Expanded Work Plan
While folk memory may on occasion alter reality significantly, it is unusual for such a story to refer to something in the landscape which is not visible. 1
Our primary site-investigation locations include:
- St. Anne’s Park and St. Enda’s Park: These parks feature cave follies that serve as examples of “non-caves.”
- Granite hills of Ticknock: To explore the myth of the "Soldier's Cave."
- Chink Well and Priest’s Chamber: as examples of folklores altering the memory of a place, The latter is remembered in folklore as a place of refuge.
- Village of Lusk: A cave known in folk memory, yet with no physical evidence.
Our proposal for the Dublin residency entails working together on experimental essay-films and installations, built upon research into Dublin’s non-caves and their ties to folklore and collective memory. We aim to visit these locations and collaborate with local geologists and artists.
To elaborate on our motivation letter, we would like to expand on our stories here.
Mana Tashakorinia
We have previously collaborated in curating exhibitions and events:
_Fog is a cloud that touches the ground
_Strong Wind Events Foster Leaning Trees
Mana’s Story
I retrospectively read the newspapers from April 1975, from the end of an incident to the beginning2; Bahman made a list of people he deemed harmful to the country and decided to kill them. When the villagers refused to join him, he and his wife, Kathryn, moved to a cave with their children. Bahman left to execute his plan, and the police discovered the cave, killing Kathryn. Bahman later died in a conflict with the police. Fatemeh was taken to Kathryn’s aunt, Ozra. The fate of the other two girls remains unknown.
The marginalization of this story means there is only a few documentation and photos. I traveled to Allah Deh, in April 2024 aiming to locate the cave where Kathryn died. After interviewing locals, I learned that mining activities had destroyed the cave. So, I searched for the village itself. I found the mosque that Bahman and Kathryn had built, where the only existing image of them was located.Most locals referred to Bahman as “Bahman Khan,” a term of honor. When asked about Kathryn, they quickly shifted to discuss her famous father. Kathryn’s story had decayed, metaphorically like the cave destroyed by mining activities. Her narrative was corroded through layers of recollection, losing clarity with each retelling. Kathryn was nowhere to be found.
According to Etelaat newspaper, one of the three outlets that covered the event, Kathryn and her children had been in the cave for at least a month before the incident. When the police arrived, they found only a few remnants of bread and raisins. How did she manage to feed, entertain, and keep her children for an entire month in that cave? Did she sing lullabies to them?
As the evidence fades and the characters' stories lose their connection to the places they once inhabited, I am compelled to fill these narrative gaps with fiction. This fiction finds a home in spaces with inherently fictive qualities, such as caves intertwined with folklore. Though these stories are geographically distant, they converge in a “non-place,” where the boundaries between reality and myth blur, connecting them in ways that transcend their physical origins.
Photo of the cave before destruction, Unknown source
Kathryn and her child, Unknown source
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1) Mulraney, Robert. “Underground Dublin, Part I: The Caves of Dublin.” Caves of Ireland, 15 June 2021, cavesofireland.com/underground-dublin-part-i-the-caves-of-dublin/.
2) Kathryn Adl, the only daughter of the Shah’s doctor, fell in love with Bahman Hojjat Kashani. They moved to a desolate, abandoned village near Khorramdreh in Zanjan province and began to build a new community; Allah Deh (Village of God). Despite being paralyzed after falling from Atashgah mountain while hiking, Kathryn gave birth to their only daughter, Fatemeh, and cared for Bahman's children from previous marriages. The newsletters heralded the birth as a miracle, the only document focusing solely on Kathryn. Reports on her accident were about her father’s attempts to save her, and subsequent articles centered on Bahman. Kathryn was nowhere to be found, only two images of her exist. She holds a cigarette in one, gazing off as if she has no cares in the world. In the other, she carefully cradles her daughter while sitting in a wheelchair, with the mosque they built together with Bahman in the background. On the walls, verses of Al-Qāri‘ah (the calamity) can be seen, inscribed by Bahman. I wanted to know her.
Amy’s Story
During a tour of the area, after we approached an abandoned concrete building, someone pointed out that there were stalactites inside; they were beautiful. You walk in a forest and organic shapes almost start having a competition to stand out the most. Here they were maybe standing out against the concrete background they were growing on.
The centre of my current, ongoing, artistic research stems from an encounter with an artillery station in Skattanniemi, Helsinki, built during World War I as part of the coastal defense line. Built around 1916, by displacing national and foreign labour for what were considered safety measures, it was never used for its original purpose, but was never dismantled either. The area is rather managed through policies of conservation - both of the war ruin, for its cultural and historical significance, and of the multiple ecologies surrounding it.
Today the site is an abandoned concrete building in the forest, only partially underground. This reflects its role as a defensive structure, in both protecting those inside of it, and leaving openings for attacking those on the outside. It’s a site which, due to water precipitating and minerals slowly seeping through, is growing calthemites, or concrete-based stalactites; effectively becoming an urban cave. Written notes, verbal mentions, romantic visions, digital folder and file names, all very often featured the word “cave” throughout the time spent working on this so far. It’s not really a cave. It is, now, very much a cave.
In its condition of never being used in combat nor dismantled, the cave seems to host some pent-up energy. The stories on its construction feature missing elements, and the authors around it are often unknown.
Water, beyond making the site slippery and intriguing,both resourceful and dangerous, is an active actor in reshaping it. I'm interested in the powerful transformative potential of water, and in the role that reflection on its multiple dynamics can play in dissecting both the historicity and potential future of a place.
Photos by Amy Merigo