Slipped, Fell and Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor (The Film)

Slipped, Fell And Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor (The Film) by Lisa Freeman features actors, a saxophone player and a significant location: the once-busy sea bathing pool at Naylor’s Cove, Bray. This project stems from Freeman’s research into sites of failed and poorly designed civic architecture, and how these sites can impact our health, identity and leisure pursuits.

This special screening is accompanied by text readings and an artist Q&A as well as the launch of Freeman's limited edition publication of the same name, designed by the award-winning Or Studio.

This features photographs of the performance, script excerpts, archival imagery and drawings, alongside commissioned texts by Rachel Donnelly, Dennis McNulty and Astrid Newman.

Excerpt from ‘Time Slips and Falls’ writer Rachel Donnelly’s response to the work:

Are they trying to excavate the ruins of the baths? To reach pre-internet time, when our primary civic spaces were physical (whether flesh, paper or radio-wave based) and democratic, rather than digital and commodified by Meta and Twitter? The concrete fragments sit heavy on the beach, guarding their past. The waves break continuously. Two of the performers are sitting back to back on the wall again, heads resting on each other’s shoulders. We’re on a loop, we’re on a loop. It’s exactly two metres by two metres and we lie on it sometimes to feel…

This event is FREE but ticketed. Please reserve your place here.

Slipped, Fell And Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor (The Film)

Credits

Written and directed by Lisa Freeman
Video by Collective Film
Director of Photography Kenneth Adams
Sound Jack O’Donoghue
Editor Georgia Kelly
Performers Biaina Ryan, Niamh McPhillips, Tadhg O’Rourke
Saxophone player Andrea Jones
Publication Design Or Studio
Photography Louis Haugh
Curator Anne Mullee

Special thanks to Dennis McNulty, Anne Mullee, Astrid Newman, Dan Reidy

Additional thanks to aemi (Alice Butler, Daniel Fitzpatrick & Emer Lynch), Bray Town Council, Emma
Conway, Lauren Conway, Padraig Cunningham, Rachel Donnelly, Lana May Fleming, Collective Films,
Louis Haugh, Julie Kelleher, Gerlanda Maniglia, Vera Ryklova, Jenny Sherwin, Or Studio, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Claire Walsh, Wicklow Library Local Studies Department

Slipped, Fell and Smacked My Face Off The Dance Floor live performances took place at Naylor's Cove, Bray, presented by Mermaid Arts Centre, on 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th June 2022.