UNDER CONSTRUCTION
December 13, 2021 § Leave a comment
The absence of updates has, in part, been due to the focus on finally building a new website.
The intention is that the site will, simultaneously, be an archive and repository of the cycle of projects, to date, including, SOUTHERN CROSS (1999-2002), The Breathing Factory (2002-2006), Ausschnitte Aus EDEN/Extracts from Eden (2003-2009) and THE MARKET (2010-) and a means to update on a new project, alongside ongoing events, publications etc. All material will be available and made accessible to download. It is always appreciated when people check here and so thank you for your interest and your patience.
The website can be accessed at markcurran.org and will go live in early 2022.

TAXED TO THE MAX – NOORDERLICHT 2019 (NL)
October 5, 2019 § Leave a comment
Incorporating photographic series, mixed media, video and sound installations, performances, and spatial work on this theme, artists include amongst others, Alan Gignoux, Brigitte de Langen, David Klammer, Davide Monteleone, Dorothée Elisa Baumann, Ezio D’Agostino, Gina Peyran Tan, Igor Tereshkov, Ishan Tankha, John Vink, Jos Jansen, Kanad Chakrabarti, Mari Bastashevski, Mark Curran, Martin Toft, Oliver Ressler & Zanny Begg, Thomas Kuijpers & Ursula Biemann.
This edition will include installation of The Breathing Factory (2002-2006) at the Centrum Beeldende Kunst (CBK) Groningen. The project was originally supported by Arts Council, Belfast Exposed, Butler Gallery & Gallery of Photography & published by Edition Braus (2006)
‘The Breathing Factory critically addresses the role and representation of labour and global labour practices in this newly industrialised landscape as manifest in manufacturing and technology. 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 focuses specifically upon the Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, part of a cluster formation of multinational technology complexes, in Leixlip in the east of Ireland’
The Breathing Factory was the outcome of practice-led masters & doctorate research, one of the first in the Republic of Ireland. More information here.
Full PDF of book available for free download here.
The Economy of Appearances – Installation (Film)
March 25, 2016 § Leave a comment
‘In Mark Curran’s practice, projects unfold over time. (Since the late nineties) Curran has undertaken a cycle of long-term, ethnographically-informed multimedia research projects addressing the predatory context resulting from migrations and flows of global capital…in this major exhibition, The Economy of Appearances, Curran draws these projects together for the first time, expanding the enquiry with newly commissioned work completed in Amsterdam. Incorporating photographs, film, sound, artifactual material and testimony, themes include algorithmic machinery of financial markets, as innovator of this technology, absorption of crises as normalisation of deviance, and long range mapping and consequences of financial activity distanced from citizens and everyday life’ Helen Carey
from Installation at Limerick City Gallery of Art (Autumn 2015)
Filming Isabella Walsh
Editing Isabella Walsh & Mark Curran
Thanks to Arts Council Ireland, Noorderlicht Photography, NEPN (University of Sunderland), Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT), Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Gallery of Photography & Culture Ireland
Full information here (e-flux).
Installation images here.
The Breathing Factory at FORMAT 2013, Derby, UK
March 5, 2013 § Leave a comment
I mean we can keep throwing tax breaks at them but that’s just…that will only go so far…it’s a fool’s economy or a false economy or fool’s paradise or whatever you want to call it…I think we need to be…more cost effective and I don’t think…at the moment we really are…what we have got is, as I said, is…a well-trained, educated, kind of workforce…so that’s in our favour, but, again time will tell whether that’s enough…I don’t see it attracting everybody…I think they’ll always come in for the tax break and that’s probably the main reason they’re here for now…so I’m really not sure where this is going to be in 10-15 years time…you could have a lot of well-educated people walking done to the dole office (unemployment office) and you know…but like, I don’t really know where it’s going…you know…
(Cleanroom Supervisor, Canteen, Hewlett-Packard Ireland, 28 November 2003)
THE BREATHING FACTORY
A project by Mark Curran
Update: short video clip of the installation at FORMAT 13
Installation of The Breathing Factory, FORMAT13, Derby, UK from Mark Curran on Vimeo.