Auto-cannibalism
Auto-cannibalism is a provocative exploration of self-exploitation within contemporary capitalist systems, where the body becomes both a site of production and consumption. In this work, I address the psychological and physical toll of living in a neoliberal environment, using cannibalistic imagery as a metaphor for self-sacrifice and the erosion of individual identity in the pursuit of personal or societal goals. The term auto-cannibalism refers to the concept of self-destruction driven by forces such as economic pressures, technological advancements, and environmental degradation.
The installation projects the film onto two-way mirror, which creates an experience that implies surveillance. The mirror simultaneously reflects the viewer on one side and reveals a transparency on the other, suggesting a layered relationship between visibility and obscurity in capitalist systems. This duality implicates the viewer within the cycle of self-exploitation, as they see themselves both within the artwork and reflected back, signaling their role as both participant and observer in these destructive systems.
In the film, the use of visceral, sometimes grotesque imagery depicts this process of self-devouring, where the act of violence embodies the idea of a system that perpetuates self-consumption. The film’s narrative and visual elements are meant to disturb and provoke, encouraging viewers to reflect on the destructive cycles of capitalism and how individuals, knowingly or unknowingly, contribute to their own erasure. The work critiques not only personal sacrifice but also the wider societal mechanisms that enable such behaviors, drawing a parallel between self-cannibalism and the capitalist model that consumes resources and people alike.
Auto-cannibalism employs both symbolism and raw, confrontational visuals, engaging viewers in a conversation about the toxic cycles of self-exploitation and questioning how we, as individuals and as a society, allow ourselves to be consumed by the systems we inhabit. By using the grotesque image of cannibalism and the two-way mirror, I invite the audience to critically examine their own roles within the larger social and economic structures. The mirror, with its implications of surveillance and reflection, underscores the viewer’s complicity within these cycles, making them part of the critique as they confront their reflection and the transparency that lies beyond.
Machination as part of Oscillation: An Altering Rhythm on view at The Counting House, 2023
Machination is a multimedia installation that delves into themes of mechanisation, surveillance, and control within the context of contemporary capitalism. In this work, Barrett creates a speculative world where human agency is overtaken by technology and machinery, reflecting on the increasing automation of life and its psychological and physical impacts. The film’s stark, often unsettling imagery explores how systems of power—both technological and economic—shape our lives, emphasising the tension between human autonomy and mechanised control.
The title Machination reflects the central concept of the work, where complex, often invisible systems of control manipulate individuals. Through surreal, dystopian visuals, Barrett critiques the dehumanising forces of industrialisation and capitalism, and the way these forces infiltrate the most intimate aspects of life. The film’s narrative and aesthetic choices encourage viewers to reflect on how technology, while seemingly neutral, often becomes a tool of oppression and exploitation, consuming both the environment and the individual in the process.
In addition to its exploration of mechanisation, Machination also touches on issues of surveillance, monitoring, and the increasing lack of privacy in the digital age. By using visual metaphors of machinery and artificial environments, Barrett raises critical questions about the erosion of individual freedom in a hyper-normal, corporate-dominated world. The film functions as both a critique of modern technological advancements and a call for greater awareness of how these systems impact our lives and bodies. Through this work, Barrett continues to engage with speculative and critical art, drawing on philosophical and theoretical underpinnings to challenge the viewer’s understanding of contemporary life and its future trajectory.
As part of the exhibition, Barrett developed a site-specific live performance entitled Automation, where he explores the concept of chaosmosis, as theorised by Félix Guattari. Chaosmosis describes a complex interplay between internal order and external chaos, challenging the performer to find a sense of balance within an accelerating, disruptive environment. In the performance, he sits motionless atop a washing machine set to increase in speed. As the machine accelerates, it begins to release black, foamy liquid, symbolising a visceral response to the pressures of systematic deceit and capitalist overproduction.
The act of sitting still on a violently vibrating machine encapsulates the tension between forced composure and external instability, mirroring the challenges of maintaining a sense of inner calm amid precarious social and economic conditions. The black foam evokes a reaction against these unsustainable systems, suggesting that they produce toxic, unmanageable byproducts—both literally and metaphorically. The work portrays an industrially-induced chaos that cannot be fully controlled or reconciled, highlighting the struggle to maintain equilibrium within the dehumanising pace of modern life.
In Automation, Barrett captures the process of seeking an internal rhythm as an act of resistance, making the chaotic machinery not only an object but an active, confrontational participant. The work suggests that as the machine spins faster, it pushes against the limits of human endurance, drawing attention to the ways in which mechanisation and capitalist demands threaten to engulf personal agency, forcing a re-evaluation of the boundaries between autonomy and automation.
Panopticism was a second site-specific live performance as part of the exhibition, which delved deeply into the themes of surveillance and autonomy. Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault’s concept of the panopticon, the work plays with the dynamics of observation in an unsettling way.
In the performance, Barrett is positioned high atop industrial equipment, encapsulated within a transparent glass box. This choice of setting immediately establishes a sense of separation between the performer and the audience, evoking a controlled environment that mirrors the surveillant gaze of the panopticon. The glass box serves as both a physical and metaphorical barrier, suggesting both visibility and confinement. The height of the industrial equipment emphasises the sense of isolation and detachment, positioning Barrett as both an observer and observed entity.
