Lisa Freeman is a Kildare-based visual artist and filmmaker working across moving image, installation and scripted performance. Her practice explores the interdependence of power structures and relations, the body, site specificity and the presentation of the self in the everyday. Her films and performances examine how intimacy emerges, and might be used as a form of resistance, within psychological states shaped by personal interaction, the built environment, the media and imagination.
Drawing on archives, mainstream media and local knowledge, her work is often set within specific geographic and architectural landscapes. Working with actors and musicians, her recent projects explore ideas of tenderness and generosity in civic space. Works such as Slipped, Fell and Smacked my Face off the Dance Floor, Approx 1 Second of a Sweet Kiss and Hook, Spill, Cry Your Eyes Out examine the everyday, where small moments can lead to more surreal events, and experiences of social isolation in the public realm. Freeman’s scriptwriting is inspired by intimate moments, conversations and encounters in specific environments, which she documents through photography, video and writing before shaping them in the studio through rhythm, pacing and staging. Her moving image work brings past embodied experiences into the present, exploring the body as an archive of time and place. She is currently developing a new film, Dawn, supported by an Arts Council Project Award, informed by research in the Irish folklore archives at UCD.
Lisa Freeman applied for a Golden Fleece Award to invest in specialist filmmaking equipment, which would enable a more independent approach to capturing high-quality, site-specific and atmospheric moments within her practice.
