Eoghan Ryan’s two films depart from specific moments and movements in the history of Ireland: the mutations of contemporary right-wing nationalism (Carceral Jigs) and the post-Brexit moment of the early 2020s (A Sod State). His films often deploy found and borrowed footage, fast-paced editing, and elements of puppetry, horror or propaganda, as a critical gateway into the ways in which conflict is shaped by popular media and remote spectatorship.

A Sod State premiered in 2021 at the Open Studios of the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam during Ryan’s residency, and it has been shown various times ever since. The Kriterion screening is the Dutch premier of Carceral Jigs, Ryan’s latest film, which was commissioned in 2025 for the 41st EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art.

The screening event and the conversation afterwards with Eoghan Ryan is part of the exhibition project state of us, a collaboration between de Appel and EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Carceral Jigs (2025) by Eoghan Ryan is a video work that uses children’s television tropes, scenes of musical rehearsal, 3D puppetry and linguistic tongue twisters which are traced across documentary interviews, archival footage and recent protest recordings to expose mutations, contradictions and shifting rhythms within Irish nationalism today. Employing filmed material from operational holiday camps, the video excavates how the re-use of architectures of containment – for example, those outsourced by the Irish state to facilitate direct provision – often complicates and confuses nationalist identification. Carceral Jigs invites viewers to consider how control is choreographed and performed – through culture, policy, media and the built environment – and how this spectacle of belonging is often maintained and malformed by denying it to others.

A Sod State (2021–2022) by Eoghan Ryan refers to ‘sod’ or turf: wet, fertile ground. It is also British slang for someone difficult or troublesome, and as in ‘sod all’, meaning absolutely nothing. ‘State’ refers both to the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time, and to a nation or territory considered as an organised political community. A Sod State posits the pre- and post-Brexit ‘Troubles’ in the north of Ireland as a form of repetitive political theatre, in which an inner demon performs binary contradictions of class, faith, identities and borders, as well as the private, public and political. Using these identifications to reflect on binaries, conflicts and confusions within the human condition, the work considers the effects of constant exposure to a narrative of violence constructed through images and stereotypes reinforced by religious belief, pop culture and state politics.

After the screening follows a conversation with Eoghan Ryan. Tickets will soon be available through Kriterion's website.