The Decameron / Na Deich Lá

14th February - 5th April 2025

Curated by Sara Greavu 

The Decameron / Na Deich Lá departs from Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th century book of short stories. Set within a frame story wherein ten young people flee to a villa outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death pandemic, it takes place over the course of ten days and ten nights, during which they eat, play games, sing, play music and tell stories to pass the time.

In this new film work, the ten protagonists and frame story are relocated to a contemporary ‘co-living’ development where they ‘live, work and play’ together. Aimed at a young, affluent and globally transient workforce, co-living developments function to normalise housing crises in an ‘age of loneliness’ by redefining the concept of home and living. Through focusing on experience and convenience over space and privacy, living becomes a service that is provided and the concept of a stable home is replaced by home as a subscription.

The Decameron / Na Deich Lá draws on a range of motifs, themes and tropes from literature, television, theatre, cinema, self-help guides, social media and advertising, among other sources, to form the foundation of the script. The work was made covertly while the artist stayed as a resident at a co-living development, and the characters and plot lines were developed over a period of six months through a series of Character-Based Improvisation (CBI) workshops with dramaturg, Rob Marchand. Building on ten detailed casting calls with loose origins in Boccaccio’s Decameron, the CBI methodology encouraged the actors to place their characters at ‘the centre of their own universe’ with rich personal histories, desires, and motivations. The process to arrive at each character’s narrative arc involved deep collaboration with the actors through improvisation and rehearsal combined with verbatim elements scripted by the artist.

In the film work, the ten protagonists move from room to room, engaging with props found on site and each other within the improvised set of the co-living development’s spaces. Shot entirely on iPhone with audio from concealed lapel microphones, the clandestine production method provoked encounters between the actors’ highly choreographed performances and the contingent elements inherent in this approach to shooting on location.

The exhibition also includes an installation which alters the architecture of the gallery space and houses a durational video work of the artist sleeping. Outside there is an artwork installed on Project’s billboard on Essex Street East. Pasted on top of the previous billboard image, this work is an enlarged, black and white medium-format photograph taken by the artist's father, Ronan McCrea. Made for this exhibition, the photo is of the derelict Rialto Cinema on the South Circular Road. The site, which sits beside the artist's family home, has been sold and is marked for development as student housing.

The Decameron / Na Deich Lá was commissioned by Project Arts Centre and primarily funded by the The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Project Award.

Photo Credit: Louis Haugh