Performing political acts: Performance art in northern ireland: Ritual, catharsis, and transformation

I often think about the war in Northern Ireland that made me what I am: holding a gun in my hand when I was 15, seeing a burnt and severed leg in a street in Belfast after a bomb, the smell of excrement mixed with a sweet aroma not unlike lilies, being shot at for going out with a Catholic, random violence and the sound of Jean Jeanie. I also think about making a performance on a frosty morning in 1979 in a derelict church I knew as a child. Naked, my breath caught in the winter light. And, I often think about the sense of freedom, wonder, and dignity making art has afforded me.1 Realising the 'bottom line' is never ideological, but human; that art is not in, of, or onto itself. It's for people.