The first work in this project was filmed exactly four weeks ago.
The project was developed entirely on site during the Season of the Witch workshop and residency at Live Art Ireland 28th June-17th July 2025, and became a trilogy of short films shot with my laptop webcam and edited with pre installed editing software, with additional sound recorded on my phone.
001: Blood & Fury
Content Warning: Menstrual blood, partial nudity.
Shot in one take, this was less a performance and more an honest release of grief, grievances and that which doesn’t serve me anymore.
002: Rain Must Fall
One of my particular loves is the way humans share songs, and Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall by Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots is a song which really epitomises this for me.
003: Regrette Rien
There are few acts as human as belting out a half remembered banger to express or generate joy. This was filmed in the ashes of the fire pit where I burned my first spell scroll in nearly two decades, and cremated a bat found deceased outside my room as an act of grieving those whom I have lost.
About The Work
Named for a figure observed walking the grounds of Live Art Ireland’s Milford House, the work began from the desire to find a way to purge my own feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. The costume was drawn from my own clothing, having combined my weight allowance for clothing and potential costume on the journey.
It is also the name for a particular spectre in Appalachian folklore – a ghostly female in black warning errant husbands to return home (particularly from bars and clubs). These visitations were no gentle admonishments – the figures would scream, punch and “slap men to the ground with a swish of their spectral garments”, even killing men who wronged their wives on the spot where their crime occurred. Whether a genuine phantom or a co-operative means of women working together to engender better behaviour from their spouses, I found the fact my subconscious yearns for the capacity to terrify men who would attempt to have agency over women particularly telling.
Vicky Roden 