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September Girls’ Powerful New 360-Degree Video Confronts Ireland’s Archaic Abortion Laws

The Dublin band use a GoPro to help place the Catholic Church on blast.

Think of GoPros and it’s normally of cameras strapped to the helmets of people jumping out of planes or tearing down mountains. But Dublin-based five-piece September Girls have used the mobile cameras to shoot a special 360-degree video for their latest song “Catholic Guilt”.

Using a special 12-camera GoPro rig, director and guitarist Jessie Ward O'Sullivan shot the video in a single take.

The dark, raw and bleak son taken from the band’s second album, Age of Indignation, deals with the anger many Irish women feel towards the Catholic Church. The Church in Ireland still exerts a patriarchal force over women which is evident from country's draconian abortion laws.

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The video symbolises this force as over the course of the song, the band lose their autonomy as they are subjected to spotlights, attacked with written messages, and tied up and unable to play their instruments.

Watch the video below and read a short interview with Jessie Ward O'Sullivan.

Noisey: Whose idea was the 360-degree video?
Jessie Ward O’Sullivan: It was mine. I make videos for my day-job and since the start of the year have been researching and developing a series of 360/VR videos for the tourism industry.

The song is raw and confrontational, so I liked the idea of the band surrounding the viewer and the viewer not entirely sure where they should look next. The 360 picture forces you to interact with the video, even watching it more than once to make sure you didn't miss something. If viewed on a Cardboard or VR headset, it can be quite disconcerting, as you have to constantly turn your head to see what is coming, which is exactly the feeling I was hoping to evoke.

What is being written on your bodies?
Messages that we feel powers that be are trying force onto our female bodies. Words like; vessel, subject, fear, control, guilt. Messages that are forced upon us on a daily basis, both subconsciously and not, to keep us toeing the line. As a woman you sometimes feel that your body is not your own, that it is something anyone can comment upon or judge, or a vessel or weapon that you're unable to control yourself. In 2016 it's pretty frustrating that we still need to fight for for bodily autonomy.

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Surely if the church is to change it needs to be done by young people. Do old conservative dudes still run the show? It’s often about power rather than religion.
The Catholic Church is incredibly engrained in Irish society and politics. There are moments that it feels like it is losing a bit of ground, but the current government is very Catholic-led, so not much seems to really change in the long run. Families are forced to baptise their children in order to get into local schools, scandals of child abuse or the terrible conditions of the old mother-and-baby homes are completely brushed under the rug. In the courts, sexual abusers are given incredibly lenient, if not suspended, sentences. As someone who doesn't personally subscribe to the Catholic faith, it is really frustrating.

There has been some recent progress such as Marriage Equality, but both the Church and politicians are digging their heels in when it comes to abortion. Women requiring abortions in Ireland have to travel abroad to get them, making abortion something available only to people who have the privilege of being able to travel. There is a big movement to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which equates the right to life of a pregnant woman with that of an embryo or foetus. In doing so it criminalises abortion in all cases except where to continue a pregnancy would result in death. This is a really dangerous and archaic law, and is considered an infringement of international human rights norms. Polls suggest that the majority of the Irish population are in support of changing the law. We're absolutely trying to use everything within our power to bring attention to this issue, and along with many other groups in Ireland, such as The Abortion Rights campaign and the X-ile Project, will hopefully lead to a referendum to Repeal the 8th.

What has the feedback to the song been like?
I think the song has certainly hit a nerve in Ireland as the current political climate is so tense. Our second album gained a lot more positive attention here than we expected, I think because we were talking about issues that have a lot of people frustrated. It's an angry song on an angry album, so while some reviewers accused us of "losing our sweetness" I think others found it refreshing to hear an honest voice amongst the pop fluff.

‘Age of Indignation’ is available now through Fortuna Pop!

September Girls play a fundraiser for the X-ile Project at the Bello Bar in Dublin on August 20.