The new Centre Culturel Irlandais at the restored Irish College in Paris - which Minister for the Arts, John O'Donoghue opens today - marks the beginning of an exciting new era for Irish art and music abroad, writes Lara Marlowe
'Le premier jour" - the first day - it says on the invitation to today's inauguration of the Centre Culturel Irlandais. The sunny yellow, inch-high letters are centred over a photograph of the stone-carved escutcheon in the Rue des Irlandais. The British crown above the coat of arms - and the Latin letters in the courtyard saying collegium clericorum hibernorum - are now vestiges of Irish history. But the harp at the centre is of the emblem is ever graceful, a perennial symbol. As part of the inaugural weekend, two of Ireland's finest harpists, Cormac de Barra and Anne-Marie O'Farrell, will perform in the ornate Chapel of Saint Patrick tomorrow evening.
The first day: Adam and Eve, the garden of Eden? I ask Helen Carey, who became director in September, after running the Galway Arts Centre, Cúirt Literary Festival and Galway Youth Theatre since 1999. "We didn't go back as far as the book of Genesis," Carey laughs. October 18th will not mark the creation of the world, but the creation of a one-square acre, Irish world in the heart of Paris. "It's the first day of the Centre Culturel," Carey explains. "But not the first day of the Collège des Irlandais."
She makes a clear distinction. The Centre Culturel is a concept that comes to fruition today. The College was founded in 1578, one of 29 across Europe that enabled Ireland to train priests through three centuries of British penal laws. The Catholic Church, which played the leading historical role, maintains a discreet presence with the new chaplain, Father Des Knowles, performing Mass every Sunday.
On the eve of the Nice Treaty referendum, the Taoiseach will miss a fine opportunity to show Ireland's commitment to a presence in Europe by failing to attend the inauguration. His absence is a disappointment to the dozens of men and women who laboured so hard to create the first Irish cultural centre abroad. Instead of Ahern, the Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, will unveil a stone at noon. Carey won't reveal what the words on the stone are (she likes secrets and surprises) but says: "It is is an integral part of the building" - like the names of Louis XV, Napoleon III and Pope John-Paul II, all recorded on the walls of the college.
Designed by the court architect Francois-Joseph Belanger in 1769, the college harboured priests during the revolution, hosted tea dances for the Empress Josephine, was shelled in the Franco-Prussian war and barely escaped confiscation during the tide of anti-clerical sentiment that culminated in the 1905 Loi Combes.
After the second World War, it was inhabited by Polish priests who had survived the Dachau concentration camp. Gradually, over the past two decades, Ireland has repossessed it. The €10.5 million restoration was planned at the height of the economic boom, but hopes that the centre might serve as a prototype for similar projects around the world have been put on hold.
While O'Donoghue tours the renovated building, 400 guests will enjoy canapés and champagne under a white marquee in the courtyard. Carey has organised an intensive first week that takes in almost every art form and geographical corner of Ireland. The strong representation of the west and women reflect her own background. Some events are free. Admission of between €5 and €15 will be charged for others, with proceeds going to the running of the centre.
This evening, seven musicians from the traditional Irish group, Dervish, will hold a concert under the marquee, with the singer Cathy Jordan. Tomorrow afternoon, the photographer David Farrell will launch his Innocent Landscapes exhibition, which won the European Publishers' Award for Photography. "It shows areas in the border counties where people who disappeared during the Troubles were believed to have been buried," Carey explains. "The landscapes are beautiful, but they show the marks of attempts to recover bodies." The award-winning Irish novelists John McGahern and Jennifer Johnston will read from their most recent books this weekend. Next week, Máirin Ni Dhonnchadha and Margaret MacCurtain, editors of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, will launch two new volumes on Irish women's writing, followed by a reading by Anne Haverty.
The RTÉ Van Brugh String Quartet will perform in the chapel tomorrow, with the clarinettist Romain Guyot. Three days after the Nice Referendum, French and Irish academics and diplomats will hold a discussion about Ireland and Europe.
The college contains 45 simply but tastefully furnished rooms, each with its own bathroom, which will be rented for between €550 and €700 a month. Half the rooms have already been allotted, and residents began moving in this month. Would-be lodgers can telephone or write to the Centre for application forms. "We want Irish people who can benefit from being here, who have a particular need to be in Paris, for example a year's course of study," says Carey. "We have people in law, agriculture, linguistics, a couple of writers." Breakfast in the bright, airy, first-floor salle des résidents is included.
THE centre also has rooms for two artists-in-residence. The short story writer Claire Keegan, from Co Wexford, and the landscape artist Fionna Murray, who teaches at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, have been invited by Carey for the two-month inaugural period. They will contribute by holding creative writing and studio workshops.
The Mediathèque is expected to draw the broadest French and Irish public. It is a large room on the ground floor with an elliptical screen suspended from the ceiling, where images of contemporary Ireland will be projected. Computer work-stations are tucked away along the back wall. Visitors can watch RTÉ, listen to Irish music through headphones and read Irish newspapers, magazines, books and literary journals.
Carey has organised at least one event every week until Christmas. She knows the programme by heart: a reading from Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds by his French translator; Donal O'Kelly performing Catalpa - the story of the attempted rescue of six Fenian prisoners in 1875; an evening of detective novels in English and French, by Ken Bruen and Patrick Raynal; and readings by Anne Enright, Leland Bardwell, Bernard MacLaverty, Evelyn Conlon and Dominique Mainard.
There will be lectures on architecture, Irish artists in late-18th century Rome, Irish impressionists and post-impressionists. The director Johnny O'Reilly and the film artist Clare Langan will speak during a series of short Irish films in late November. The classical pianist Miceal O'Rourke will give a solo recital on November 27th. Flute-player Fintan Vallely, the author of the Companion to Irish Traditional Music, will begin a lecture series, accompanied by the sean-nós step dancer Roisin Ní Mhainin. And on December 13th, there will be a Christmas carol service in the chapel. Carey is already thinking about Saint Patrick's Day and Bloomsday - "things celebrated by the Irish abroad, and which are ripe for re-invention". She dreams of fêtes champêtres - picnics in the spring and summer.
In the courtyard of the U-shaped college, Carey anticipates the feel of the new centre. Three clear acrylic balls, public art by Tina O'Connell, have been commissioned for the garden. "When you look through them, they telescope or distort space," Carey explains.
"They'll be here to be discovered" - like the three-sided hedge maze, which can be seen from upstairs windows, or works-in-progress in the artist's studio. "Someone will look out the window of the salon des résidents," Carey says, nodding across the courtyard, "with a cup of coffee intheir hand. And they'll say, 'Oh there's so-and-so - I have to get them before they leave.' At the same time, someone will be carrying a canvas out of the atelier. All within the sanctuary of these walls."
Words such as "gestating", "evolving", "flexibility", "potential" and "change" punctuate Carey's conversation. This is the first time Ireland has established a cultural centre abroad, and she sees it as an adventure, through which she and the 15-member management committee will have to adapt. "The notion I have is of a lively, welcoming place that you come back to and discover something else . . . It's like a great waking up," she says. "You can see the shrouds coming off. You can see the possibilities."
The Centre Culturel Irlandais at the Irish College Paris is at 5 Rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris. Tel: 00331-45355979
