The House of Atreus, FIX25, 2025
Catalyst Arts Belfast
The House of Atreus* is a collaborative project by Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells exploring how working class architecture reflects contemporary social and moral systems. This partnering of experiences intersects gendered labour practices, working-class identity and the entanglement of domestic and industrial spaces.
Taking place within a site specific location, the performance duration will reflect a typical working day (9am - 5pm as formalised in the 1938 Fair Labour Standards Act) incorporating allocated breaks. Two intersecting delineated spaces form the arena in which the two artists will negotiate gender bias with one artist facing greater restrictions on space, movement and choice. The chosen space will consider the themes of labour productivity and the queer/feminist body within it. Over the duration of the working day each artist will introduce minimal objects reflecting both domestic and industrial practices.
Drawing on their social histories such as migrations of Irish workers across UK industrial cities, the housing crisis, tax incentives for tech giants, the post pandemic cost of living crisis and post celtic tiger recession,the project positions labour in all its forms as both subject and material. It engages with hierarchies that continue to shape cultural value systems in Ireland and the UK, while situating the live body inside architectures of gender, class, and capital.
The House of Atreus confronts how identity, labour, and space are constructed and contested under capitalism. The action leaves behind a sculptural residue that transforms the performance site into a charged hybrid of architectures.
*Greek mythological dynasty plagued by a curse of mistrust and suffering that culminates in its downfall, this myth illustrates how architecture reflects the moral failings of its inhabitants. Photography by Jos McGookin