The exchange of gazes between the performer and the audience is central to the piece. This interaction creates a tension, as both the performer and the viewers are aware of each other’s presence, yet there is a shifting dynamic in terms of control. Who is watching whom? This question becomes more pronounced as the piece unfolds, as the audience’s gaze is constantly challenged and refracted. The glass box creates a feeling of surveillance, where Barrett’s every movement is seen, yet the audience is left unsure of their own role as passive viewers or active participants in this observation.
The incorporation of slow, animalistic movements in the performance starkly contrasts with the clinical, industrial environment in which the performance takes place, creating a critique of capitalist systems. The industrial setting, with its clean lines, mechanised elements, and the glass box encasing the performer, evokes the sterility and precision of capitalism—systems that often emphasise efficiency, control, and dehumanisation. This environment suggests a system where individuals are reduced to parts of a larger, impersonal machine, under constant surveillance and regulation, much like workers in a capitalist economy.
Barrett’s animalistic movements disrupt this sterile atmosphere. Rather than embodying the rational, controlled behaviour expected in such a setting, his primal gestures introduce unpredictability, and a sense of raw, unrefined energy. This stands in direct opposition to the mechanical, orderly nature of industrial capitalism, which seeks to standardise and suppress individual expression. By embodying an almost threatening or sentient force, Barrett’s performance challenges the rigid, depersonalising structures of the capitalist system. His animalistic movements imply a return to instinctual behaviour, suggesting that beneath the surface of controlled, capitalist environments, there is an inherent desire for autonomy, resistance, and vitality that cannot be fully suppressed.
This contradiction between the raw, instinctive movements and the clinical setting underscores the tension between human agency and capitalist structures. It suggests that, even within the most controlled and monitored environments, there exists an underlying potential for rebellion or transformation—an animalistic force that resists being fully commodified or contained.
Tracing A Futureless Present as part of After Light: These Dark Citizens, R&H Hall, 2022
Tracing a Futureless Present was part of the exhibition After Light: These Dark Citizens, which was commissioned for the Cork Midsummer Festival 2022. The installation, which featured a combination of visual art, soundscapes, and lighting, explored the urban environment of Cork by night. In collaboration with Peter Power, the work invited participants to engage with the city through an interactive, self-guided audio tour. The experience encouraged audiences to experience the city’s nocturnal life—its forgotten spaces, hidden histories, and the voices of its night citizens.
Barrett’s contribution focused on capturing the atmosphere and mood of the city after dark, in dialogue with the city’s evolving identity and the interplay between the human experience and the landscape. His immersive approach utilised visual elements to create an evocative space where participants could reflect on the past, present, and future of the city, guided by a reflective narrative woven into the surrounding environment.
Staging the work in the now demolished brutalist R&H Hall building was crucial to the work’s exploration of decay, temporality, and industrial decline. The building’s stark, concrete structure—once a symbol of industrial strength and now an abandoned relic—mirrored the themes of a futureless present, highlighting the impermanence of both human and industrial achievements.
The performance in this setting connected past industrial aspirations to present urban decline. Moving through the deteriorating space, Barrett embodied the weight of an industrial legacy that never fully materialised, prompting reflection on how society builds, abandons, and ultimately erases once-prominent structures, along with the lives shaped by them.
Through a combination of LED screen visuals, sound, and performative elements, Barrett creates a fragmented, dystopian environment that mirrors the fractured nature of the present moment. The installation is designed to evoke a sense of temporal disorientation, placing the viewer in a world that seems simultaneously stuck in the past and disconnected from any clear future. It reflects the idea of a futureless present, where hope and progress seem increasingly elusive, and power structures feel like they are crumbling under the weight of their own contradictions.
Strange Simultaneity as part of Oileán on view at the Battery Observatory Point, Spike Island, 2021
Strange Simultaneity is a multimedia installation that is linked to Mark Fisher’s concept of Hauntology, which is deeply concerned with the interplay between past and present, the spectral presence of lost futures, and the eerie sense of stagnation in contemporary life. Hauntology is a term Fisher adopted from Jacques Derrida, referring to the ways in which the past continues to haunt the present, especially in the form of missed opportunities, deferred futures, and the feeling that something has been lost that we cannot fully access or understand.
In Barrett’s Strange Simultaneity, the installation’s disorienting mixture of sound, laser floor gridding, visual projections, and the historic context of Spike Island evokes a sense of temporal collapse. The work creates an atmosphere where the viewer is confronted with both the weight of the past and the overwhelming presence of an uncertain future. The work reflects on the ghosts of unrealised futures, the lost possibilities of social progression, and the sense that the present is saturated with the remnants of these unrealised paths.
This sensation of being stuck in a kind of nowhere time—a space between what could have been and what is—aligns with Fisher’s notion that modern life, especially post-1990s, is characterised by a cultural stagnation, where we are no longer progressing but are instead haunted by past ideals, technologies, and dreams of the future that are no longer possible. Strange Simultaneity amplifies this feeling, reflecting the pervasive uncertainty and fragmented nature of contemporary life, where technological crises and ecological collapse haunt our collective consciousness without offering any clear path forward.
