Title
'Burn/T Out: Conflict & Forced Displacement during the Northern Ireland 'troubles'.
Dodge 701C | December 3, 2024 | 6pm
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Description
As a result of the outbreak of the 'Troubles' across the North of Ireland, some 45 - 60,000 people were forced from their homes, becoming “burnt out”. This has been referred to as the largest movement of civilians in Europe since the outbreak of World War II. Those forced to leave their homes either crossed the border in Ireland and became refugees, or stayed in Northern Ireland as internally displaced persons. In 2024, the legacy of this displacement remains pronounced, with segregation and division a feature of the post-conflict landscape. Although violent displacement ultimately provided the backdrop to segregated Belfast and beyond, relatively little work has been done to examine the long-term effect on those who were burnt out. Since the signing of the historic Good Friday Agreement, multiple efforts to deal with the legacy of the past have been proposed. Oral memory archives, grassroots storytelling projects and historical inquiries have all been attempted, with varying degrees of success. During this talk, Brendan Ciarán Browne and Casey Asprooth-Jackson reflect on their exhibition entitled Burn/t Out, and their attempts to spotlight the long-term impact of the mass-displacement of civilians caused by the eruption of violence in 1969. By sharing visual stills, and documentary film material from their work, Brendan & Casey invite you to receive stories of mass displacement in an exhausted present. This study of displacement seeks to provoke reflection on a critically under-examined experience, while ruminating on the fatigue it has produced. Held at once, these opposing tendencies suggest a synthesis: that the endeavor to recall and recover from the trauma of the past is also the struggle not to burnout. Jessie Rubin, ethnomusicology PhD candidate at Columbia will be the discussant.
Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne is tenured Professor of Conflict Resolution at Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on conflict and forced displacement in the context of the north of Ireland and Palestine. He is the author of several books including 'Refugees & Forced Displacement in the Northern Ireland Troubled: Untold Journeys' (with Niall Gilmartin), and 'Transitional (in)Justice & Enforcing the Peace on Palestine' (Nominated for the Middle East Monitor Palestine book award, 2023).
Casey Asprooth-Jackson is an artist and filmmaker from Rochester, New York. His visual production centers on alternative modes of political expression, and his research has included case studies in Palestine, Norway and Ireland. He received a BA in Film Production from Bard College, and an MFA in Intermedia from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art.
Jessie Rubin is an ethnomusicology PhD candidate at Columbia University. She recently completed a year of multi-sited fieldwork for her dissertation research, which explores how, through music, Northern Ireland’s Catholic Nationalist Republicans (CNRs) have not only carried on a tradition of Palestine solidarity, but in doing so have launched a discussion of how Irish republicanism might be (re)fashioned on the global stage. Rubin's Masters’ thesis, “Places We Could Find Ourselves In”: Affective Networks of Queer MENA Party Life in NYC" examines New York-based reformulations of MENA (Middle East/North African) cultural practices within an electronic dance party network.
