Mark Curran
Activist Researcher & Educator. Berlin & Dublin. Practice-led PhD (Centre for Transcultural Research & Media Practice, TU Dublin), Lecturer, BA (Hons) Photography & Visual Media (Programme Chair 2017-2020) & Postgraduate Supervisor, MA by Research, Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT), Dublin. Visiting Professor, MA Visual & Media Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin (2011-2021). Research Associate 2021, ARCHIVO Research Network (Portugal) & University of Arts London (UAL)(UK). Visiting Faculty (2006-2008), Postgraduate Summer Programme, Steinhardt School for Cultural Studies, New York University.
Incorporating multi-media installation, centrally informed by visual anthropology, beginning in the late 1990s, Curran has undertaken a cycle of long-term research projects, critically addressing the predatory context resulting from the migrations and flows of global capital.
These have been extensively published and exhibited, including, DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), Chicago, USA (2010), Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2010), Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal (2011), Grimmuseum, Berlin, Germany (2013) & FORMAT, Derby, England (2013). Curran has also presented widely most recently McGill University, Montreal (2014), Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), London (2015), University of Ljubljana (2015), University of Bern (2015), Boston University (2016), College Arts Association (CAA) 105th Annual Conference, New York (2017), RAI, London (2020), University of South Wales (2021) & Aalto University, Helsinki (2022).
Supported by Arts Council of Ireland & curated by Helen Carey, THE MARKET (2010-) continues the cycle & focuses on the functioning & condition of the global markets and the role of financial capital. It was first installed at Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland (2013), Belfast Exposed Gallery, Northern Ireland (2013) & Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France (2014). In Autumn 2015, an extensive mid-career installation titled, The Economy of Appearances, was presented at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA), Ireland. More recent installations include Noorderlicht, Netherlands (2015 & 2019)), Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto, Canada (2016), Museum of Capitalism, USA (Oakland, 2017 & New York City 2019), Le Bleu du Ciel – Center pour la photographie contemporaine, Lyon, France (2017), Turchin Centre for the Visual Arts, North Carolina, USA (2017), Krakow Photomonth (2018) & Ballarat Biennale, Australia (2019), PhotoIreland (2022) & Villa Heike, Berlin (2022).
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Curran worked on projects against Apartheid in South Africa & in support of the then Frontline States, alongside working with young people from First Nation communities in western Canada. From 1991-1996, he was a Social Worker in the area of Disability & Independent Living with focus on Empowerment, Advocacy & Self-Advocacy (Canada & Ireland).
Incorporating multi-media installation, centrally informed by visual anthropology, beginning in the late 1990s, Curran has undertaken a cycle of long-term research projects, critically addressing the predatory context resulting from the migrations and flows of global capital.
These have been extensively published and exhibited, including, DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), Chicago, USA (2010), Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2010), Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal (2011), Grimmuseum, Berlin, Germany (2013) & FORMAT, Derby, England (2013). Curran has also presented widely most recently McGill University, Montreal (2014), Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), London (2015), University of Ljubljana (2015), University of Bern (2015), Boston University (2016), College Arts Association (CAA) 105th Annual Conference, New York (2017), RAI, London (2020), University of South Wales (2021) & Aalto University, Helsinki (2022).
Supported by Arts Council of Ireland & curated by Helen Carey, THE MARKET (2010-) continues the cycle & focuses on the functioning & condition of the global markets and the role of financial capital. It was first installed at Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland (2013), Belfast Exposed Gallery, Northern Ireland (2013) & Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France (2014). In Autumn 2015, an extensive mid-career installation titled, The Economy of Appearances, was presented at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA), Ireland. More recent installations include Noorderlicht, Netherlands (2015 & 2019)), Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto, Canada (2016), Museum of Capitalism, USA (Oakland, 2017 & New York City 2019), Le Bleu du Ciel – Center pour la photographie contemporaine, Lyon, France (2017), Turchin Centre for the Visual Arts, North Carolina, USA (2017), Krakow Photomonth (2018) & Ballarat Biennale, Australia (2019), PhotoIreland (2022) & Villa Heike, Berlin (2022).
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Curran worked on projects against Apartheid in South Africa & in support of the then Frontline States, alongside working with young people from First Nation communities in western Canada. From 1991-1996, he was a Social Worker in the area of Disability & Independent Living with focus on Empowerment, Advocacy & Self-Advocacy (Canada & Ireland).
