THE ORIGINAL AFFLUENT SOCIETY

THE ORIGINAL AFFLUENT SOCIETY
Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. (Marshall Sahlins, 1972)
Project Arts Centre presents an event led by artists Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones.
Taking its departure from Browne's current exhibition, Second Burial at Le Blanc, the discussion will begin in the Geology Museum, Trinity College Dublin with a presentation of extracts from anthropologist Marshall Sahlins' book Stone Age Economics. Sahlins' idea of ‘the original affluent society- proposed a re-visioning of hunter-gatherer societies from being 'primitive' to seeing them as practitioners of a refined mode of subsistence, from which much can be learned. The group will then move onwards, via the Central Bank on Dame Street, to Project Arts Centre for a brief discussion focused on themes of economic ritual, invented tradition and obsolescence as explored by the work in Second Burial at Le Blanc.
Booking fast - only a few places remain.
To book your place contact the gallery on 01 8819613 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 01 8819613 end_of_the_skype_highlighting ext.146, or email gallery@projectartscentre.ie.
As a precaution, please remember to pack your umbrella, and please note, this will be a recorded event.
Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland. Her research-based practice includes exhibitions, public projects, publishing and critical writing, and she also collaborates with Gareth Kennedy as Kennedy Browne. Her work implicitly addresses 'the economy' as the dominant metaphor for contemporary social and political relations. She is concerned with the creation or documentation of intentional economies and temporary communities, typically small-scale systems influenced by emotional affects. An interest in forms of non-market exchange such as gifting, subsistence, subsidies and poaching leads to the creation of particular bespoke objects for circulation and use to map existing but sometimes hidden social relations and desires. This work is typically domestic in character, using technologies such as knitting, flower-pressing, letter-writing, carpet-knotting and film-making, and is often carried out with the participation of a 'community' where it is based, or creates a fictional or temporary 'community' for itself.
Browne has participated in residencies and artist exchanges in Finland, Thailand, Japan and the UK and is currently resident at Firestation Artist Studios, Dublin. Recent exhibitions include Minimalism and Applied II, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, and Unto This Last, Raven Row, London (both 2010). In 2009, she co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Jesse Jones is an artist from Ireland. She recently completed an international fellowship in New York as part of a fellowship residency program at Location One, sponsored by The Arts Council. Jones’ practice focuses on the embedded political and social history within the cinematic space. Seeing popular culture as an expression of this collective narrative of history, her work often adopts elements such as the B movie or pop music as a site of shared memory. Jones is currently developing a new work called In These Troubled Times based on the Brechtian quote from the 1929 opera, "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny". The project aims to examine the effect of the collapsed Celtic Tiger economy on the urban landscape and trace how ideas of optimism and disappointment collide in our consciousness through discursive workshops and film screenings during her residency.
Jones is also a writer and curator, contributing regularly to discussions panels such as RTE's The View. Recent work includes Against the Realm of the Absolute, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2011), The Predicament of Man, RUA RED, Dublin (2010) and The Spectre and the Sphere, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2008). Jones will have her first solo exhibition in the U.S., entitled The Struggle Against Ourselves, at REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles in June 2011. She is the current Digital Arts Studio resident at RUA RED, Dublin