For introduction to this post see previous post:
So there are these two parallel areas of activity for this residency: considering Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner and reconsidering my own engagement with protest through, or via, visual imagery on a banner.
Between April of this year and September when Hirschhorn’s banner was finally unrolled and installed in Fabrica I knew the work only through photographs of it. Although the photographic documentation of it I was given included several close-up detailed shots of the individual images on the banner, when I first saw the piece for real I experienced a reaction that I have understood, from observing other people looking at the work, to be fairly typical of a first viewing of it. I felt physically shaken and sick in the stomach. However, I did want to look at the images. That fascination has been there from the start and it is something I continue to reflect upon.
I would say that since that first viewing I have been through a range of responses. Quite near the start of the residency proper I had a period of quite strong doubt about my involvement with the work at all. It was a kind of moral objection. I suppose I was anticipating, or trying to anticipate, the responses of visitors to the exhibition and trying to place myself in relation to the work – as if I had to have a very clear take on it. I remember seriously fantasising about withdrawing from the project, without any intention whatsoever of actually wanting to. As if to try out in my mind what kind of position it would signify if I were to declare that I were dissociating myself from the work. But I found the notion of this kind of withdrawal unsatisfactory because I hadn’t yet tested myself against the work in relation to other people. I have found myself agreeing with people who find the images degrading to the dead people on show. I think many of the images are degrading to them especially if you consider that some of them will have been taken by the perpetrators of the crimes represented. But whether the work is degrading? I don’t think so. I remember coming into the gallery space one day when it was quite empty and standing in front of the banner and I suddenly had a very strong sense of how the piece is a very true memorial to all those who are represented on it. They all appeared extremely dignified in their death and I felt the piece was honouring each and every single one of them.
I am in touch with someone from The Forum, which describes itself as "an innovative weblog featuring reviews, previews, opinion pieces and interviews from independent arts writers." She has sent me four questions which have actually been very timely in prompting me to write about aspects of my own responses to Hirschhorn's Incommensurable Banner. I have decided to post these (rather lengthy) entries in this and the following posts.
1. What kind of responses have you had to the work and how have your reactions changed during this time, if they have? If so, in what ways?
I have been thinking about ‘The Incommensurable Banner’ by Hirschhorn since April of this year. This was on the basis of my already existing strong interest in Hirschhorn’s practice, specifically how he works with other people, sometimes with communities of people, whilst still maintaining a strong sense of the identity of his own practice as an artist. When I was first offered the chance to be artist animateur at Fabrica, in residence alongside the banner, I was extremely pleased because I was invited to do so on the basis of what Liz and Matthew, the two directors of Fabrica, knew about my practice, without either of them knowing that I had this strong interest in Hirschhorn. So, it seemed to me, and this is still the case, that there it is a very good match for me to be engaging with Hirschhorn’s work in this way. The very first response to the work that I noted, upon being told what the work consisted of, was a sense of relief. I heard myself say inside my head: “At last we are going to be shown the images that demonstrate what war is actually about” and this reaction came about against a background of recognition that the wars we are involved in as aggressors are highly sanitised in their representation by the media. I was also excited by the idea of making some kind of comparison in intent and effect of Hirschhorn’s Incommensurable Banner with my own attempt to make an anti-war banner. In 2003 I made a peace banner to take with me to the demonstrations in London against the war on Iraq. At the time I remember being utterly lost when trying to picture what sort of imagery I might put on my banner. In the end I opted for what I considered, at the time, to be ‘positive’ imagery, though when I look back at this now I can see that the imagery, of verdant countryside, flowers and rainbows, is extremely clichéd and really rather ‘cheesy’. So, this residency has been a good opportunity to get this banner of mine out of storage, have another look at it and reconsider the relationship of art to politics at this stage, five years after the worldwide opposition on the streets to the war against Iraq.
Blog entries to write:
Conversation with David Constantine yesterday about Brecht's 'Kriegsfibel' and relationship of poetry to photographic images of war – transcribe recording of conversation and select parts for blog.
Impromptu discussion today at Fabrica with students from Greenwich University.
On speechlessness.
Reading of Islam & the West – conversation between Derrida and Mustapha Chérif – when I've read more of it.
Rancière on translation and communication.
Replace Branson image with something – anything – else. – done
I am in a North London library. Mum is sitting on a sofa in the children's area. I think she's nodding off. We've just had lunch together in a cafe. She's 81, though, for some reason, I keep thinking she's 82. Her eyesight is poor as she suffers from age-related macular degeneration and she is becoming increasingly unable to look after herself. I come and see her when I can but the job of looking after her falls mainly to my sister who lives near to her.
I noticed this morning having spent yesterday evening and last night in my old family home that something strange had happened to time and space and that I felt as if I had been there forever and that my life in Brighton felt like a million miles away.
I'd better not keep her waiting too long but it's nice and warm in here, much warmer than at her house where there seems to be something wrong with the heating.
It's political. Me being here. Her sitting over there. Me trying to take care of her but failing mostly. The job is much larger than I can manage, short of giving up my life and living with her. Maybe that's what I ought to do? You only have one mum after all. But I know I can't – or rather won't.
I miss her. She used to be such a lively spirit. So vivacious. Now she sits mainly motionless and seems rather tuned out a lot of the time, cocooned in her dulled senses. But she's still there.
I feel sad but keep cheerful because that's the least I can do.
What this has got to do with Hirschhorn I really don't know. Except that if he is really trying to reach for the human in us all, as Julian Stallabrass said during his talk about him, then that is what I am trying to do too.
In her. And in myself.
Having spent the past week bemoaning the fact that I have had no internet access at home for the past week (due to technical problems with my ISP) and so have had my late nightly blogging habit interrupted I now feel that I have turned a corner.
I have now realised that I am a nomad blogger.
I am having to write and blog posts here and there wherever I can. Ah, such freedom! Such liberation from the domestic realm!
Not as easy to download, crop, optimise and post images but it needn't stop me writing and I can catch up with images at the weekend.
So, if you're reading this, Richard Branson, please do keep trying to fix the problem but be assured that my outlook is looking somewhat brighter.
