The Aran Islands lie off the Bay of Galway, in the west of Ireland. They are made up of the islands of Iris Mor, Inis Meain and Inis Oirr. In 1934, Robert Flaherty made a film about the life of shark fishermen in the village of Kilronan, on Inis Mor. The documentary filmmaker and father of ethnofiction based his work on the island’s local population. But he had to distort reality; in fact, the island’s inhabitants had not engaged in fishing for a very long time. Back in the United States, the academic community of ethnologists criticised this blending of genres, where ethnology and fiction intertwine. Yet, on the island, people have kept the memory of this now legendary film alive. So much so, that many venues and places refer to it, such as the youth hostel bearing the name of the documentary: The Man of Aran.

Miotas follows in the footsteps of this myth. It aims to continue the story of this documentary and its twists and turns through the history of the island by inviting its inhabitants to revive the tradition of shark fishing. Often accompanied by festive and collective moments, islanders would gather around pots on the beach, sharing the fish. The aim is to get the islanders to make their own crockery in an oven dug into the beach. Each family brings clay collected from their plot of land, which is then used to shape the bowls and plates. The interior of the plate is shaped with wool yarn, using each family’s representative stitch. The next step is to prepare the kiln for firing the ceramics by digging into the sand. Seaweed, shale and sand, all materials found on the island, are themselves part of the process creating the glaze.

Ethnofiction Design was the methodology by which the project was conceived. ED is a practice emerging from design research, which uses ethnographic research to create a fictitious topography which then defines uses. Robert Flaherty’s film The Man of Aran is the fictional terrain used by Anne Xiradakis and Armand Behar for Miotas.

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