The Engineering of Consent II on view at The Marina Warehouse, 2021
The Engineering of Consent II is an immersive multimedia installation that builds upon Noam Chomsky’s seminal work, Manufacturing Consent. The exhibition engages critically with Chomsky’s ideas about how power structures, particularly in media and politics, shape public opinion and manipulate societal behaviours through manufactured narratives. Barrett’s exhibition explores these dynamics within the context of contemporary capitalism, offering a visual and sensory experience that critiques the mechanisms of consent, both individually and collectively, in modern society.
The installation seeks to render visible the often unseen mechanisms of surveillance by imbuing industrial apparatus with layers of symbolic and experiential meaning in order to examine the role of technological systems in influencing our perceptions of reality. By utilising industrial claw grabs and entangled wires, it tackles the way in which these systems dictate personal and collective choices, often obscuring alternative or dissenting viewpoints. Through a series of performances, video works, and installations, Barrett unpacks how consent is engineered in the contemporary world, where consumerism, surveillance, and state power intersect to shape social norms and individual behaviours.
By developing this theme further, Barrett adds a layer of critique of how technology and capitalistic infrastructures manipulate both the environment and the human body. The work not only revisits Chomsky’s analysis but also updates it for a modern audience, reflecting on how today’s technologies have further intensified the manufacturing of consent in the digital age.
The Engineering of Consent on view at No. 46 Grand Parade Gallery, 2020
The Engineering of Consent is a multimedia exploration of power, influence, and the mechanisms that shape public perception. The work engages with Noam Chomsky’s seminal text, Manufacturing Consent, which critiques how media and corporate structures manipulate public opinion and support the interests of powerful elites. Barrett’s installation translates these ideas into a visual and interactive experience, probing how consent is engineered within contemporary society through technology and media.
Barrett employed projections on circuit boards, transforming them into screens through which complex narratives of surveillance, capitalism, and control were relayed. This method not only ties into the theme of technological manipulation but also symbolically critiques the pervasive influence of digital and media technologies in shaping our perceptions. Through the use of film, installation and sound, Barrett invites the audience to reflect on their complicity in systems of consent, making visible the hidden structures that shape modern life.
The show reflects Barrett’s ongoing engagement with themes of autonomy, technological influence, and the intersections of body and system within a capitalist framework.
Confluence on view at The Lavit gallery, 2020
Confluence explores themes of transience, human experience, and the relationship between the body and nature. In this two-person show, Barrett presented work that critically engaged with the complexities of Irish society, specifically examining the role of the male figure within traditional patriarchal frameworks.
Through performance and video installation, Barrett’s pieces depict the male body as simultaneously fragile and elevated, encapsulating the vulnerability of an archetypal figure placed on a metaphorical pedestal. His work also engages with spiritual traditions, drawing on influences from Eastern philosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism. These influences allowed Barrett to explore the human quest for transformation and the cyclical nature of birth and death, as well as the role of the shaman as a mediator in the journey between life and death.
In this exhibition, Barrett used immersive elements and video art to present the body in states of both progression and regression, reflecting on how human beings exist within the natural world. His approach evokes a sense of ritualistic exploration, framing the male figure within an Irish landscape that speaks to fragility, spiritual quest, and ecological balance.
Caul on view at Dismantle, 2019
Caul is a deeply auto-fictional work that intricately weaves together his personal history, themes of survival, and transformative ritual, while also addressing larger socio-political forces, particularly the pressures of technological advancements and patriarchal traditions.
The performance draws from Barrett’s own birth experience, where the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, causing a near-death experience. This life-or-death moment echoes the rites of passage in shamanic traditions, where such experiences are often seen as part of a spiritual or transformative journey. The auto-fictional nature of the work allows Barrett to narrate his own personal trauma within the framework of larger existential and societal forces, connecting his physical survival to broader spiritual rituals that focus on transformation and rebirth. This aspect of the work speaks to the human need to reimagine or reset one’s connection to the world in the face of extreme circumstances—whether those are natural or societal.
Similarly, Fall of Man expands upon these themes by using a ritualistic and performative act to engage with the body’s vulnerabilities. Standing beneath a waterfall, Barrett subjected himself to extreme cold and pressure, forcing a blanking of the mind. This act can be interpreted as a metaphorical shedding of self, a return to a primal, unmediated state, which stands in contrast to the growing influence of technology and mechanised systems that increasingly mediate human experience. This blanking of the mind can be seen as a refusal of the constant noise of modern society, the technological imperative, and the patriarchal structures that demand conformity. It is an attempt to return to something raw and unencumbered by external forces.
The exhibition ultimately employs ritualistic acts of transformation to combat the alienating forces of technological advancement and patriarchal tradition. These rituals act as methods of self-preservation, allowing the artist to regain agency in a world increasingly defined by external control. Through these personal, embodied performances, Barrett creates space for resistance and reimagines the possibilities for the human body in the face of ever-encroaching systems of power.