A series of immersive artworks recently took over Belfast, activating pockets within the Northern Ireland capital for three days. The city-wide exhibition, Red Sky at Night, featured five temporary, site-specific installations by Polish, Thai, Palestinian, Greek, and Irish artists. It was curated by Household, a women-led collective. Participating artists included Zuza Goliska, Kanich Khajohnsri, Kasper Lecnim, Irmina Rusicka, Dina Mimi, Aisling OBeirn, and Leandros Ntolas. The exhibitions name was derived from the ancient mariners maxim: Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.The five locations in Belfast where the artworks unfolded were a park, a church, an old bank, an iron warehouse, a palatial Victorian chamber, and a botanic garden from 1840.Lament was a collaboration between Goliska, musician Jack Wilson, and singers from the St. Annes Cathedral Choir. (Chad Alexander/Courtesy Household)At Bank of Irelands abandoned locale on the corner of North Street and Royal Avenue, Lament by Warsaw-based Zuza Goliska offered a meditation on modern architecture, protest movements, music, and gentrification. The mixed-media ensemble took place within a handsome 5-story, art deco tower by Joseph Vincent Downes, completed in 1930.Banks Take Our Houses, So We Take Their BuildingsNot long ago, Household invited artists like Goliska to Belfast to meet the city. Artists had the chance to meander around town, and choose the sites they wanted to work with, culminating in the city-wide exhibition last November.Goliska took an interest in this particular Bank of Ireland building because, in 2012, protesters occupied it during Occupy Belfast, an Occupy Wall Street offshoot, to raise awareness about rising inequity. Banks take our houses, so we take their buildings, one of the protesters told a local reporter during the movement. Occupy Belfast held court at the Bank of Ireland building for ten months, until its electricity was cut, and the police raided it that October. The art deco building has been empty ever since. In the next few years, however, a major development will transform the blocks surrounding the Downes building, which will be repurposed as a tourism center, threatening its historical memory.Lament featured a live musical performance inside the Bank of Ireland. (Chad Alexander/Courtesy Household)Lament was a collaboration between Goliska, musician Jack Wilson, and singers from the St. Annes Cathedral Choir. It was conceptualized as a love song for the former Bank of Ireland building before it enters its last gentrified state and becomes a tourist centre, the curators said. For Lament, Wilson and St. Annes Cathedral Choir played a rearranged version of a 1993 song by the Cranberries, Linger, transforming the epic love anthem into a lamentation. I fell in love with the building on the corner of North Street and Royal Avenue during my first trip to Belfast, Goliska said. Together with a group of artists, we got invited by the Household team for our first research trip, and we were housed around the corner at Donegall Street. It looked exceptional with the tower topped with a clock facing directly towards the crossing of the streets, its placement and height giving it a slightly dominating position over the surrounding buildings, Goliska continued. The former Bank of Ireland building is undeniably also lingering. In its current state, it is in between functions: after its public utility phase and occupied period but before its tourist-driven future.Today, the building is empty, but it will be repurposed into a tourism center. (Chad Alexander/Courtesy Household)Kanich Khajohnsris POSSESSION was sited at the Palm HouseBotanic Garden, an 1840 building designed by Charles Lanyon, a prominent British architect. Khajohnsri, a Thai artist, made sound, photography, and sculpture pieces scattered throughout Lanyons crystal palace. POSSESSION is about finding commonalities between Thai and Northern Ireland cultures, namely how both societies approach burial, death, and spirituality, and how these practices connect peoples to their land, Khajohnsri said.Exterior view of Palm HouseBotanic Garden, a building from 1840 designed by Charles Lanyon. (Simon Mills/Courtesy Household)The choice to stage POSSESSION inside the Lanyon building was fitting. The steel and glass structure was built in Victorian Belfast to demonstrate the British Empires industrial might. The piece by Khajohnsri challenges the imperialist architecture where it sits, and asks visitors to consider new, anti-colonial means of land stewardship. This makes the artwork especially ripe, given the years of anti-colonial organizing against the British Empire set in Belfast for Irish unification.Khajohnsris contribution was similar to one by Irish artist Aisling OBeirn in Waterworks Park. Suggestions for Stargazing was based on a long-term research project by OBeirn that engages astronomers, writers, environmentalists, council workers and residents of Belfast to draw attention to light pollution and [advocate] for darker skies.POSSESSIONS had photography, sound installations, and sculptures. (Simon Mills/Courtesy Household)The contribution by Dina Mimi, a Palestinian artist based in Jerusalem and Amsterdam, was a harrowing narrative that centered men and women who had been incarcerated. The Sound We Longed For was an expos into how the human body responds to incarceration. It took place inside the atmospheric Riddels Warehouse in Belfast. Much like Goliskas piece, which washed an atrium in green light, the work by Mimi used red light to heighten the industrial architecture of Riddels Warehouse. For that artwork, Mimi said she was particularly intrigued by the sensory experiences of imprisonment, posing questions such as: What sounds did you long for? What did you hear and smell? Through these inquiries, she seeks to capture these fading memories through the senses.Mimis contribution centered men and women had been previously incarcerated. (Simon Mills/Courtesy Household)Common Point Exercises by Polish artists Irmina Rusicka and Kasper Lecnim was a rumination on play, set inside 2 Royal Avenue, a palatial building from Victorian Belfast. There, the artist duo concocted an indoor public park for children.The immersive intervention by Rusicka and Lecnim also featured bespoke sculptures meant for children to interact with. Rolls of drawings made by elementary school students were scattered throughout 2RA.Common Point Exercises created an indoor public park for children. (Simon Mills/Courtesy Household)Inside Carlisle Memorial Church, Leandros Ntolas, a Greek artist, delivered Benign Land. That artwork was an exploration of the artists long standing research into perception, architecture and light. Ntolas collaborated with John DArcy, a Belfast-based sound artist and lecturer, to create an audio installation to accompany the production.Benign Land, a sound installation by Leandros Ntolas (Simon Mills/Courtesy Household)Red Sky at Night took place in Belfast between November 13.