Rundale

‘what does the future have in hold for you?’

Mel Galley and Clara McSweeney

Unfolding through the audience’s homes as a mysterious package, phone call and cryptic website, Holdings was a remote artwork on housing and place created by Mel Galley and Clara McSweeney. Beginning with a question, ‘what does the future have in hold for you?’, the performance posed as an interaction between the audience and a surreal, ambiguous (and slightly inept) development company. Influenced by the language and imagery typical from these corporations, the viewer slid down a webpage oozing with illogical renders of housing interspersed with a written narration responding to the same site. Interrupted by a live call, the audience found themselves answering absurd survey questions, interacting with very junior ‘expert’ advisors, on hold, conspiring with managers to break their company script (and leave their job) and, as the performance-call ended, invited to open the mysterious package before them.

First shared at Dublin Fringe Festival (2025) with a sold-out run, the piece won the Judge’s Choice Award for Beyond the Stage and earned nominations for Best Design and the Fitzmaurice Award. Through this reflective writing on the making and sharing of Holdings, we consider how our collaboration started, the research weaving into and through the piece, how the work was materially and digitally brought into being and, finally, where we will take it in the future.

Image 1: Holdings Marketing Image, Model by Mel Galley. Image Credit: Clara McSweeney, dithered to reduce file size.

1: Starting Out…

Holdings emerged from an ongoing collaborative practice between Clara McSweeney and Mel Galley, which began in 2024, working together on the Fringe Was Here project as part of Art and the City, a six-week course with the Creative Futures Academy led by artist Michelle Browne. Since then, we have collaborated on two further projects: A City at Ten Kilometers an Hour, developed alongside Toshali Chattopadhyay, a PhD researcher from Dublin City University, which resulted in a sensory installation giving shape to Toshali’s investigations of the Calcutta tram system and Holdings, which we will delve into here. Through these projects, we realised the exciting possibilities of collaborating, with our practices holding overlapping interests in (and care for) housing and cities, whilst bringing together different methods of working and skills in making.

Image 2: Clara and Mel keeping track of the Holdings performances in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios.

2: Researching, testing, playing…

This remote interactive artwork on homes and places in the process of change came out of Mel’s artist residency with Data Stories. The Maynooth University based research project mapped Ireland’s planning and property landscapes through their data ecosystems. Bringing into proximity social science researchers and artists through a series of year-long artist residencies running in cycles over the project, the team on Data Stories collaborated on case studies to create stories with and about data. Led by Professor Rob Kitchin, the project emphasised the importance and affordances of artistic processes of research, collaboration and sharing to offer alternative paths into these crucial debates on housing, development and planning which can (often) be all too difficult to tread.

Working in collaboration with Dr Danielle Hynes and Dr Samuel Mutter on Data Narratives, the first kernel of what would become Holdings took shape. The Data Narratives case study offered an opportunity to delve into how data and narrative are put to use in scaffolding and shaping each other, considering the metaphors and language used around data, which data is collected or omitted, and how data can be attached to (or severed from) different contexts. Throughout the case study, Mel, Dani and Sam met to collaborate on a series of writing sessions. Responding to constraints on physical meet-ups when developing the form of the workshops, Mel chose to utilise online spreadsheets as a virtual space for immediate collaboration, drawing on a form often associated with collating and reporting data. Lifting phrases from reports gathered by Dani and Sam as part of their mapping process, these loaded sentences were abstracted into short segments, open to interpretation, and placed in the grid to start the writing. Throughout the sessions we followed a series of parameters or rules for our writing, including; write only one word, write only two words, write in a specific order, write simultaneously, or a different word limit for each participant (a serious struggle if you were the person assigned one word). The size of the sentences was limited by the length of room on the grid, allowing usually for around 5-8 words.

grip

Purchase               clinging

                                desperate

                                slipping

                                lost                                                         residual

After embarking on a large series of these (often bizarre) word-chess collaborations, we returned to our grids to reflect on the unusual narratives appearing across each session. Choosing to expand this process further, we selected the grid of Purchase (shared above) to take away into our practices and each write in response to. Over the coming months we developed, side-by-side, three narratives in response to these seven words; a grid of definitions laying logic for a short story by Dani, pieces by Sam on peering over fences and the muddled metaphors of data, and a monologue on the mutability of place and the futile attempts to fix it into stability by Mel. Through a crit-informed structure we met regularly, sharing our writings as they progressed forward (or slunk back), and developing each in response to the thinking, questioning and reflections of the others.

Sharing her writing from the project for the first time as an artist book and sculpture Hoardings in Liquid Urbanisms (The LAB Gallery, Dublin, 2025), Mel felt the possibility for the piece to develop further. Working with Clara to develop the concept for an interactive artwork, which brought the thinking around data and narrative into the form of the piece, we began to develop Holdings. Included in the package of the piece (which we will get on to now) is a zine bringing together the original Purchase grid with each of the writings by Dani, Sam and Mel.

