ArtScape: Expectation and realisation rarely match, but the programme launch for Cork's year as European Capital of Culture 2005 was humming with the sense of achieved symmetry at the Crawford Gallery on Thursday.
Delivery is all when it comes to cultural promises and this day-long series of meetings, tours, speeches and unveilings, finishing with a large and climactic party, ended more than two years of speculation, criticism and delayed anticipation which have culminated in the publication of the full programme. Or almost full: there are going to be late entries and some participants, such as the Cork Opera House, prefer to remain involved only as a venue rather than disclose any plans of their own, for the moment. And there are a few disappointments, among them the fact that despite the hearty provision of contemporary dance (especially Fête de la Danse) there is no mention of a major visiting classical ballet company, and even Opera 2005's promised production of Mozart is presented as Figaro's Wedding.
Even critics of the possible denominators by which a policy of "open access" can be governed (and these, given the number of free entry events, must be few enough) have to acknowledge that this special year is the time to see things differently. It is the time, as programme director Tom McCarthy said on Thursday, in which to investigate this small city and its potential. "Here we create a long moment in 2005. For this year Cork becomes a little sittingroom on the edge of Europe."
Short story judges
Pat Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre confirmed that crimewriter Val McDiarmid will chair the judging panel for the €50,000 Frank O'Connor International Short Story prize, the centrepiece of the literature strand. Others on the panel include Hans Jorg Schertenleib, the Swiss-German novelist and short-story writer now living in Donegal, the American James Lasdun, and short-story writer Desmond Hogan. Although the source of the prize fund itself (originally understood to be official partners Thomas Crosbie Holdings Ltd) is now unattributed, Cotter says the preliminary administration for the award for the best collection of short stories published in English in the two years to June 2005 has been agreed.
Poetry - especially the European translations series - is a significant element in the programme, which includes Johnny Hanrahan's Meridian production of Metamorphoses, UCC's publication of the Atlas of Cork City and Old World Colony, Theo Dorgan's An Leabhar Mór: the Great Book of Gaelic" and Donal Creedon's Second City trilogy of plays.
The programme also includes the World Writing Series, beginning in February and bringing to Cork the Kenyan liberation novelist Ngugi Wa Thiong 'O, Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Claudio Magris, Anthony Cronin and Hans Magnus Enzenberger. The Everyman Palace new playwriting commission was awarded to Bryan Delaney - already an award-winner - and artistic director Pat Talbot couldn't hide his satisfaction on Thursday that, in association with Cork 2005, the theatre was able to arrange the world premiere of a new play by Neil Labute: Wrecks, directed by Labute himself, in autumn 2005.
A promenade of glamour
The promenade-style, multi-venue programme launch could have been disastrous had the weather not been so obliging, but it made several valuable points: it introduced visiting media to Cork's geography, knowledge of which is going to be crucial to the enjoyment of several events, not least the Relocations productions devised by Corcadorca and its European collaborators. It also revealed the transformations in some of the year's most important venues. Beginning at the Everyman Palace (where the new season's programme board was too large to get through the doors), whose Victorian auditorium is glamorous with gilding, paint and carpet and where the foyer posters have been replaced by elegant mirrors on wine-red walls, and ending at the sparkling all-white re-constituted Triskel - its refurbishment heralded even by the pristine laneway outside - this tour included the Opera House where the inner halls and stairways have been luxuriously upgraded.
The auditorium is as dreary as ever but there are plans for this too, and for the moment the foyer and bars ooze sophistication. Other places around the city are improving themselves, led by the splendid - and long-awaited - new wing at the city museum; Triskel must be hoping the adjacent Christ Church will soon be available, while the beautiful soaring spaces of St Fin Barre's Cathedral are to be used for a surprising variety of events. The Crawford Gallery, scene of the formal civic and ministerial speeches, was also at its most inviting, but it was disturbing to hear, under the din of Thursday's celebrations, that its sister-building, the Crawford College of Art and Design, may soon be looking for a new location.
This issue had to be willingly, if temporarily, sidelined on Thursday, when UCC's new Glucksman Gallery provoked sharp intakes of breath. Admittedly, seen in its setting of riverside autumnal trees, this cantilevered, timber-clad building by architects O'Donnell and Tuomey was looking its very best; and admittedly also the gallery has nothing at all to do with Cork 2005 except as a venue. But what a gift - to the year and to the city!
See also 'Amazing Space', Magazine
Fervent collisions
The collisions of 2005 forecast by Tony Sheehan began on Thursday morning in the foyer of the Everyman and heralded the juxtaposition of practitioners, promoters, agents and operators which continued all day. Some areas of the programme seemed, and remained, elusive, such as the collaboration between Fiona Shaw and Dorothy Cross on a venture named Monte Notte. More than this it is impossible to discern, but Philip King was unstoppable in his fervour for his Music Migrations series of concerts with joint curator Brynn Ormrod of London's Barbican. Richard Wakely created an electrical field of his own, wearing two hats: his first is as the Commissioner for the Irish Festival of Arts and Culture in China and thus promotor of the visit to Cork of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (at the Opera House in October 2005) and of the Shanghai Percussion Ensemble (City Hall in November 2005); his second role is as presenter of the Sol Pico Dance Company at the Opera House next January. Other highlights include a summer proms programme from the National Youth Orchestra, cellist Christopher Marwood talking about the week-long European Quartet series and the Kronos visit and the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, keen expositions of the Rory Gallagher exhibition, discussions of sports writing and landscape conventions. Yes, it seemed to be a case of all human life being involved: the massed bands of the Defence Forces, bands of visiting maritime services, circuses, residencies, workshops, collectives, cuisine, the inaugural European chess championship, the Tokyo Ensemble at the Granary, Boomerang at the Triskel, a new play from Enda Walsh, another from Bairbre de Barra for Graffiti, Mike Kenny's adaptation of The Snow Queen also for Graffiti, a Carnival of Dreams in Emmet Place performed by the European Children's Theatre Encounter to the music of Cormac O'Connor, Martin McDonagh's Olivier Award-winning The Pillowman directed by John Crowley at the Opera House, the East Cork Festival of Early Music with Emma Kirkby and Monteverdi, ceramics, guiding, film, photography and video, John Gibson's new opera Judith and Holofernes and Mark O'Keefe's work with composer Anthea Haddow and director Cathie Boyd for Apocalypse with Glasgow's Theatre Cryptic.
By Thursday's end the most welcome words were the phrase "in a nutshell" - except that the shell, and the nut, kept getting bigger and bigger. Still, there was time to hear from Martin Barrett, 2005's Director of Special Events, and from Philip Hammond of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Catriona Regan of Belfast 2006, of their unique partnership, first in the presentation of the first exhibition of the joint arts councils' collections of contemporary art, then in the interchange between Cork and Belfast city councils for the St Patrick's Day celebrations in Cork for 2005 and the Belfast City Hall centenary in 2006. There is also to be a conference on cultural mapping arranged by QUB and UCC over the St Patrick's weekend, a visit from the Ulster Orchestra in June and, before that, of Open Arts, the company that organised the opening ceremony for Dublin's Special Olympics and is coming to Cork to work on an Easter Parade, and linking up with Evelyn Grant's Cork Music Works. All in one day, the programme for 2005 is too dense and multi-faceted to be fully evaluated, but it was a day full not just of promise but of promises kept as well.
See www.cork2005.ie