I was thinking about the affects (or somaesthics even) of the irrealis mood in Irish/Gaeilge, through the Modh Coinníolach. I was interested in the affect/effect of this mood/tense in the Irish language and how it seemed to reflect a prevailing mood/tense within technological research. While it seemed to be a mood that echoed the speculative narratives surrounding technologies like ‘Smart Cities’ and ‘Internet of Things’, it is also (I think) a mood of decolonisation… it feels subversive, slippery — at once compliant with and resisting whatever prevailing narrative or authority is in power. The modh coinníollach felt to me to be in the same register as Deleuze and Guattari’s minor literature, and I wanted to follow that feeling (without theorising too much).

So, I sought out and recorded conversations with Irish language speakers (Gaeilgóirs): comedian Áine Gallagher and travel writer Manchán Magan. (I aim to continue this conversation with Irish speakers and build up a deeper understanding of how the modh coinníollach is used in every day, what work it does, and to see if it could be used as a lens through which to study the narratives and fictions of technology). 

When I spoke with Áine Gallagher, she told me a story from a friend of hers, Darach, who had returned to learning and speaking Irish so that he could converse more fully with his father. Darach once asked his father to tell him about the modh coinníollach and how he could use this tense better, to which request his father replied: sure what would you want to know about that for? That’s only for making excuses! Which is a delicious example of the modh coinníollach in action. But it also seemed to chime with my own hunch that proposal writing (particularly in relation to technological research) was very much about ‘making excuses’, and very much about making-believe. The modh coinníollach and proposal writing both seem to hold the form of what Charles Eames has referred to as Fictions of Reality and what I have referred to as Technologies of Fiction.

And when I spoke with Manchán Magan, I composed segments of our conversation into an audio piece that could be listened to on headphones in the gallery space at HDLU, Zagreb, as part of Difference Engine IX: ALTERN_ATORS. I had the audio translated into Bosnian so that people could listen in English and a local language. My colleague Dr. Harun Siljak helped to translate it and narrate it with another colleague of ours from Connect, Dr. Elma Avdic. The text was also printed out and stacked in the gallery for people to take away (link to audio).