colemans in Carrick-on-Shannon, The Dock will host artists and collaborators Tara Baoth Mooney, Camille Baker, and Maf’j Alvarez on Thursday 21 November at 7pm. The evening will include an artists’ talk, screening, and panel conversation with special guests.
This will be the first presentation of Mammary Mountain by Tara Baoth Mooney, Camille Baker, and Maf’j Alvarez in Ireland following their participation in the Venice International Film Festival in Italy, Digital Cultures Festival in Poland, BFI London Film Festival in the UK, and Art + VR Festival in the Czech Republic.
This event is kindly supported by Creative Ireland. Tickets are free and booking is required.
About Mammary Mountain
Mammary Mountain is an intimate immersive story and embodied haptic experience that explores dis-ease within the body and its relationship to the broader context of the land through the breast cancer journey. These pressing themes and social realities are explored through the prism of artist Tara Baoth Mooney’s experience of breast cancer, interwoven with patients' and survivors' stories of their cancer treatment, recovery and post treatment trauma.
The result is a piece of work with many deep roots, bringing together the personal and the collective, the abstract and the representational, in an intimate and far-reaching investigation of eco-psychosocial models of human-landscape interaction. The work hopes to ignite new public engagement, validate survivors’ experiences and inform others, ultimately resulting in a more nuanced empathic and holistic understanding of the breast cancer treatment experience.
The Experience at Colemans
Within the world of Mammary Mountain, participants navigate a space that straddles perceptions of dream-like other worlds and everyday reality. The audience is invited to bear witness to the expedition of cancer, as narrated by survivors and patients. These stories of multiple treatments and the cumulative effect on the mind and body, are told through a chorus of voices, giving direct accounts and poetic responses, along with striking visual imagery in the form of compelling and immersive animation and an intricate soundscape.
Audiences will not just play a passive, receptive role within Mammary Mountain, but also a performative and sensory-inducing one. Set in a doctor's surgery or clinic, the experience begins with a ritual of preparation. 'Patients' are slowly dressed in a Mammography Gown, over which a specially designed haptic garment is wrapped. Each participant also wears a VR headset, while sitting in a bespoke chair. The narrative is then embodied through the haptic garment, which vibrates in areas of the body often affected by pain or discomfort mapped to the breast lymph nodes of the chest, underarm and back.
Mammary Mountain will be exhibited at Colemans on Main Street from on 20 November, 1—5pm and from 21—23 November, 11am—5pm.
The experience is free and booking is required.
About the artists
Tara Baoth Mooney is an interdisciplinary artist whose work responds to events past and present that explore lived experience and the inter-relationship of people with daily ritual, plants, nonhuman life forms and objects within their respective ecologies and practice.
Camille Baker is a maker of participatory performance and immersive artworks, through expressive non-verbal communication, extended embodiment and presence in real, mixed reality and interactive artworks, using XR, haptics, wearable devices and mobile media.
Maf’j Alvarez is a digital media artist and creative technologist living in Brighton, UK. Her work focuses on ecology, cultural and gender diversity in relation to open access to technology. She also works as a user experience designer on large-scale digital transformation projects for government services.
Mammary Mountain was funded by Arts Council England, Create, The Arts Council of Ireland, Leitrim County Council Arts Office, and Root Interactive.