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 BOG FOG series, Ireland 1996
Mixed medium on stationary, ledger, plastic and Dublin’s phone book. Size: Specifications follow in updating.
The visit to Ireland followed on an invitation for a FIU summer meeting by the Irish writer/philosopher Patrick Healy and his cousin, the financial consultant and economist Tyrone F.J. Clements in 1996. Healy, Dorothy Walker and many others among whom was Oliver Dowling, Cecil King, Miss. Waldron of the Municipal Gallery of Art , and Caroline Tisdall, had been involved in Beuys’s plans for a Free International University in Ireland, from the mid-seventies.. (A report on this will follow with updating) Healy and Bien had met several months before in Amsterdam, on the initiative of their mutual friend/  colleague Hilarius Hofstede. During the FIU meeting at Bishop’s Court, they discussed the construction of a FIU domicile in Ireland, the Bog House project, which because of various reasons could not be realised. Several months later although, in October 1996, this would lead to the initiative for the FIU Summer School project in Normandy, France. Patrick Healy came to Amsterdam as an artist in residence on the Amsterdam’s art’s council invitation, and was co-opted as professor of inter-disciplinary research with the FIU Amsterdam, and director of research in general., his initial research project was to study the Artchive of the future, and prepare a monograph on the work of Jacobus Kloppenburg, this began with an initial report to Moyland on the request of Ron Mannheim, to where it was proposed the artchive might be removed, as it faced physical threat of destruction in Amsterdam.
The materials used in this series were provided by their host, Tyrone Clements; his day by day financial investigation notes and other available material which was kept in one of the horse stables of Bishop’s Court.
At night: peat fires, discourse and future planning. During the days: FIU visits to Dublin, recorded interview on the Beuys blackboards at the Hugh Lane Gallery, meetings with Christine Kennedy, Frank Callanan, Brendan O’Byrne , and soft gliding Toyota tours through emerald green Celtic landscapes, 15 miles per hour, because the clutch had broken down and there was no time for repair. The children were allowed to stand on the back seat with their heads outside and look trough the open roof. They remember this time in Ireland as an unforgettable treat; the spinning world finally reduced again to human speed.
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