Grúpat and Jennifer Walshe

about

Grúpat is an international arts collective based in Tallaght, County Dublin, Ireland. The collective works primarily in sound, with work ranging from strictly notated compositions for classic ensembles to graphic scores, sonic sculptures, sound installations and interventions in both the public and private spheres. The roots of Grúpat can be traced to 1999, when Bulletin M, The Parks Service, Turf Boon and other artists met at a rave at the Hellfire Club on Montpelier Hill, in the Dublin Mountains. They decided to form a political and artistic “insurgency” based on the ideas of the Situationists, graffiti artists, direct action networks, and others, which they called “The Avant Gardaí.” The rave was shut down by the police, but the artists met together later and began to develop interventions, dérives, and détournments along Situationist lines, which culminated in the infamous 2001 Quaring the Square intervention in the Tallaght Square, a multimedia infiltration that set upon Saturday afternoon mall shoppers with a three-hour long, illegal spectacle of music, dancing and art. Several members of The Avant Gardaí were arrested as a result, all of whom refused to give their proper names or answer any questions in any way except to say: “Grúpat.” As the practices and goals of The Avant Gardaí shifted and changed after the events surrounding Quaring the Square, and as membership evolved and grew more artistic and less provocatively political in orientation, what began as an assu

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