RE-VISIT, RE-VIEW. PART TWO
Like Spread, the second piece of work re-visited and re-viewed for the East Sussex Open also had its origins at the Redoubt Fortress where I’d worked on a project during 2009. The piece, Just Looking For A Place (Refuge), is a short video, shown only once before, at the Redoubt, as part of a bigger body of work called Home is Where… It is one of a series of works which explore undefined spaces which all show signs of occupation by unknown inhabitants.
I was asked to say a few words about the work on opening night at Towner, and talked a little about its origin at the Redoubt and about my interest in our uneasy relationship with the natural world. But afterwards I felt dissatisfied with what I’d said. I felt I’d let the work down by not explaining its context properly, making it appear rather shallow and insignificant. I realize now how important it is that this piece should retain its links with other work from that project in order to form part of a bigger picture. So, how to do this?
Since Napoleonic times, the Redoubt Fortress has been home to scores of soldiers. Since the second world war however, it has had a varied history, housing a model village, an aquarium, and currently a military museum. Although open to the public, it is a constant battle to keep it in reasonable order, a battle not helped by a modern day invasion and occupation by a colony of urban pigeons.
I spent a lot of time in the museum, exploring artifacts which included letters and personal memorabilia from POWs and soldiers at the front. I became very conscious of the importance of “home” as something yearned for, treasured, missed – a place worth fighting for. At the same time, I was constantly reminded of the horror of destruction and violation of the home which I recalled as a feature of the Bosnian war, and the distress and misery of people displaced by war all over the world. This became the central theme for all of the work I made at the Redoubt.
In one of the display cases in the museum there was a miniature scroll of paper and a tiny cylinder into which the paper fitted, to be attached to the leg of a carrier pigeon. I was interested in the part played in war time by the very birds who are now considered “the enemy” at the Redoubt. A little research about carrier pigeons led me to the PDSA’s Dickin Medal, “awarded to animals displaying conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty” and awarded to 32 World War 2 pigeons who between them saved hundreds of lives. How ironic that these “brave” pigeons (possibly ancestors of the unwelcome squatters at the Redoubt), while carrying out their “duty”, were in fact simply following their natural instincts to fly home at any cost. The presence of the pigeons at the Redoubt quickly became the thread that joined my thoughts together and gave the work a form. The piece at Towner this month, Just Looking For A Place (Refuge), explores the spaces occupied by the mostly unseen, but clearly heard pigeon families, indignant and fearful at my intrusion into “their” spaces.
So, how to resolve the problem of showing this work in a different setting without loss of relevance? How to refer to the context of the work so that it doesn’t appear as just a single, unremarkable video? Perhaps the next re-viewing of the work should see two (or three) pieces of work become one? There were three important pieces which formed the core work at the Redoubt, Homing, a set of 32 certificates for the Dickin Medal pigeons, There’s No Place Like…, a digital animation, and Just Looking For A Place (Refuge). Perhaps the key is to show them only together, as one piece.
Watch the videos below: Just Looking For A Place (Refuge) and There’s No Place Like…
Digital animation, There’s No PLace Like… 2:09
