BURIED WITH THE MACHINE
Buried with the Machine
Screening programme featuring work by Rebecca Barten, David Crowley, Brian Dillon, Mikala Dwyer, Bea McMahon, Elisabeth Subrin, amongst others
The Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely
Saturday 5 September 2026
Tickets will be available in July 2026
The Clearing ends with a screening programme at The Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, on Saturday 5 September 2026.
The programme reflects on the circumstances of the death of Vaari Claffey’s Great Grandfather, Timothy Cleary. A Tinahely native, Cleary was described in his obituary as a ‘scientific machinist’, an innovator who had reputedly bought the first thresher in Ireland. He died in a tragic accident at his saw mills in Arklow. The machine that killed him was buried partly in a field and partly with his body.
The film programme is supported by the research of anthropologist and film-programmer, Todd Sekuler. Through artists’ moving image the programme explores our (sometimes dangerous) relationship to machinery as it veers towards hybridity, the compulsion to tinker to the point of glitching and the nature of obsessive attachment to the non-living.
Screenings will be accompanied by artistic interferences from makers, writers and researchers including Bea McMahon, Mikala Dwyer, David Crowley and Brian Dillon, amongst others.
This screening programme is part of The Clearing, a major new public project by Dublin-based curator and producer Vaari Claffey. It unfolds across an exhibition at Kunstverein Aughrim, a day of performance and sculpture as part of Craic in the Granite Music & Arts Festival, and a screening programme at The Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely.
The Clearing is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Kunstverein Aughrim’s collaboration with Vaari Claffey is supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Vaari Claffey would like to thank CCI Paris, and Der Windtunnel, Zurich for support in the development of this project. Vaari Claffey & Brian Hand were supported by NCAD Research Seed Funding and NIVAL, Dublin.