So the 1970s in Ireland, this is when The Troubles
really break out following Bloody Sunday in 1972.
A group of civil rights protesters, Catholics, Republicans,
they were fighting for complete succession
of North Ireland from the UK,
were protesting and essentially
it got out of hand and a group of British soldiers
opened fire on then and killed them.
In the 1970s we used a look inspired by women
who were fighting in the Irish Republican A rmy,
whether or not we were glorifying violence
or terrorism by including the IRA look
was a question that I asked myself,
and I think we asked of each other
as we were completing this project.
I wanted to use the look because it simply reflected
the violence of the time period.
I think we would've done a disservice
to the project by leaving that look out
because that would've white washed
a large part of North Ireland's history.
For the Republic of Ireland in the 1970s,
we used a look by Colman Doyle.
Colman Doyle was a photographer
traveling through Ireland and he took
what he considered to be cultural anthropological photos,
largely of women in Ireland and what they looked like
on a day to day basis.
So this look is long, straight, dark hair,
pretty severe makeup, pretty sexy.
So in the 1980s in both the Republic of Ireland
and North Ireland, the troubles which began in the 1970s
began to quiet, not completely go away.
There's an arms deal with Libya that goes wrong
and that actually puts a large damper
for a number of years on the IRA's actions around Belfast,
then in turn, provides an opening for diplomacy.
For North Ireland, we found a photograph
taken for a newspaper about the Belfast club scene.
These are women who are entering a club at night.
They've done themselves up,
they've dyed their hair blonde,
they've blown out their hair pretty much
to the limits of human possibility.
They look like London punk rockers.
In the Republic of Ireland, we chose a look
inspired by Linda Martin who at the time
was a Eurovision star,
which was Europe's singing competition.
It's also interesting to look at
the similarities between her look
and the look of Belfast.
So in the 1990s, both in the Republic of Ireland
and North Ireland, we get a decade of prosperity,
and this is reflected in both the looks.
We chose two separate music groups.
For Northern Ireland, we chose a look
inspired by Candida Doyle who was the keyboardist
in the band Pulp.
So you have a woman in a male dominated rock band
representing both her country's scars
and her country's future.
The 1990s in the Republic of Ireland,
the looks we found were largely inspired by pop groups,
specifically girl groups at the time.
So B*Witched was a girl pop group
based out of Dublin and their look was very poppy.
This was Britney Spears, this was Spice Girls,
so you're getting dyed blonde hair, complicated up-dos,
and definitely complicated makeup as well.
So in the 2000s in the Republic of Ireland,
Catholicism takes a hit because of the controversy
with the Catholic Church starting in the mid 2000s.
Some of the old lines between the two countries
become blurred or seem to be less important
and more arbitrary than they were before.
And this leads to the homogenization
of art and pop culture that you see
in a lot of the western world at this point.
Again, this is the beginning of N'Sync
and Backstreet Boys.
Both North Ireland and Republic of Ireland are no different.
We used a look inspired by Nadine Coyle
who was a member of the girl group Girls Aloud,
which was comprised of different girls
from all over the UK.
She is largely credited with being the representative
of North Ireland which critics would say
was sort of a ploy by the pop culture industry
of Great Britain at the time to continue to fold
Belfast and North Ireland into their culture
and into that homogenization.
Six was another famous pop group,
this time in Republic of Ireland.
And again, it continues to represent
how at this point art and artistry
and identity making became homogenized
with the proliferation of the internet.
Globalization at the time really folded in
both North Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
and so the look we chose was a look inspired by
what pop culture really was to the western world.
In the 2010s in the Republic of Ireland,
you get a referendum on gay marriage,
which allows same sex couples to wed each other
in the Republic of Ireland.
This obviously changes, drastically,
its self-determination as a largely religious
practicing Catholic country.
This redefines the role they play
on the global stage for progressive politics.
Well I think examining the history of Ireland is important
because its violent history is recent history.
This is a western ally.
The violence and the trouble that it experienced
is not beyond the realm of possibility
for other western democracies.
It can fail that easily and it's just that fragile.