New Green Fool

Alan Cunningham

[Essays]

ISBN:
2024, Paperback Original with French flaps, 250 Pages

 

[Pre-order soon]

About the book

In New Green Fool, Alan Cunningham reflects on the fragile truth of his countless identifications and denials, on the often excessively private nature of his positions and, finally, on the consequences of favouring private certainty over the more complicated, relational aspects of ourselves and our sense of being – and being in – a society. Initially blending quotations from poet Patrick Kavanagh’s work The Green Fool with lyrical reflections on Cunningham’s life, the collection eventually starts to draw on a wider range of sources as it progresses and becomes more chaotic and cannibalistic. The trope Irishness – the ‘Irish’ identity –that Kavanagh utilised in The Green Fool was later discarded by Kavanagh as a ‘pack of lies.’ Over the course of thirteen interconnected essays, Cunningham considers the potential for foolishness and self-delusion in setting one’s identity – or identities – far too strongly in any direction.

About the author

Alan Cunningham works primarily with text and moving image. Current work explores vulnerability, personhood, the concept of the boundary, spatial ethics/aesthetics, sanctity/profanity and the mythologies of nature and the ‘able’ body. Previous work includes Count from Zero to One Hundred (2013), Sovereign Invalid (2018) (both text), Sangar (2019) and How They Have Performed Their Buildings (2022) (both moving image). His moving image work has been most recently exhibited at Antre Peaux (FR), the Werkleitz Centre for Media Art (GER) and NeMe (Cyprus) as a member of the Forms of Ownership (FOO) collective. He is the recipient of funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, EMARE/EMAP and Film London (FLAMIN Fellow 2021/22). Originally from the north of Ireland, he is currently based in London.