Things To Do: Admire Waterford, hear a snare drum get pulverised, play the Wii, nestle into a Peanut Worm’s Dream

Our Picks

Our recommendations – no sponsored content, or adverts, just stuff we like.

The Glass Booth

This evening at 18.00, artist Jenny Brady will be launching her new experimental moving-image work The Glass Booth / An Both Gloine at Projects Arts Centre in Temple Bar.

In ‘The Glass Booth …’, Brady “casts a cinematic gaze” on the role of interpreters, both formal and informal, by scrutinising their process in environments familiar and extreme. Rather than being an intermediary in the background of a discussion, she makes them the focal point of this film to examine their complex process of listening, decoding and responding.

To explore the profession, its high stakes and inevitable slip-ups, Brady focuses on their role in scenarios including Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s meeting at the 1985 Geneva Summit, and an asylum seeker being interviewed at the International Protection Office.

From tomorrow, Friday 25 July, The Glass Booth / An Both Gloine will be showing in the centre’s gallery until 2 October. Screenings are on from 11.00 to 18.00 daily with subtitled and audiovisual-description versions alternating throughout the day.

Entry is free. For more information, visit the exhibition’s page here.

Nobody Could Hear The Music

It is almost nine years since independent Councillor Mannix Flynn sat out on the window ledge of City Hall and held up the sign calling for the Artane Boys Band to dissolve. In the months that followed, and then years, he continued his campaign. He tabled motions asking for the band to change its name and uniform, and that the Lord Mayor withdraw from being a patron of the Artane School of Music and Artane Band.

The Christian Brothers used to run the band as well as the St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Artane between 1870 and 1969, during which time many young boys suffered physical and sexual abuse. And for Flynn, a survivor of industrial schools, the band’s uniform and flag “represent symbols of oppression”, he said in 2021.

This Sunday, 27 July, Flynn is due to unveil a new installation on South William Street, titled "Nobody Could Hear The Music", once again calling on the Artane Band to change its uniform and name.

Since the middle of the month, Flynn has been documenting the work-in-progress over on his Instagram page, which has included his draping of a large flag over the face of numbers 20 and 21 South William Street, as well as his spray painting of brass and woodwind instruments, and a snare drum black.

To keep track of the project, and for more information ahead of its launch this weekend, you can visit the "Nobody Could Hear The Music" website here.

Barry Lyndon and Challengers at the Light House Cinema

It’s been about seven years since I last spent a full day in the Light House Cinema down in Smithfield, and it’s something every citizen should attempt at least once in their life.

This Saturday is arguably a day that anyone keen on pulling off the long-haul should consider, primarily because it won’t mean being glued to a seat the whole time.

First and foremost, the 50th anniversary 4k restoration of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon will be screening at 13.15. As part of those celebrations, there is an accompanying photo series by the photographer John Foley, titled “A landscape photography exhibition documenting the cinematic landscapes of Waterford used in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon”.

Between 2020 and 2023, Foley ventured across Waterford, and visited the director’s London archive, in order to capture the exact landscapes from the south-east that Kubrick used as the backdrop to his 18th-century epic. Previously shown as part of the 2023 Imagine Arts Festival in Waterford, the series will be on show at the Light House over the next few weeks.

Later, at 20.40, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is coming back for one night only, and as a tie-in, from 19.00 on, the bar will be hosting a Wii Sports Tennis competition, with participants encouraged to wear tennis attire.

I realise now that the only film screening in between these two events is Fantastic Four: First Steps. So perhaps, and contrary to my original proposal, you could just go out and get some fresh air for a couple of hours. Not everything needs to be a marathon.

To get your tickets, go to the Light House website here.

Ryosuke Kiyasu

Three weeks ago, we recommended a gig centred around a crowbar. Two weeks ago, we recommended another involving water and ceramics for percussion. This week, we’re going to suggest a conventional snare drum being played quite unconventionally. The aim, at this stage, is to turn loyal readers of this newsletter into proponents of avant-garde percussion in time for Christmas.

It has been almost a year since the Japanese snare drum soloist Ryosuke Kiyasu performed at the original Unit 44 on Prussia Street, and for a year now, I have been envious of anybody who was in attendance that night. Fortunately, however, Dr. Kiyasu, as he calls himself, is returning to play at the new Unit 44 on Little Green Street next Thursday.

What will this entail? Simple. Kiyasu is going to beat his snare drum to within an inch of its life. He is going to throw it around the room, and whack the table on which it is placed, with his drumsticks. He’ll blow the drum, run his hair across the drum. It’ll be loud. It’ll be wild, and, with his set estimated to run for an hour, it’ll be an estimated 59 minutes too long for some people.

