URIEL ORLOW is interested in what happens in the shadow of great narratives of history. Some ideas he presented that interest me are:
Heterotopia – spaces in our society that are outside of society such as hospitals, prisons etc. Uriel is interested in art as heterotopia – various things brought together to create new space. He also talks about history in a non linear fashion, can we talk about history in space not time. This links in with Bourriard’s Altermodern theory of artists using history in clusters. He talks about the Aesthetic revolution blurring fact and fiction which destabilises mechanisms of truth, but engaes with politics of truth. He says documentary must be fictionalised, playing of sources, to suggest new possibilities. He is also interested in how an image can only be a snapshot , never the whole picture. He says re fact and fiction that fiction might be a more powerful way to portray facts.
His satement is:
“Orlow’s work tackles the impossibility of narrating or representing the past and addresses the spatial conditions of history and memory. Spanning locations in Africa, the Arctic, Eastern Europe and Switzerland, his work can often be seen to employ a method of both horizontal-lateral and vertical-archival investigation in order to explore blind spots in the production and dissemination of knowledge. Orlow’s modular installations comprising video, photography, drawing, sound and text, can be seen as a re-mix of the ‘real’ which permeates perception and performs a subtle operation that activates the potential of ruptures and ruins as ethical concerns of the present.”
I went to see a show he is in at Gasworks Hydrachy: Power & Resistance at Sea.
Here he showed The short and the long of it “which takes as a starting point the failed passage of fourteen international cargo ships through the Suez Canal on 5 June 1967. Caught in the outbreak of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the ships were only able to leave the canal in 1975 when it re-opened. While stranded, the cold-war political allegiances of the multi-national crews were dissolved and gave way to a form of communal survival and the establishment of a social system. This involved the organisation of their own olympic games in 1968, amongst other activities. Playing with different modes of documentary and narrative, the work focuses on this event hidden in the shadow of official histories. With sound by Mikhail Karikis.”
another piece I really enjoyed at the show was The Undesirables (2007). “Melanie Jackson revisits the incident of the container ship MSC Napoli, which was stricken off the South English coast in 2007. As containers washed up on Branscombe beach, the media announced that according to maritime legislation their content would become common property. While people rushed to help themselves to items as varied as BMW motorbikes, shampoo bottles and trainers, the authorities and right wing media became increasingly hostile to this scavenging. Made of paper cut outs and dramatised by lights and shadows, The Undesirables recreates the event, evoking the social context in this tale of present-day bounty.”
“in civilisations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates”
http://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/detail.php?…
