Irish Museum of Modern Art presents Not I an Installation by Neil Jordan on view through 9 September 2012.
This unique film-based installation, directed by Neil Jordan and featuring the American actress Julianne Moore, is based on Samuel Beckett’s play Not I, 1972. Not I presents an actress seated on a stage with just her mouth visible. The mouth then delivers a long monologue, a constant stream of consciousness. Beckett’s friend, and one of his favourite interpreters of his work, Billie Whitelaw recalled her performance of the original work: “I defy anyone to come up with a more intense theatrical experience than Samuel Beckett’s Not I. In otherwise complete darkness, a disembodied female mouth, known as Mouth, about eight feet above the stage, delivers a hyper-rapid stream of consciousness, a mixture of reminiscence and evasion, an existentially terrifying babble, hinting at deep trauma and extinction of self”. – www.imma.ie