When I first met Julie a few months ago in Belfast we spoke about divides between people, divided lands and the political and sociological policy employed by empires to get the people to fight amongst themselves; The “Divide and Conquer” stratedgy enables people to be more easily controlled. Unity is seen as a threat by those who strive to control the masses. These would be colonisers strategically employed the tactic in order to create conflict between the people who originally resided in the territory. It was then a much simplier task to steal land and resources from them. They would be too busy arguing amongst themselves to have the solidarity needed to fend off enemies.
This combination of political, military and economic strategy to gain and maintain power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into smaller chunks is still evident today. The existing hegemony is constantly separating people into different groups, usually class related and economically motivated. I find myself coming to conclusions on who I am based on who I am not. Essentially this is about me separating myself from others as opposed seeking out commonalities. Unfortunately it is often through the discovery of similarities with others that I find a deep contentment. I reside myself to the fact that my nature seems at odds with the dominant thinking of my time and the subsequent sociological structure. I’m all for divisions that enrich our lives, culturally for example but for the most part I find the divisions I encounter everyday are pointless and harmful to my mental health.
We went to the centre of O’Connell bridge. It lies over the Liffey, the river dividing the North of the city from the South. The divide in Dublin was the most evident thing I noticed when I first came here 10 years ago. Growing up in the west of Ireland in rural areas during the 80’s and 90’s I hadn’t experienced such a gap between rich and poor until I went to Dublin. Most people where I grew up were working class and in economic terms seen as poor, funnily enough I didn’t notice because it was seen as normal. In Dublin the class system was evident in the accents, the regions and the life opportunities for the occupants of these regions. For example my boyfriend at the time came from an affluent area and could secure work based on his address alone.
We drew a line across the O Connell bridge to highlight the divide between the two sides of the city. The following are photos taken by Michael Stephens. Maciej (Magic) Martyniuk filmed the event and Julie Fiala editing the footage. She speaks about the piece on her blog http://juliefiala.tumblr.com/
