TRANSCENDENTAL SERIES
IN A STATE TO FIND OUT
A Day of Creative Self-Inquiry with AIRE
In a State to Find Out is a day-long retreat part of the Transcendental Series presented by The Deserted School.
Artists will join Óscar Mascareñas and Tony Monahan
in creative self-inquiry, where questions will be suspended and narratives dissolved.
To be in a state to find out is to come upon as one goes along a pathless way of inter-relationship; to expect nothing; to look deeply into our state of being, and from there act.
Through an environment of quiet reflection facilitated by AIRE’s expansive silent soundscapes, artists will establish themselves
in the present as they observe and create.
Rather than seeing creation as a process towards an outcome, this retreat will open up opportunities for artists to transcend the limits of their discipline, attend to the inner and outer spaces of self, and practice creation as a way of being.
Date: Saturday the 14th of November 2026
Location: The Attic, Hotel Doolin, Doolin, Co. Clare
Time: 11 am to 5.30 pm
Cost: €95 (Lunch included)
A POEM-HUT of self-inquiry harbouring those moved to know by themselves and for themselves.
A HOUSE OF CONTEMPLATION where discourse becomes observation and philosophy turns into action. Where the exchanges are no longer of ideas, but of in-sights.
A LOCUS of rest, learning and contemplation where texts are no longer texts, but reflections of truth. Where the frames no longer belong to a discipline, and all disciplines are restored to actions.
A POETIC CELL where all forms of authority dissolve; intellectuality surrenders to sensation and the argument to observation.
A RADICAL SITE for experimentation with a view to transcending current understanding and knowledge. Where theory is dis-placed by stillness and narrative is superseded by truth.
A PROCESS-LED DEN where the lens is not reason, but attention.
AN ENVIRONMENT of practice for exploring the ‘gaps in-between’ and the ‘spaces beyond’ current, organised fields, in the pursuit of a new and free order of knowledge, as well as a poetics of presence.
A SPACE where the existing methods, practices, approaches, premises, technologies, forms, media and platforms that govern the current world of knowledge are exposed, suspended, deferred and ultimately dissolved through observation and reflexive action with the purpose of unfolding transcendental pathways of exploration, meta-integration and self-alteration.
A RHIZOME-LIKE HUB distinct and free from any established logocentric, argumentative and categorical approaches to, and hierarchies of, knowledge and life.
A CRUX POIESIS that focuses on practice, and seeks freedom from thought, conditioning, time and intellectual division towards the bringing forth of the unknown.
A LATITUDE for beings to create and share experiences that lie on the far side of human understanding and actuality.
AN INDEPENDENT AND EMANCIPATING SETTING led by a group of free, transcendental, all-embracing and undogmatic humans.
The school's name is inspired by the poem Aonar dhamhsa eidir dhaoinibh (The Empty School) believed to be from the early 17th century, around the time when the last bardic schools of Ireland are said to have been closed. See 'The Irish Review' (Dublin), Vol. 2, No. 23 (Jan., 1913), pp. 594-596. The poem's translation is by Osborn Bergin.
