“WITH REPORTS OF UFO ACTIVITY INCREASING, CAN WE REALLY AFFORD TO IGNORE THE QUESTIONS THAT THEY RAISE?” – CÓILÍN O’CONNELL

Cóilín O’Connell spoke to LMFAO061 on his new publication ‘A Phenomenon Only Slightly Strange’, a booklet containing three texts that explore different aspects of the UFO phenomenon and how it relates to the postcolonial and peripheral states of Ireland and Cyprus.

We are living in a time of perceived collapse and crisis. The old ways are rotten and falling away with no clear future. Cóilín sees the symbol of the UFO arriving with no answers, no help given to the ‘periphery’. It comes and disrupts our concrete notions of common sense, proposing futures that could’ve been but were shot down by colonialism and capitalism. A representation of knowledge, beliefs and possibilities that have been crushed, a sentiment heavily hung on Irish soil.

“Theres a few things that are going on at once in the piece, how UFO experiences and investigations capture broader ideas to do with the politics and history of a place.”

“UFOs are a bit of a vector ; they are very open to interpretation.”

The text and images within are disjointed , fragmented with intentional space left between. “This isn't an academic piece - it's an artwork , a book that acts as a piece of art.”

“A few years ago, I was in Cyprus, Limassol, on an artist residency for a week..”

“I was trying to find connections between Ireland and Cyprus, there's a lot there. Both former British colonies, both partitioned, in Cyprus, it’s a bit more extreme, the capital city is divided in half like Berlin in the 80s. I found the UFO as a way to join these parallels.”

“Ive been working on this for years , I have been collecting material for a long time both in Cyprus and Ireland , searching through the National and newspaper archives. I spend a lot of time in my practice looking through archives and collections, I work a lot with found materials.”

O'Connell's artistic practice finds a certain kinship in the methods of the archetypal UFO investigator - hobbyist detectives who investigate and explore narratives around UFO and alien experiences.

"I'm interested in UFO detectives - how they work with found and original material. From my perspective as an artist that's something that I find quite interesting, combining both sources with no hierarchy between the two.”

“They are interesting characters, ill be careful how I say this - they fake stuff for want of a better word. How they report the story is as much about them as it is the UFO. Their personality gets mixed up with where they happen to be and the politics of the place.”

The booklet is full of striking images taken from national newspapers and DIY publications produced by these investigators. The 1980s and 90s in Ireland was a particularly fertile time for UFO hunting groups, many of whom produced their own zines.

“There are these really interesting characters. It's a subculture that hasn't really managed to carry onto the next generation. They were really organised - had this extensive infrastructure of conventions and meetups. There were a number of newsletters and journals that circulated at the time.”

Cóilín is referring to groups like the UFO Society of Ireland (UFOSI) - an organisation based out of Roscommon that received extensive attention from the press. Strangely enough, Ireland ranked amongst the highest in Europe for UFO sightings in the 1990s , the majority of which focused around the small town of Boyle. The Roscommon UFO ‘flap’ included a supposed UFO crash in the Curlew Mountains. It was the news coverage and research of this event by Irish UFO investigators that influenced Cóilín's work.

The UFOSI along with similar organizations produced DIY zines and newsletters, "A lot of them reprint American articles but they also have analysts , Irish writers and journalists writing for them. One talks about the scandal that would happen if people knew about the American military flights passing over Ireland.”

“But there's not been a scandal really , it's a very normal thing now and people were predicting this big kickback if there was common knowledge of these flights.”

The Ditch has done extensive coverage of Shannon Airports use by foreign military - they have found that in the last number of months American munitions have passed through Shannon Airport multiple times for use in Israels genocide of Palestine and attacks on Iran.

Physical or digital copies of DIY UFO publications from Ireland and Cyprus are incredibly hard to come across, ”It took me ages to track down copies , I was contacting archives all around Ireland until I saw someone posted on Twitter that they found some scans. I thought for a while that maybe they didn't exist , and that the newsletters I read about were made up. The whole process was detective work. You're not really sure what is true and what's fiction.”

BUFORA Ireland Branch Journal - 1993

The subculture has mostly died out in Ireland with many of its key members retiring or passing on, "There's younger people into it but there's not the same infrastructure as before. I think it sort of died out when smartphones became a thing. A lot of their old websites are gone now.”

The reports these groups investigated were never really concluded, new photos or documents get released and the whole narrative changes.

“I like that it's an ongoing story, and doesn't have a neat conclusion. There are parallels to how folklore, history and national identities are produced, constantly changing with the passage of time and being renegotiated.”

“I would like to do more with this but I think it'll be quite different. It will probably be some sort of art work that can go into a gallery or art setting. This publication is finished but this theme has been something I've been tipping away at for years.”

‘A Phenomenon Only Slightly Strange’ was written and designed by Coílín O’Connell and published by Mirror Lamp Press. A free digital copy of the zine can be found at www.mirrorlamppress.com. Physical copies printed on luxury satin paper can be purchased from The Library Project or from O’Connell directly at @c_o_connell on Instagram.

Telegram Channel of Cóilín O’Connell here