Siobhán McDonald, artist and former Resonances III participant and artist in residence at JRC, will return to the JRC Ispra site from the 17th to the 21st of March, to develop and form connections around her ongoing project – Shapeshifter, which responds to the Starts4 Water “Port Perceptions” theme through an evolving project that revives buried port traditions and perspectives. Using cutting-edge data from 1850–2050, it maps pathways for everyday actions to counter rising tides.
The project aims to foster a dialogue on Europe’s changing marine landscapes and rising sea levels. The EU ports’ subsea ecosystems, sensitive to changes in temperature, acidification from rising CO2 levels, and the ravages of storms, are a central focus. The sonic landscape of the underwater environment reflects the health and status of the marine habitats.
Siobhán will be giving a hybrid presentation whilst at JRC to interested colleagues, to open up the space for dialogue and collaboration in the project, especially around aspects which touch upon emerging technologies, such as the use of AI and its interaction with music, as well as water, sea level rises, biodiversity and ports – to situate the work within the broader European and Mediterranean level.
Event details to follow -for more details, please contact JRC-RESONANCES@ec.europa.eu for more.
About Shapeshifter
At its heart, Shapeshifter explores Dublin Port’s history as a wetland and the mythologies it holds. Water serves both as a metaphor and a measurable force—a living, breathing system linking planetary networks and underground waterways. Audiences will experience a major interdisciplinary artwork, blending an immersive, otherworldly film with a visceral live performance to inspire bold shifts in public thinking on port infrastructures, water, and its vital connections to the EU. Ultimately, it envisions alternative futures, reflecting on the balance between human intervention and natural forces—merging the poetics of water with the challenges of “ports in transition.”
Partners
ADAPT
BETA Festival
Waterways Ireland
Smart City – Dublin City Council
Irish Maritime Development Office
Biography & background
Siobhán McDonald lives and works in Dublin. Siobhán works with natural materials, withdrawing them from their cycles of generation, growth and decay. This process gives form to a range of projects which consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time. Her artworks make use of natural phenomena and technologies to stage poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural world. Beginning with a specific site of investigation, Siobhán weaves diverse narratives into visual stories, often inviting nature itself to participate in the creative process. Her research-driven practice employs a distinctive artistic language to express intangible processes, utilising painting, drawing, film, and sound.
For Resonances III, together with scientists at the JRC and Trinity College Dublin, artist Siobhán McDonald revisited historical processes of botanic image making to create drawings and 3D works of plants that coexist with toxicity. Using air-borne pollutants collected from EU cities, ash and film footage from EU volcanoes, she created drawings, paintings and film works to show how plants and humans are adapting to air pollution, both now and historically.
As part of her work for the STUDIOTOPIA initiative, Siobhán collaborated with JRC soil scientist Arwyn Jones, among others, on a project which explored natural earth processes which humans have accelerated through our existence on the planet, and a mutual interest in the Critical Zone - the thin area between the soil and the rocks where all systems connect - to explore how human activities affect frequencies within this Zone, that then change the planet's fragile equilibrium. Siobhán was back in residency at JRC Ispra, to exchange with Arwyn, explore the soil library, collect soil samples to make pigments, and discover the Lago Maggiore as the place where Alessandro Volta first discovered Methane in 1776.
Details
- Publication date