Engberg - En Route

Evading the tyranny of the GPS, Engberg leads us off the beaten cyber-path on a delightful, thought-provokingand at times very movinganalogue mystery tour of everything from Viking pilgrims to ancient orreries to the Vietnam War and the incipient perils of AI. Along the way, like some genius bowerbird, she lovingly curates a treasure-trove of eccentric historical, personal and sociological gems to reveal deep, enduring truths about the unholy union of the human soul and machines as well as the rich fruits to be had from losing ones way. Engberg is a humane, generous guide. Most importantly, she reveals the real meaning of hygge.

Magda Szubanski

Juliana Engberg is an award-winning and internationally recognised curator, cultural producer and writer. Most recently she was the program director for European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017 in Denmark. She has a reputation for creating groundbreaking, compelling and engaging multi-form festivals, visual arts projects, commissions, events and public engagement programs. Engberg is a professorial fellow at Monash University in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, and an adjunct professor at RMIT in the Faculty of Architecture and Design.

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Paul Daley On Patriotism

Tony Wheeler On Travel

Germaine Greer On Rape

Germaine Greer On Rage

Fleur Anderson On Sleep

Don Watson On Indignation

Katharine Murphy On Disruption

Sarah Ferguson On Mother

Nikki Gemmell On Quiet

Blanche dAlpuget On Lust & Longing

Leigh Sales On Doubt

Barrie Kosky On Ecstasy

David Malouf On Experience

Malcolm Knox On Obsession

Gay Bilson On Digestion

Anne Summers On Luck

Robert Dessaix On Humbug

Julian Burnside On Privilege

Elisabeth Wynhausen On Resilience

Susan Johnson On Beauty

Juliana
Engberg

En
Route

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2018

Text and map Juliana Engberg, 2018

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2018

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Text design by Alice Graphics

Cover design by Nada Backovic

Author photograph by Kay Campbell

Typeset by Typeskill

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

9780522874495 (paperback)

9780522874501 (ebook)

For Kay, the real-life navigator

G PS navigation systems are mostly useful. But not nearly as engaging and anthropologically interesting as the way we used to navigate. For instance, a while ago, when we were visiting a friend at the outer tip of the south-west corner of Ireland, a place so small it has no name except the appellation near, our helpful driving directions were heaven-sent, to say the least.

Our route was not navigated by the use of stars, but described in statues and grottos. Turn left, wrote our friend, at the blue Virgin Mary, then go a few miles until you come to a white Virgin Mary, then turn right, go along a while more and then when you come to the Virgin Mary in the grotto turn left In the end, and some fifteen Virgin Marys later, we entered a dirt track that led to our final manger. Hallelujah! as Leonard would say.

If we had used the GPS it no doubt would have sent us along a magenta-highlighted route and occasionally picked out a McDonalds or the nearest petrol station, but it would not have given rise to the amazing revelation of the immaculate Mary route; which, of course, says a great deal about Ireland, and our host, as well as allowing us to imagine the probable assistance the divine provided to toddling tipplers who, perchance, stared in amazement at the glowing mother as they swayed in an Irish night breeze over many millennia.

Well, I say millennia, but that is perhaps a poetic concoction. The Marys situated on corners, in grottos, and on pedestals, popping up here, there and everywhere, dotting the Irish highways and byways, are more generally modern Marys than religious relics of times past. Most of these Marys materialised as a result of Ireland embracing, with a fervour unmatched by most nations, the Vaticans year of the Marian. Marys galore were sculpted, ordered, painted and deposited by roadsides, on corners, in parks and randomly about to help keep the goodly folk of Ireland focused upon the divine and practise their faith.

Of course, there was also an unfocused moment when in the 1980s reports of visions, movement and talking from the Mary statues grabbed the ardent in a grip of hysteria that attracted worldwide attention. Perhaps a little too much. Visions schmizzons, said the Vatican, well be having none of that Irish jiggin and such. Cease and desist immediately with the miracle malarkey; people will be tinkin were raving lunatics. Or edicts to that effect.

So perturbing was this situation that scientists were enlisted to find a reason for this misapparition; to wit, they suggested dramatic backlighting and optical blurring from staring too long at the divine representation had caused an optic oscillation in some folks eyes, which created the impression of movement. Whether a tipple or two was involved or not is but conjecture; however, my imagining is not too far off the plotonly fanciful in a calendar sense by a few millennia or so.

Although, it should be mentioned, such sightings in Ireland are not entirely modern. The apparition at Our Lady of Knock shrine in County Mayo, back in 1879, displayed not only a gleaming, incandescent vision of the Blessed Virgin, but a good gathering of appearances in the forms of St John, St Joseph, attending angels and the Lord Jesus Christ. At that time the sightings were considered genuine and trustworthy, and were embraced somewhat enthusiastically by the powers that be for their mystical pull upon the population postpotato famine.

Youre probably wondering if it was this phenomenon that gave rise to knock knock jokes, but that was more likely attributable to the porter in Shakespeares MacbethKnock, knock! Whos there, in the other devils nameanother apparitional turn altogether.

By the by, if you were female, Catholic, Irish (or even not) and born in the Marian year1954you probably had a pretty good chance of being named Mary or Marian, and if your parents were super devout, a combo Mary Marian or Marian Mary, even the holy trifecta, Mary Marion Margaret. The year 1954 was dedicated to all things Mariological and included pilgrimages (no doubt assisted by statues), cultural events and many sermons. A big