News & Events

Performance Maker Luke Casserly to undertake residency at Earth Institute

Published: Friday, 26 January, 2024

Image from Distillation (2023) by Pato Cassinoni.

Multidisciplinary performance maker Luke Casserly will be undertaking a residency at the Earth Institute this year as part of a Next Generation award from the Arts Council which he received in 2023. Luke was one of twenty artists selected for this award which supports emerging artists across all disciplines at an early and pivotal stage in their career.

Luke’s work weaves together environmental research, documentary, sound art, and site as a way of carving out space for new possibilities to emerge between live performance and physical landscape. To date, his projects have brought audiences through city streets, back gardens, train stations, beaches, and a bog in the Irish midlands. Most recently, he created Distillation (2023), a performative journey which takes you to the Irish bog landscape through scent.

The project was created in response to the recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland, where Luke collaborated with perfume maker Joan Woods to create a unique distillation of the Midlands bog as the starting point for an olfactory encounter which looks at our human relationship to place. Distillation is a co-production with the Abbey Theatre & Solas Nua in Washington DC.

Following a sold out run as part of Dublin Theatre Festival in 2023, Distillation is currently being performed at the Abbey Theatre until 10 February and will be presented in the US later this Spring. More information on the project and how to book tickets can be found here.

Luke will do an informal coffee morning event on 21 March at 10.45am (see below) and all are welcome. He will also be on campus for a week-long micro-residency in Autumn this year which will include research and short work in development sharing. Events organised will be open to UCD staff and students and we’ll advertise details of these closer to the time.

In the meantime, if you would like to be introduced to Luke just get in touch with our research manager Caitriona Devery [Caitriona.devery@ucd.ie]. You can also find out more about Luke's practice by visiting his website here.

Coffee Morning with Luke Casserly | Autobiographical Landscapes | 21 March 2024 | 10:45 | Earth Institute Kitchen and on Zoom

Luke Casserly is a performance maker from Longford, Ireland whose work examines the intersection of live performance and physical landscape. During the session, we will look at the idea of place as a starting point. Each person attending is invited to bring along an object from the first landscape they ever encountered - this could be something literally from that place or something more symbolic / poetic that serves as a reminder of it. This tapestry of objects will form a brief show and tell, designed to open out conversations around our relationship to landscape through an autobiographical lens. Luke will speak about his own creative practice during the session, and share some insights into a new project he is currently developing with the support of UCD Earth Institute.
TOP