Concept

Engagement is a way of capturing attention, a way of alluring and a way of enticing to possess ownership. We could implement this as a way of attracting an audience, being drawn into a system and in turn be captivated. Such methods can include smoke screens, masquerade and stings.

We can be engaged in political upheaval and in contrast engaged to be married. Either way if one shows the willingness to engage then they are seized, arrested and caught, through an innocent human desire to absorb and be engrossed.

What happens when this engagement is done in a malicious, unlawful and corrupted way? When does the real become hyper-real? Entrapment is the process of this transition to occupy whether through political, artistic or personal systems.

What is the ethical concern over this? Is the viewer guilty for being engrossed in a piece of work that is deemed vulgar or inappropriate; a guilty pleasure? Is the accused guilty until proven innocent? Is the artist wrongly committed for a self-indulgent expression? Does this polarity repel or assist the convicted?

International artists have been invited to submit work which explores a subversive engagement, use tactics and trickery to captivate and which contests rules and laws of a system. Aesthetically, artists works entices the audience, engages them in viewing and ultimately entrap them into the work. Will the viewer be engrossed, cheated or convicted?

Works featured include traditional art forms of photography, painting and sculpture but also the contemporary processes of interventions, installations and new media.

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Quilos and the Windmill


UK and Sweden

'Quilos and the Windmill present 'Phoebus and the Crow (a moral tale)'    

€650
'The Manciples Tale' (from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales') tells of a white crow in a golden cage who speaks and sings with a human voice.  One day the crow tells his master (Phoebus, a god living on earth) that his wife has taken a lover, and describes their affair eloquently and in great detail. In a jealous rage Phoebus kills his wife and then turns on the crow, accusing it of tittle-tattle and lies, blaming it for his wife's death.  Phoebus then rips out the crow's white feathers until its body is dark, removes its beautiful voice and curses all crows from then on: "ever shall ye be black and nor never sweet noise shall ye make".

Phoebus and the Crow is a tale about truth and lies. Was the white crow, with its human voice, 'guilty' for telling the truth about its master's wife? or should it have spared Phoebus' feelings and stayed silent? Should it have turned a blind eye, become mute, unseeing and 'innocent' of the wife's act of betrayal, and in so doing remain trapped in a golden cage for ever? or was it right to speak out and in so doing dramatically affect its own life as well as the lives of future generations?