CÓAN
2016

HD video, 14 minutes.

The video is a series of kōans, i.e., questions, dialogues or stories used in Zen Buddhist practice, which originate in 12th century China. For most kōans, any rational or logical interpretation of the story is seen as pointless. The real meaning of a kōan lies outside of language, and can only be grasped intuitively. The fim was made for my solo exhibition Seas suas suigh síos seas suas at Leitrim Sculpture Centre in Ireland in November 2016, a show that dealt with the Irish language from the viewpoint of a foreigner. I translated 16 kōans myself into Irish and the video shows me reading them against the backdrop of different types of landscape; Irish, Greek and Norwegian.