My advice would be to browse Kiyasu’s social media page to get a sense of his work. He posts most of his performances there, and they are both entertaining on their own merits, and equally for the amount of negative comments they attract from users who the Instagram algorithm seemed keen to provoke. The best, posted by a user on Reddit, says “the guy calls himself a Dr, but has no music education at all”. That alone would sell me on him.

The performance is scheduled to start at 20.00 on Thursday, 31 July. Tickets are €15 plus booking fees, and can be purchased here.

Faigh Amach

Also next Thursday, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios will be launching "Faigh Amach", a new group exhibition by artists Ella Bertilsson, Kathy Tynan and Emily Waszak.

Roughly translated as “discover”, it is the first part of a new initiative organised by the gallery in partnership with Culture Ireland and the Southwark Park Galleries (SPG), London to support an artist in presenting their first solo exhibition outside Ireland. Of the three artists selected through an open-call, one will then be selected to exhibit over in London next spring.

As part of this exhibition, Bertilsson will be showing her recent film, A Peanut Worm’s Dream with viewers being invited to “nestle into an immersive interior space” while some of its characters, including a fish and a “goat/deer” emerge from the film itself.

Tynan, meanwhile, will be exhibiting a series of recent paintings sequenced as a panorama of “cinematic flashbacks.” These will bring together personal scenes from memory and family photographs, and look at her own childhood and later experiences as a mother.

Finally, Emily Waszak has produced a work reflecting on the idea of connecting with the spirit world, and comprising several large-scale woven pieces, including discarded waste textiles gathered from industrial sites around Dublin, alongside fragments of fabric chosen by her for their personal significance.

The opening reception is at 18.00 on Thursday, 31 July and the exhibition will be open to the public until 21 September. There's more information here.

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Dopa-Mean Girl by Louisa Ní Éideáin– Craic Den

Dopa-Mean Girl is back for 1 night only ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe, tonight at the Craic Den at 6.30pm. Come on a trip into the mind of a woman with ADHD.

This award-winning one-woman cabaret-style show recreates the polyphony of a brain that must do at least two things at all times. Everything, including this show, is in search of one thing – the elusive Dopamine hit.

This show is in English and Gaeilge. Tickets are €10 and can be bought here.

Your Voice, Dublin’s Energy

Codema - Dublin’s Energy Agency is currently running the Your Voice, Dublin’s Energy Future survey, which invites the public to share their views on how Dublin can move away from fossil fuels.

If you have any ideas for how the capital can be a cleaner, healthier place to live, work and visit, go fill out their survey here.

The deadline for completion is Tuesday 21 October.

Fingal proposes public play spaces in Dublin 15

Fingal County Council has launched consultations on two proposed public play spaces in Hazelbury Park and Hartstown Park.

Members of the public will be able to review both proposals and share their feedback here. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 27 August.

Falling Fruits Ireland

As harvesting season approaches, Falling Fruit Ireland is looking for help to identify new beneficiaries for its fruit.

They are looking for organisations, groups, clubs, schools, community centres, senior citizen and retirement homes, local markets, co-ops, restaurants, cafes, direct provision centres and/or private individuals making apple cider vinegar and who can deal with large quantities of apples over the twelve week harvest period.

To get involved, visit their website here.

Climate Action Interactive Talk in Grangegorman

Over at the Sanctuary on Stanhope Street in Grangegorman, volunteer climate activists will be discussing the state of the climate crisis and some of the major climate issues facing Ireland, like the threat of liquefied natural gas imports, data centre energy use, and growing emission aviation.

The talk will begin at 19.00 on 7 August. To book a ticket, visit the event’s page here.

CoisCéim Dance Theatre's Dancehall Blues by David Bolger

Directed and choreographed by David Bolger, Dancehall Blues transports you to a surreal dancehall at dusk, where reality and imagination blur. A genre-defying experience, it was previously nominated for Best Production & Best Design at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2024.

It will be showing at the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire from 31 July to 2 August.

Tickets are on sale here.

CoisCéim Broadreach | Moving Signatures

A new collaboration between CoisCéim Broadreach and IMMA Horizons, this four-month-long project begins in the galleries of IMMA where you will take part in a series of Saturday afternoon slow-art tours designed to provoke your senses and deepen your connection with selected works from the museum’s permanent collection.

Then, guided by choreographer and filmmaker Jonathan Mitchell, you’ll respond physically to an artwork that resonates with you to capture your own moving signature – your unique trace.

Moving Signatures begins on 2 August, and will conclude on 16 November. For more information visit its page here.

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