Image 3: Purchase Zine by  Danielle Hynes, Mel Galley and Sam Mutter. Image Credit: Maria McSweeney, dithered to reduce file size. 

3: Making it Happen…

Whilst working together we quickly realised we naturally gravitated towards different tasks in a project. Clara enjoyed organising, budgeting, sound-designing and going on random side quests. Mel was drawn to writing, designing, bookbinding and visual imagery. While creating Holdings, we divided tasks based on what we loved and where our individual skill sets were best suited.

One of our main methodologies when working together was organising everything into tables, and with Holdings this was no different! From the beginning we organised our potential team, timeline, funding options, and audience experience plan into tables in our shared Google Drive or grids mapped across massive rolls of paper in the studio. As we rapidly arrived at the crunch time of making, we created a large table titled (optimistically) MAKE IT HAPPEN, which helped guide us through the intense period leading up to the launch of Holdings. Another table was later used to track and collate data from the audience members during the performance itself. What can we say – we love a good table!

Another methodology we use in our collaborative practice is setting aside dedicated thinking-testing-playing time in the studio. We did this at the start of the Holdings process, which ultimately made us feel less daunted about the project ahead.

The Holding’s performance consisted of three main elements; a text message leading to a website, a call and a package. All these elements were created to fit into the narrative of a dysfunctional and ambiguous property agency, the like of which currently exists in most rental markets. Ahead of the performance, the audience member received a mysterious brown welcome package from the Holdings team with a note stating NOT to open the package until instructed and to read the welcome letter, which outlined the performance timeline.

Image 4: Holdings Package Opened. Image Credit: Maria McSweeney 

The performance began with a text, linking them to the Holdings website (and also including a reminder that they would receive a call from the Holdings team in five minutes). Entering the website started their journey, bringing them into the conceptual world of Holdings. On the website the audience member scrolled down a fragmented and eerie landscape, encountering a story intertwined with oozing 3D-rendered structures, designed to situate them within the world of the performance. The renderings were modelled off the quickly rising clinical and identical apartments constructed along the periphery of East Wall, near the Dublin Docklands.

Absurd slogans like The best time to buy a house was five decades ago and the second best time is five decades ahead and Invest in the future and be a parent to be proud of loomed large, bracketed by the short story of an unnamed character interacting with the same impersonal interface. This first segment of the performance is the most virtual and remote, existing only digitally and without any temporal or personal anchor (you can experience the website here).

The first phone call began in the format of a corporate survey, performed by Aoife Sweeney O’ Connor and Aine Ryan, acting as employees of the fictitious property company. The call invited the audience to talk about their own experiences of housing by a ‘new’ member of staff who was nervous, discovering over the call that it was their first day on the job. The anxious employee asked more straightforward questions initially, determining if the audience member was a renter, homeowner, or god forbid, a landlord. This led to more obscure questions, such as in your current dwelling, what three words would describe how it feels and would you call it a home?

The employee then broke down as the questionnaire finished, revealing that they didn’t know what to do with the responses and asking to pass on the caller to their manager. Generic hold music played whilst the audience waited (offering a brief dance break for ourselves and the actors performing out of our fictional call centre).

The audience was then put through to the manager, played by Sarah Griffin and Bláithín Ward over the run of the show. The make-shift company started to unravel even more when the manager revealed that they were considering quitting. Rather than going through the scripted answers, they asked if they could share a writing they worked on during their lunch breaks.  From there the audience member is transported into a spoken monologue on places in the process of change, owning a home, and what it means to notice and interact with the places surrounding us everyday. The piece considers how muscle memory, in how we move through and interact with places around us, can lead us past possibilities for meaningful interaction and connection. 

Image 5: Aoife Sweeney O’ Connor and Sarah Griffin performing Holdings in the free space of Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Image Credit: Clara McSweeney, dithered to reduce file size.

The performance draws to a close with the manager asking the audience member to open the welcome package in front of them after the call, revealing that they’ve replaced the original contents with their own special objects to question how we see places and reflect on our own homes. The objects include the Purchase zine (developed through collaborative grid-writing exercises mentioned above) and fours ‘lenses’: A piece of cyanotype to take care of, a postcard to share thoughts back to us, a viewfinder to notice place differently, and a pocket card with a question to carry with you.

The project was made possible through funding from a number of streams, including Data Stories Maynooth and the Make Space for Art fund by Dublin Fringe Festival. Temple Bar Gallery + Studios generously provided us with a free space which we used as the call centre for Holdings. Additional support came through fundraising including hosting The Great* Housing Pub Quiz at The Bernard Shaw, as well as the purchase of miniature houses, zines and prints by our friends and supporters.

