If you could catch Ireland or even just Dublin in a moment that tells you almost everything about the cultural, social, economical and physical state of the nation, you’d be doing well to fit it all into just one evening, or indeed a musician’s setlist. An abandoned retail unit built during the boom, the windows taped over with bin-liners, concrete blocks remain exposed, the ceiling unfinished still revealing the service ducts, improvise furniture from beer crates, plywood, and large industrial timber spools for tables dotted with the cheapest off-licence purchases, a few token Christmas decorations, €15 entry with all proceeds to the Simon Community, a more sparse crowd than perhaps otherwise expected because of the arctic weather grasping the country, a somewhat eclectic crowd none-the-less, a crowd of mostly unemployed twenty-somethings thus ‘Young Hearts Run Free,’ the appropriate title for the event, some dancing, some talking, all cheerful and a mesmeric guitarist from West Africa the final warm-up act before folk musician and former Planxty member Dónal Lunny begins.
The venue right on Smithfield Plaza in Dublin has been threatened with transfer to NAMA since February 2009, but in this abandoned retail unit and warehouse leftover from the Celtic Tiger, the Complex promotes innovations in art, theatre, comedy and music for all sections of the community. They describe the abandoned building-site nature of the venue as ‘site-specific’ with all furniture entirely movable – it fits with their ethos of ‘exploring current issues in society and in the local community,’ so in this industrial urban aesthetic there is a contemporary resonance. They run workshops and classes from which their creativity is sourced, incorporating gallery and rehearsal spaces, to produce entirely in-house shows, although they are not limited to that.
This is all part of a new trend that is emerging, not just in Smithfield, but throughout Dublin – that of re-using spaces that were either left behind and not developed during the building-boom, or using those that were developed but turned out to be surplus to requirements. Consider the urban gardens in Dolphin’s Barn, Clougher Road and Cherry Orchard, and in similar vein to the Complex, Block T in the Chinese Markets also in Smithfield. Put Block T together with the Complex, the Lighthouse Cinema, popular bars the Cobblestone and Dice and it seems the vision for Smithfield seems to finally be materialising as it heaves with anticipation on a cold Friday night.
In the past ten years, Smithfield has gone through a rigorous regeneration, with a programme of building work making it among the most densely designed projects in Dublin. There’s a brief glimpse in the Commitments in the 1980s which shows what it used to look like, the chimney doesn’t have the lift or viewing pod, and the new block is a dreary row of council housing, echoes of which remain on the northeast edge of the plaza. There was a vision brought together by a team of designers for a highly active civic space for markets and outdoor concerts, making Smithfield a cultural hive and an exciting new quarter for city. The vision didn’t materialise however, despite sporadic successes such as the traditional horse fair and the seasonal Christmas markets. The activity such a vast urban space required never came, the vacant shop fronts couldn’t even find tenants when things were good, now they stand as headstones for the Celtic Tiger.
But like Temple Bar in the eighties, it is the artisan ventures that seem to thrive in the bad times; economics’ crisis is imagination’s opportunity. Other workshops are dotted around the area setting up a vibrant network and with ease of access to the city centre attracting a culturally rich demographic to Smithfield, there’s a high number of foreign nationals, the traditional working class residents, young professionals and students bringing a attractive urban variety.
Before the West African guitarist began on Saturday night, the music was briefly interrupted to allow Dónal Lunny give an interview. The previously half-attentive crowd now all drew to the side stage, shuffling for space as they tried to catch a glimpse, and importantly some world weary counsel from the words he speaks. The almost shy interviewer breaks the ice, so to speak, by mentioning the unfortunate reason for the small turnout, but then Lunny starts to respond to real questions, he speaks fondly of a recent trip to the World Badhrán Championships in the midlands, he jokes over the west of Ireland being a bad place for badhráns because it’s too damp, and he speaks on technology in a way one may perhaps not expect... a man renown for tradition embraces contemporary technology, he says “it opens the door, there’s still some... iffy stuff, but there can be great music, great possibilities outside of the regular 9-5, watching the clock life...”
On the walk down, a Garda suggested that the fact patrons are permitted to bring their own alcohol is “entirely illegal... but what can you do...” Hard to say really whether he was being entirely genuine or otherwise, he was dealing with some young urban troublemakers in Super-Valu on North Kings Street at the time, so the Complex was of little concern save some polite Saturday night banter. Events like this and similar ones at nearby Block T in the Chinese markets usually get wound up around midnight, and the Gardaí don’t tend to be too slow in ensuring punters move on.
So as that hour approaches, Dónal Lunny looks toward closing his set with a song sung as gaeilge and something a little faster to leave the crowd wanting more. You wonder whether a larger, warmer, or dare one day it rural, crowd would be more inclined to dancing like those few to the side of the stage, but very few actually do despite their attentiveness. The soft ballad sang in Irish has a resonance with the warm-up act’s west African song, they lyrics of both inevitably lost on this audience but then that’s not like it mattered, for these performances were about music, less so about poetry, they were about tradition, two very different ones, finding some shared leftover space in contemporary Ireland and holding an audience there.
When the music stops, that crowd loiter inside around the industrial timber spools finishing the last of their drinks, keeping close to the heaters, fearful of the delicate walk home on the black ice on the footpaths. They eventually fall out on to the freezing cold Smithfield Plaza, there’s no one hanging around the Lighthouse or anywhere close, it’s too cold with snow covering the square and freezing fog echoing up around the old chimney, over to the council accommodation and the Cobblestone up to the north-east edge. That’s where the trendy people who weren’t dancing will perhaps go, if not then maybe to nearby Dice Bar or Sin É, but regardless for bravely into the cold urban night they disperse until next time...
