Making art politically

Last night I saw 'The Incommensurable Banner' for the first time. Come and see it yourself at Fabrica, the private view's tonight 6-9pm.

This morning I exploded my Grandma.

This week is gearing up to the opening of the Hirschhorn exhibition on Thursday at Fabrica, Brighton 6-9pm and also the whole launch of the Brighton Photo Biennial. It will be good to see The Incommensurable Banner at last. I feel I know it so well yet haven't actually seen it live yet.

Started teaching back at the university this week. It is very heartening to find such enthusiasm amongst my students about the White Night debate 'Make Love Not War' that will be happening on 25 October in the University of Brighton gallery 9-10pm. At least a few of them already are keen to get involved. I would like the whole event to be theirs really. For them to ask the question what does that phrase 'Make Love Not War' mean to them now? I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's book about 1968 to find out more about student activism in the 60s and 70s.

Altogether the times feel particularly volatile. People are starting to give voice to their resentment that they might have to pick up the tab for the mistakes arising from unregulated banking maneouvres.

In trying to engage with what was my rather mouldering political consciousness I often feel like a phoney. In this whole process I tend to monitor the feelings which arise as if they were a weather vane for more generalised situations. Being 'political' or appealing to a 'political consciousness' from the comfort of one's own circumstances can seem a bit like a cheap trick: an easy option compared to the myriad ambiguities of art. But I don't think it is a particularly 'easy' approach, riddled as it is with all the complexities of interest, desire and history.

I had a dental check up this morning at a dental practice I've not been to before. It is nearer to my new home. At the end of the check-up (one small cavity otherwise all well) I asked my new dentist how transferring dentists works and whether I would need to arrange to have my dental records from my previous dentist sent to this practice. He looked at me with such a look of bewilderment and annoyance on his face. I might as well have asked him to relate his earliest childhood memory to me. No, he explained, we can just work with what we've seen today.

I left pondering the consequences of working without reference to history.

On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work:

Sad
Depressed, angry
Want to cry
Anxious. Makes me worry about people. What do their families think. What does their best friend think. What happens to lead to this.
Anti-dote to governmental propaganda.
Language, complexities hiding reality.
What kind of artist feels able to present this subject matter. What does he want. [writer didn’t use any question marks]

Mutilated, cut up, bloodied, defaced, wounded, dead, shot up bodies
Tortured, horrific scenes of bombed out cars and half naked bodies.
Images are billboard like arranged in no particular order or place.
Militant style writing, untidy and dripping with paint.
Space is as dirty and scruffy as the images themselves.
Angry bloodshed scenes.
Nothing to laugh about it is a serious matter. Should this really been shown in an art gallery?? These are someones friends, loved ones, son, daughter, mother, father

Sickness. Anger. Rage.
Before I saw the images I thought I had prepared myself. I told myself, it is up to you how you view the banner: as people with lives and loved ones and grief or as merely a group of pictures depicting particles and atoms arranged differently. Not people. I thought I could try and look past death, at the aesthetics. The colour. The patterns. But I couldn’t. Each image holds so much – loss, despair, inconsolable, grief. Mourning. Horror. Shame, the shame of us as humans.
Death is not something I am privy to see often in my life, making it seem intriguing, like a secret. In reality it is not this, it is something else, terrifying and scarily real.

On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work:

Disbelief
Guilt
Disgust
Intrigue
Defiance
I feel that good Art by definition evokes strong emotions within us, and this piece certainly does that.
As these images used are all from real life, and are already in circulation within the media, it would seem hypocritical to censor these images in any way. Should act as a wake-up call.

Wrinkly
Dishevelled
Whacked together.
Tacked and strung to the wall in a hurried fashion, not wanting to be cool or distanced or overly considered. The banner is glued onto the cardboard roll and this encourages you to view it as a banner rather than a picture.
An urgent display in sympathy with the flayed bodies plastered over its surface.

Horror
Disgust
Fear
Inhumanity
How can humans do this?
Some of the images I don’t know, can’t tell what they are and that’s quite worrying … I don’t think I really want to know – but you can’t stop yourself from trying to figure it out.
Horrifying – to see bodies to disfigured
And left with no-one to clear up the mess.
Imagine finding your relative in the street like that. Maybe in such a state that you’re not even sure if it’s your loved one.
I see this as a the deeds of others… I feel quite detached because I don’t know what I can do about the situation.
How involved/detached should I be with any war?

Whilst looking at the first few images of the entire work, I felt a rather distanced interest in the actual physical presentation of it: The fact that is is a partially rolled out banner, that there seemed to be something scriptural about that kind of reading surface; that perhaps what we can see might just be a beginning – would the tone and content of the material change further in?

And then the close-ups – then, I got lost in the horror, the awkward positions, the strange grimaces, the absence of expression.

Blood
Violence
Nasty
Intriguing
Emergency
War
Suffering
Extreme
Difficult
Red
Mess
Struggle
Unfair
Stupidity
Politics
Disgusting
Too much to bear.

On Tuesday 23 September I ran a workshop at Fabrica for volunteers and staff. After looking at some documentation of the Hirschhorn work that will be showing during the Photobiennial I asked people to write down their responses to the work. Each response was then sealed in an envelope, thrown into the middle of the room and then each person picked an envelope. In small groups of four we read out and discussed these reactions to the work.

HORROR
How could one human make/cause a other to look like this. The peace/photos are extremely powerful when put together like this, because it make the horror seem even worse. Makes you think, what is so important that is worth killing for, making people see these things in their lives, happening with their friends and family. When you see these by themselves in the news paper they don't seem as significant.

War
Hypocrisy
Angry
Incommensurable
Upset
Humanity
Injustice
Died
Violence
Blood
War

Seen so many images like this recently in the news/newspaper. Possibly not as graphic/uncensored as this particular work.
Maybe this is why I don't find it shocking/upsetting?
However there is a brutality to them. Violence.
Should they be used in artwork or installation?
Displayed
Public

Very raw.
High shock value, almost reads like a bloody version of Heat magazine.
Reminds me a little of Santiago Sierra only Hirschhorn uses the notion of humanity and suffering in a different manner. The photographs are at an extremity of human warfare suffering but however I'm not sure how successful they are in shocking the Western society into doing something beneficial. I can imagine a large majority of people feeling highly emotional and extremely guilty and those combinations of emotions being so heightened that they feel at a loss. So much so that they personally choose to numb themselves to the over sensation they just encountered.

The communication of suffering – singularity of pain – can it be truly expressed? What does it mean for the viewer?
Is it appropriate? For those represented and for those viewing the exhibition.
VOYEURISM
What are the intentions of showing these pictures?
Reality of war – individual experiences.
What we do not usually see.
But will it have any l [this line crossed out]