*While the quiz was great the housing landscape sadly was not!

4: Reflecting, Iterating, Sharing Again…

Over the first run of Holdings we performed 88 shows, each time talking with an audience member about their opinions and experiences of housing and place and gathering a rich, qualitative dataset of responses. Whilst the dialogue and story of the artwork questions our relationship to homes and change, the form of the piece is deeply rooted in the initial research on data and its relationship to the narratives we tell. In Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, she poses that ‘we relate, know, think, world, and tell stories through and with other stories, worlds, knowledges, thinkings, yearnings’, emphasising that ‘it matters what thoughts think thoughts; it matters what stories tell stories’. In this way we believe it matters what data is gathered on housing and homes, what questions are asked and who is answering them.

The affordances of art in approaching the knotted topic of housing, home and data lies (for us) in the possibility of how people are welcomed into, shape, and carry away ideas and topics questioned in an artwork. Talking at the 2026 International Literature Festival, Dublin, writer Doireen Ní Ghríofa spoke of flinging open the doors and windows of her stories, offering in as many routes to her characters and their histories as possible. This building metaphor holds true for our approach to making and sharing Holdings; art can offer the opportunity for audiences to find their own place to stand in these discussions through generous ambiguity and uncertainty, bringing nuanced experiences and lively stories into an area frequently filled by quantitative data, dominant voices and cold figures.

As each performance of Holdings drew to a close, the audience member finished the call to open the package in front of them. In their lap, amongst the brown paper, were the lenses to reapproach places around them. This collection of small, tactile objects each came with an action, such as a lens carved with buddleia to look through or a fragment of a cyanotyped cloth to care for as part of a whole. We wanted Holdings, through these lenses and the performance as a whole, to welcome audiences along paths and across doorways into an approach to the future that both recognised the realities experienced now, and contained hope for what change can make possible. Informed by Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, which emphasises hope as an action rather than a belief, the piece finishes with an invitation for audiences to act and interact with the places around them.

In considering where we will take the artwork now, it feels necessary that the piece is not an isolated instance performed in repetition, but folds within itself the data we have already gathered, using a process of iteration to continue to shape the narrative of the work. Currently in the process of setting up a tour around Ireland of Holdings, we will use the opportunity to build into the structure of the piece multiple narrative pathways, allowing the actor to shape their dialogues and monologues directly to each audience member.

Whilst we may have performed the show 88 times on a technical level, in reality every performance, built around the generous and reflective responses particular to each participant, was a unique conversation, one that we held and heard with a deep sense of gratitude and (even after 8 days of calls) an immediate excitement to do it all again.

Image 5: Some of the Holdings Team (left to right) Mel Galley, Blaithín Ward, Sarah Griffin, Aoife Sweeney O’Connor, Áine Ryan and Clara McSweeney. Dithered to reduce file size.

A MASSIVE thank you to the Holdings team: Blaithín Ward, Sarah Griffin, Aoife Sweeney O’Connor, and Áine Ryan (actors); Dr Danielle Hynes and Dr Samuel Mutter (researchers); Maria McSweeney and Patrick Fleming (photography and videography); and Clíona Malin (dramaturg and editor).

Also, thank you to the Fringe Festival 2025 team for all the support and encouragement; to Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and The Lab Gallery for their generous spaces to rehearse and perform; and to our funders, Dublin Fringe Festival and Data Stories Maynooth.

Finally, thank you to all of our audience members who bought tickets and experienced Holdings with us, the show couldn’t have existed without you.

About us:

Mel Galley is an early-career practitioner with a constellation-shaped practice weaving together research, making, teaching and writing. She can be found (often) fabricating in workshops, digging through archives, searching across databases, wandering within landscapes and bookbinding in the studio. Mel has shown work across Ireland and the UK, including the LAB Gallery, BETA Festival and Signal Film and Media. Her artist books are held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and (more importantly) on the walls and bookshelves of strangers and friends.

Clara McSweeney is a curator, researcher, and artist from County Cork, currently based in Dublin. From 2023 – 2025, she completed the ARC-LAB Curatorial Scholarship with the Dublin City Arts Office and The LAB Gallery. Additionally, as part of the scholarship, she was a fully funded student in the IADT Art Research Collaboration Master’s program, where her master’s project Now Listen Closely Fellow Humans was shortlisted for the RDS Visual Art Awards and won the Taylor Art Trust Award 2025. Her current research interests lie in the peculiarities of certain vacant spaces in Dublin City, the potential dystopian future stemming from the housing crisis and potential flooding as a result of climate change. Previous experience includes: Curatorial Assistant at the LAB Gallery and Curatorial Resource Development Manager with the National Sculpture Factory, Cork. Currently, she is working as a Programme and Outreach Manager (Maternity Leave) at Fire Station Artist Studios.