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Papers by Mark Curran
The thesis comprises three chapters together with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter situates Hewlett-Packard’s presence in Ireland within an historicised and economic framework, while simultaneously providing critical readings of propagandist representations by the public and private enterprise sectors. The chapter’s juxtaposition of these readings, together with disparate spatio-temporal labour practices, historical periods and the introduction of different theoretical paradigms, enacts a strategic textual device used throughout this chapter and the following two. The second chapter engages directly with methodological questions underpinning the research project, alongside foregrounding different fieldwork practices. The textual presentation of interview transcript material, photography and digital video is brought into dialogue with depictions of industrialisation from the late nineteenth century to the present. The third and final chapter both identifies and establishes theoretical and representational strategies at work in the rationale, design and content of the re-constitution of the research material in the format of an installation titled, ‘The Breathing Factory’.
Completed through the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, TU Dublin (2002-2005).
Note: One of the first practice-led postgraduate research projects in the Republic of Ireland and the first using photography as a central research method.
Books by Mark Curran
The title of the project is inspired by a widely utilised flexible economic management system responsive to the needs and demands of the global market which is intended to be implemented not only at the level of the factory floor but critically, to extend to the nation state itself.
The Breathing Factory (2002-2006) addresses the role and representation of labour and global labour practices in this newly industrialised landscape. Global industrial practices are characterised by fleeting alliances, transient spaces as capital moves when and as required. In such an ephemeral, precarious and globalised context, the project focused specifically upon the Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, part of a cluster formation of multinational complexes, in Leixlip in the east of Ireland.
Having begun onsite in 2003, following nine months of negotiation regarding access due to the sensitive nature of this highly secure environment and completed over a 20 month period, each visit was pre-scheduled and pre-cleared, being accompanied at all times and thus, the policing of the project is a central concern. The outcome of a practice-led doctoral research project framed by ethnographic understandings in its undertaking, the full installation includes photographs, text-based work, digital video and sound archival material as critical re-representation.
The Breathing Factory (ISBN No. 3-89904-216-6) is a hardback edition with 180 pages & 69 colour photographs/interview excerpts/artefacts. Essays have been commissioned by Sean O Riain, Chair of the Sociology Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth and author of The Politics of High Tech Growth: Developmental States in the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Martin McCabe, lecturer and Programme Chair of the BA Photography, School of Media and researcher within the centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice in the Dublin Institute of Technology.
The thesis comprises three chapters together with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter situates Hewlett-Packard’s presence in Ireland within an historicised and economic framework, while simultaneously providing critical readings of propagandist representations by the public and private enterprise sectors. The chapter’s juxtaposition of these readings, together with disparate spatio-temporal labour practices, historical periods and the introduction of different theoretical paradigms, enacts a strategic textual device used throughout this chapter and the following two. The second chapter engages directly with methodological questions underpinning the research project, alongside foregrounding different fieldwork practices. The textual presentation of interview transcript material, photography and digital video is brought into dialogue with depictions of industrialisation from the late nineteenth century to the present. The third and final chapter both identifies and establishes theoretical and representational strategies at work in the rationale, design and content of the re-constitution of the research material in the format of an installation titled, ‘The Breathing Factory’.
Completed through the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, TU Dublin (2002-2005).
Note: One of the first practice-led postgraduate research projects in the Republic of Ireland and the first using photography as a central research method.
The title of the project is inspired by a widely utilised flexible economic management system responsive to the needs and demands of the global market which is intended to be implemented not only at the level of the factory floor but critically, to extend to the nation state itself.
The Breathing Factory (2002-2006) addresses the role and representation of labour and global labour practices in this newly industrialised landscape. Global industrial practices are characterised by fleeting alliances, transient spaces as capital moves when and as required. In such an ephemeral, precarious and globalised context, the project focused specifically upon the Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, part of a cluster formation of multinational complexes, in Leixlip in the east of Ireland.
Having begun onsite in 2003, following nine months of negotiation regarding access due to the sensitive nature of this highly secure environment and completed over a 20 month period, each visit was pre-scheduled and pre-cleared, being accompanied at all times and thus, the policing of the project is a central concern. The outcome of a practice-led doctoral research project framed by ethnographic understandings in its undertaking, the full installation includes photographs, text-based work, digital video and sound archival material as critical re-representation.
The Breathing Factory (ISBN No. 3-89904-216-6) is a hardback edition with 180 pages & 69 colour photographs/interview excerpts/artefacts. Essays have been commissioned by Sean O Riain, Chair of the Sociology Department, National University of Ireland, Maynooth and author of The Politics of High Tech Growth: Developmental States in the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Martin McCabe, lecturer and Programme Chair of the BA Photography, School of Media and researcher within the centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice in the Dublin Institute of Technology.