Tom Keeley
Alternative Arrangements: A Topography Along and Across the Irish Borderlands
First and second supervisors
Abstract
This thesis asks how architectures and landscapes of the Irish borderlands tell the stories of its pasts and presents. It draws out and responds to “polysituated” (Kinsella, 2017) sites and histories of the contested border on the island of Ireland through a method of ‘alternative arrangement’ as a form of “critical spatial practice” (Rendell, 2003). It tests and argues for a ‘topographic practice’ that uses architectural and landscape historiography as a form of artistic output; one that employs “bordering practices” (Hafeda, 2019) to break down the binary of the border.
The contested border on the island of Ireland runs 500 kilometres from Lough Foyle to the Irish Sea and has divided the six counties in the north from what is now the Republic since 1921. This research produces an alternative reading at a critical juncture: on the centenary of Partition and as the UK leaves the European Union. While the Brady Amendment of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 called for “alternative arrangements” (HC Deb 29 January 2019) to the so-called ‘Irish backstop,’ this thesis shifts the emphasis from ‘alternative arrangements’ for goods and services to making ‘alternative arrangements’ of contested historical, material, and spatial “fragments” (Benjamin, 1940), and their operations as “sites” and “non-sites” (Smithson, 1968).
The thesis consists of three journeys along and across the borderland: a drive, a walk, and an itinerant ‘hedge school’. This methodology extends other forms of “altering practice” (Petrescu, 2007), valuing both official and unofficial forms of knowledge production as a “polyphonic” (Alexievich, 2016) approach to writing and responding to histories. Through photography, mapping, performance, installation, and more, these journeys navigate the past in the present creating three sets of ‘alternative arrangements;’ in doing so reconfiguring power dynamics of peripheral architectures, landscapes, and histories, and creating a space to imagine the island differently.
Biography
Tom Keeley (b. 1982) is an artist-historian based in An Sciobairín, Ireland. He uses artistic practices to write and rethink architectural histories. This research-led ‘topographic practice’ generates site-specific outputs ranging from writing, printed matter and photography, to film, installation and performance. It studies the features of a place and goes beyond: asking how research methods, practices, and outcomes can also be site-specific.
His work has been exhibited internationally: Venice Architecture Biennale, Salone del Mobile Milano, Istanbul Design Biennial; published widely: Places Journal, The Architectural Review, MacGuffin, Domus; and is held in the collections of the National Art Library and the School of Architecture Library at Princeton University. He is a lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Cork Centre for Architectural Education.
Funding
London Arts and Humanities Partnership
Image: Keeley, T. (2022). Alternative Arrangement #4: Claí na Muice Duibhe, Corr na Péiste, Co. Mhuineacháin (Black Pig’s Dyke, Cornapaste, Co. Monaghan).