Poor unfortunate girls

Performance work with Buba Čvorić

Dublin, Ireland | 2009 | Duration: 40”
Participants: Eva Schippers, Veridiana Zurita, Seda Manavoglu, Barbara Philipp and girls from the neighborhood

   Poor unfortunate girls were young girls (mostly from Eastern Europe and Africa) who were sold into prostitution knowingly and unknowingly by their parents between approximately 1850-1925. After this, on the same premises with mostly the same girls, a Magdalen laundry was set up by legion of Mary, where they had to work without a payment and where practically imprisoned and enslaved.

We were walking around the high building with the walls along most of the street. There were no entrances. Doors were kept closed and locked for a very long time. Through the some of the windows we could see that the building and yard around were abandoned.
This building was used by legion of Mary.
Our performance in front of the same building was “forgotten skipping games” played with elastic rope.  We started to play in front of the entrance, but we could not remember any games. We could only remember different parts of the games.
Young girls from the neighborhood came and joined us.
We played together for a while,
We tried to remember,
Forgotten game…

Photos by Laura Gallagher, James P. Kinsella and Stefanie Seibold