Portrait of A borderland
country - ireland
Partner - creative placemakers
project manager - andy brydon
This film — still in early development — centres on language and identity as its core thematic territory, with a particular focus on language as a battleground: a marker of resistance, pride, and community within the Irish context, and in the broader digital world.
The project has grown from a starting point of the hidden labour of women in maintaining culture through tradition, drawing on the concept of the Bean an Tí (mother of the house) in Irish-speaking areas. It examines the role of language in relation to government control, cultural transmission, and technological change — including the contrast between analogue and digital dissemination of culture, prompted in part by the experience of finding cultural life operating through flyers and word of mouth rather than online platforms in rural Portugal. Inter-generational perspectives and communication is a recurring theme.
The film will reflect its Europeanness rather than being exclusively focused on Ireland, and the artists are also inspired by their experiences at the “edge” of Europe both culturally and physically, linking the perspectives from North Atlantic coasts of Ireland and Portugal and the Croatian coast as point for looking out but also unique places from which to look in.
The artists' own experiences and interests are informing the work — including re-location, multi-linguality, multiplicity, and the pace of change in the natural and digital world.
Geographic scope for material collection will be limited to Portugal, Ireland, and a Balkan country.
ARTISTS
visual artist - Dragana Jurisic
writer/dramaturg/librettist - Elayce Ismail
composer - matthew nolan
producer - Alison brodie
Residency 1: Fumbally Stables, Dublin, 31 March – 3 April 2026
After months of online conversations, the team met in person for the first time in The Loft at Fumbally Stables in Dublin 8, with producer Alison Brodie leading on site.
The first day was about getting to know each other’s practice. The artists built a shared visual reference board and took part in a family tree exercise, mapping where each person’s family was born, lived and died and the languages they spoke. The second day turned to exploration, with a screening of Liminality from Moving Classics: Sonic Flux, films by Derek Jarman, language games on how language includes and excludes, and discussion of technology and AI. The final day focused on form, process and next steps, with evening cultural visits around the city.
By the end of the residency, all three artists had independently named the same idea they kept returning to: LAYERS. These are the layers of land, language and identity that build up in a person over a lifetime. The team agreed to develop the film as a stills-based, non-linear collage across Ireland, Portugal and the Balkans.
Between residencies
The team met again online in May 2026. Elayce Ismail then made a field visit to County Cork, exploring the landscape and coastline around Baltimore and Sherkin Island. From this she wrote the film’s base text, a semi-autobiographical trilogy that follows one character across changes in time, place and language, to be spoken, sung or both.
