Countess Markiewicz
On October 2, ten female sound artists will converge on Richmond Barracks in Dublin, where 77 women were remanded for their involvement in the 1916 Rising.
Mean Time is a collaborative improv project marking the end of Dublin Mean Time, as strenously objected to by Countess Markiewicz.
In recently-discovered correspondence with London-Irish solictor JH McDonnell, Markiewicz saw the change, cited for reasons of railway building and telegraphy as yet another sign of British colonisation, of “public feeling… outraged by forcing of English time on us”
Mean Time writes:
Up until the 1st of October 1916 Ireland was on Dublin Mean Time which was 25 minutes and 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time.
On that day when England put its clock back by an hour for Winter Ireland put its clock back by 35 minutes and ended the historic time difference between the two countries.
(The artists) will perform a unique improvisation based on especially commissioned pieces on the theme of these lost 25 minutes for the anniversary of the abolition of Dublin Mean Time.
The event will combine contemporary music, performance art, radio art and electroacoustic composition, ‘clawing back’ time lost and imagining many possible future Irelands.
The programme will be hosted by Bernard Clarke and broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm’s Nova. The participating artists are Daria Baiocchi, Fiona Hallinan, La Cosa Preziosa, Vicky Langan, Úna Lee, Olivia Louvel, Jenn Kirby, Claudia Molitor, Gráinne Mulvey and Rachel Ní Chuinn.
A lineup you can set your watch to.
We’ll get our shawl.
it’s gunna be shrill
They moderate their voices so the men don’t get afraid.
No wonder I don’t have time for things – the Brits stole it
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Apple could placate us and offer the choice of dublin mean time on our phones. If enough of us do it…
Sounds insufferable.
I reckon if it emerged that Countess Markievicz followed through on a fart in 1918, there’d be some group willing to commemorate it in some form or other.
2017 can’t come quickly enough for me.
She wasn’t even a real Countess…
Wait, that has nothing to do with the issue. I’ve gone full ad hominem.
The internet has beaten me down!
That’s a straw man argument.
That’s so weird. 25 Irish minutes lost. Dublin Mean Time. I never heard of that before. Cool.
Is there any movement in Ireland for the change of the hour in winter to be abolished?
If nothing else it would be fun to see the Healy-Raes arguing against it.
She was a back shooter too…
Yeah, I’d like to move to European time. All this jumping around from summer time to winter time is bats.
And Constance Markievicz was a wonder. When she died, just 9 years after 1916, the government didn’t want to give her a State funeral. Her body was laid out in the Rotunda and the poor of Dublin lined up all the way around Parnell Square and down O’Connell Street to pay their respects to ‘Madame’, who had been one of the very few to stand up for them year after year and in every way and for every cause.
Don’t know about that stuff about the Countess, but I call you to reason on joining “European Time” (aka Central European Time). That’s just “Berlin Time”.
The two big considerations here are Light and Warmth. In the olden days, it made sense to have local timezones. The advance of Technology (roads, steamships, railways, aircraft, d’internetz…) makes localised timeszones less practical; but Light and Warmth still matter. Midnight started off being mid night – the middle of the night. 24:00 is shifted now to be earlier than mid-time-of-darkness, which makes sense, because it takes time for the Sun to warm up the surface of our planet; so when you get up for work in the morning, there’s a reasonable compromise between daylight wasted and warmth (though the Dawn Chorus is priceless, no matter the temperature).
France used to stick to the Paris Meridian (2+odd degrees west of Greenwich) but surrendered that fight long ago. They should, by rights (i.e. Light and Warmth), be on GMT but changed to Berlin Time for practical/Economic Reasons. The Spanish used to follow GMT, but followed the French and changed to Berlin Time for supposed-Economic reasons, leaving Portugal (Spain’s longest-border neighbour) in a different timezone (GMT). There’s now a movement in Spain to change back, as they’re realising that Economic is not as big a consideration as Light and Warmth.
It’s a balance. Within the EU, you have Finland and Spain on the same time, but Portugal on a different time to Spain. That stretches the limitations of Practicality. Given the current extent of the EU, it’s probably best to have two European timezones: Eastern (maybe centred on Warsaw?) and Western (centred on, i dunno, Greenwich?). But trying to squeeze the whole of the EU into Berlin time just isn’t gonna work.
My two cents.
But don’t get me started on “Daylight Saving”. That’s just madness…
Bernard Clarke and Rachel Ní Chuinn both have great radio shows. I’m afraid this is the kind of thing I’m very much into.