Mark Curran

Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, Faculty of Film, Art, and Creative Technologies, Faculty Member

Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, Art & Design, Faculty Member

Freie Universität Berlin, MA in Visual and Media Anthropology, Visiting Professor

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Activist Researcher & Educator. Berlin & Dublin. Practice-led PhD (Centre for Transcultural Research & Media Practice, TU Dublin), Lecturer, BA (Hons) Photography & Visual Media (Programme Chair 2017-2020) & Postgraduate Supervisor, MA by Research, Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT), Dublin. Visiting Professor, MA Visual & Media Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin (2011-2021). Research Associate 2021, ARCHIVO Research Network (Portugal) & University of Arts London (UAL)(UK). Visiting Faculty (2006-2008), Postgraduate Summer Programme, Steinhardt School for Cultural Studies, New York University.

Incorporating multi-media installation, centrally informed by visual anthropology, beginning in the late 1990s, Curran has undertaken a cycle of long-term research projects, critically addressing the predatory context resulting from the migrations and flows of global capital.

These have been extensively published and exhibited, including, DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), Chicago, USA (2010), Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2010), Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal (2011), Grimmuseum, Berlin, Germany (2013) & FORMAT, Derby, England (2013). Curran has also presented widely most recently McGill University, Montreal (2014), Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), London (2015), University of Ljubljana (2015), University of Bern (2015), Boston University (2016), College Arts Association (CAA) 105th Annual Conference, New York (2017), RAI, London (2020), University of South Wales (2021) & Aalto University, Helsinki (2022).

Supported by Arts Council of Ireland & curated by Helen Carey, THE MARKET (2010-) continues the cycle & focuses on the functioning & condition of the global markets and the role of financial capital. It was first installed at Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland (2013), Belfast Exposed Gallery, Northern Ireland (2013) & Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France (2014). In Autumn 2015, an extensive mid-career installation titled, The Economy of Appearances, was presented at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA), Ireland. More recent installations include Noorderlicht, Netherlands (2015 & 2019)), Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto, Canada (2016), Museum of Capitalism, USA (Oakland, 2017 & New York City 2019), Le Bleu du Ciel – Center pour la photographie contemporaine, Lyon, France (2017), Turchin Centre for the Visual Arts, North Carolina, USA (2017), Krakow Photomonth (2018) & Ballarat Biennale, Australia (2019), PhotoIreland (2022) & Villa Heike, Berlin (2022).

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Curran worked on projects against Apartheid in South Africa & in support of the then Frontline States, alongside working with young people from First Nation communities in western Canada. From 1991-1996, he was a Social Worker in the area of Disability & Independent Living with focus on Empowerment, Advocacy & Self-Advocacy (Canada & Ireland).

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Normalising Deviance: An Interview with Mark Curran

<jats:p>Irish photographer Mark Curran presents his on-going project THE MARKET, which is a... more <jats:p>Irish photographer Mark Curran presents his on-going project THE MARKET, which is an exploration of the predatory nature of the functioning and condition of global markets. Focusing on financial and commodity exchanges, Curran provides a multi-layered and multimodal investigation of market culture, primarily through interviews and photographic portraits of traders, financial analysts and bankers from Dublin, London, Frankfurt, Addis Ababa and Amsterdam. In the interview, Curran talks about the limitations of using photography to critically represent the intangible and immaterial aspects of the working of the market and its repetitive normalisation of deviance.</jats:p>

Final Build?: Imaging the Local-global Landscape of Hewlett-Packard, Ireland

MPhil. Thesis (Practice-led), Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, TU Dublin, 2005

This practice-led thesis constitutes a timely response to the absence of audio and visual represe... more This practice-led thesis constitutes a timely response to the absence of audio and visual representation of labour practices and post-industrial space in the context of Ireland’s accelerated economic development during the past decade, resulting in its current status as the most globalised economy in the world. The significance of Ireland’s global position is amplified by the fact that the South of Ireland never experienced the Industrial Revolution and has thus been propelled from an agricultural-based economy to one defined as post-industrial of the so-called, 'Celtic Tiger'. In both its methodological design and implementation, the study stakes out new terrain through the combined use of photography, digital video and ethnographic methods, further engaging with the oral testimony of workers in the post-industrialised multinational location/fieldsite of Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, Leixlip, County Kildare.

The thesis comprises three chapters together with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter situates Hewlett-Packard’s presence in Ireland within an historicised and economic framework, while simultaneously providing critical readings of propagandist representations by the public and private enterprise sectors. The chapter’s juxtaposition of these readings, together with disparate spatio-temporal labour practices, historical periods and the introduction of different theoretical paradigms, enacts a strategic textual device used throughout this chapter and the following two. The second chapter engages directly with methodological questions underpinning the research project, alongside foregrounding different fieldwork practices. The textual presentation of interview transcript material, photography and digital video is brought into dialogue with depictions of industrialisation from the late nineteenth century to the present. The third and final chapter both identifies and establishes theoretical and representational strategies at work in the rationale, design and content of the re-constitution of the research material in the format of an installation titled, ‘The Breathing Factory’.

Completed through the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, TU Dublin (2002-2005).

Note: One of the first practice-led postgraduate research projects in the Republic of Ireland and the first using photography as a central research method.

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Ausschnitte Aus EDEN/Extracts From EDEN (2003-2009): Re Representing The 'Wounded' Landscape Of The Lausitz, Eastern Germany - Mark Curran (Photographies/Routledge UK 2013)

Photographies (Routledge UK), 2013

Centrally informed through the application of photography, my multi-media practice has evolved to... more Centrally informed through the application of photography, my multi-media practice has evolved to one conversant in ethnography and the principles of a critically reflexive practice. Ethnography can be viewed as an epistemological position or “a commitment”, as Zsuzsa Gille states, “to study an issue at hand by understanding it from the perspectives of people whose lives are tied up with or affected by it”. The thematic concerns within my research practice have critically addressed the predatory context resulting from the flows and migrations of global capital. To this end, and drawing upon my own practice-led fieldwork in the Lausitz (Lusatia), Brandenburg in the former East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), this article and the illustrations frame a long-term research project (2003-2009) constructed in a landscape inscribed with the utopic “wounds of modernity” (Berman) — Industrialisation, Socialism, and now at great cost, Globalisation — and the re-representational strategies employed to evoke the “wounded” landscape of the Lausitz, a landscape of the here and now. viewing always at its centre the cata- lyst, the 'Tagebau', and critically seeing it as an allegory for late capitalism itself — finite, fragile and ultimately unsustainable.

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The Breathing Factory (2002-2006): Locating the global labouring body Mark Curran Journal of Media Practice Volume 9 Number 2 (2008)

Journal of Media Practice, 2008

In 2005, the Republic of Ireland was defined as the ‘most globalised economy in the world’ (IDA I... more In 2005, the Republic of Ireland was defined as the ‘most globalised economy in the world’ (IDA Ireland). The significance of this position is amplified by the fact that the South of Ireland never experienced an Industrial Revolution compared to other western European countries (O’Brien 1999). In the absence of significant audio and visual representation of labour, global labour practices and globalised industrial space in the context of this accelerated economic development, this study, both in its methodological design and implementation, stakes out new terrain through the combined use of photography, digital video and ethnographic methods, further engaging with the oral testimony of workers in the multinational location/fieldsite of Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, Leixlip, County Kildare. This article addresses the rationale for the multivocal framework in which this prac- tice-led research project has been methodologically undertaken and its role in the for- mation of the installation, The Breathing Factory (2006).

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