laboratory of land flags

The Laboratory of Land Flags is a project that aims to reawaken the essence of a ‘flag’ by collaborating with local communities and individuals of Cork City, Tramore Valley Park and the Kinship Project, inspecting and questioning flag meaning, design, rituals, and folk lore. The inspiration for the act of creation aims to come from a focus on multi-species living, stewardship of diversity, and by recreating our own flag enacting the decolonisation of ‘flags’ as a metaphor for re-thinking historic land ownership and management. The community, artist, and the site will be part of a process examining the expanded definition of the use of a flag. Looking within historical and present spaces, the dichotomy of their uses in colonialism and in liberation, social movements and activism. The Kinship Project is a starting point from where this project can emerge from within the layers of this remediated landfill site. 

The artist, interested in, belonging and using hyper-linked ecologies as ways to deconstruct narratives around society and relationships to spaces, begins by asking: 
How can agency and inclusivity use a multi-species perspective to view what is possible? 
What can we alter by advocating non-human agency? 
How can a flag or the essence of a flag provide a platform for agency? 
Where does the deconstruction of power and decolonisation bring us? 
Why do we ultimately end-up reinforcing differences within belonging? 
How does the essence of the flag change this?

Images courtesy of the artist: workshops from the laboratory of land flags

Designs inspired by flag workshops and the laboratory research

Images courtesy of the artist: exhibitions of iterations of the laboratory of land flags and the Kinship Project.

The artist with a response piece to the project engagement, currently on display at the Cork City Council Offices.