UCL Institute of Advanced Studies Common Ground, 14th March 2019.
The ‘Moving Objects’ symposium was held to launch the ‘Moving Objects: Stories of Displacement’ exhibition at the UCL Octagon space. The exhibition explores people, animals and objects in exile, in the UK and the Middle East. It includes photographic work by migrants in London created through a series of workshops held by the Helen Bamber Foundation. This work explores the ambiguity of objects as they move through everyday and museum settings. The work examines both exiled and migrated objects and the capacity of objects to move us.
Photo by participants of the Helen Bamber Foundation Photography Group
The symposium explored issues raised by a number of inter-disciplinary projects carrying out research on objects, migration, heritage and well-being. The ‘History, archives and displacement’ panel explored the role of writing and the arts, including photography, in creating critical spaces and different ways of seeing, feeling, hearing, understanding and being with individuals and communities affected by displacement (see, for instance, the Refugee Hosts project). Heritage objects (the real and the wished for) play a key role in the empowerment of communities. Archives need to be dynamic, allowing reflexive questioning and capable of projecting into the future, including wishful futures. The archive must ‘have wings’ not be a cemetery, or sink into the past; objects should facilitate comment and desire their own redundancy (Leila Samsur talking about Open Bethlehem ). See, for instance, the Unpacked: Refugee Baggage series by Mohammed Hafez.
Mohammed Hafez, UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage, 2017
And, as Derrida (1995) observes, we have to closely scrutinise what enters the archive and what does not. For my own work, care has to be taken not to create something that is reductionist and backward looking. The idea of a portable archive is one avenue to explore.
The Photography and Displacement panel included a presentation by Alejandra Carles-Tolra on the Helen Bamber Photography Group workshop, which includes handling and discussion of objects from the UCL collections (the objects providing a focus for discussion, fun and conversation). The images made by the group members are shared and discussed through WhatsApp and shared Google folders.
Samar Maqusi, Baqa’a Camp, Amman, Jordan, 2014
Samar Maqusi presented her research on the spatial politics of the Palestine refugee camps, and the role played by installations and photographic work in the research. Spending time in the place was important (it is a pre-cursor of image making and can be ‘seen’ in the frame; she raises the question of whether powerful personal stories can be told without being in the frame), and the camera was viewed as a mechanical bodily enhancement. Time (excess including waiting time: what does waiting do to hope?) and space (limitations) are intertwined in the camps. The presentations reinforced the importance of spending time with people to understand their context, their relationship to time and their relationship to space and place.
References
Derrida, J. 1995. ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’. Diacritics, 25 (2): 9-63
My work on community engagement with urban regeneration involves working closely with communities and learning about the proposed developments and their impact on these communities and the environment. Making images is a part of this process. These images are part of both relationship making and the process of identification of themes and approaches. There are messages in this work, but as photography is being used heuristically (as part of the process of investigation, not necessarily in the production of final outcomes) these messages are formative and transitory. Over the course of this module, I am developing my own artistic response the the contexts I am exploring.
Photographic work in these contexts (urban regeneration and gentrification) has largely focused on the experiences of members of the communities affected by the changes (for instance, in different ways, Zed Nelson’s and Tom Hunter’s Hackney portraits and Emma Blau’s work with residents of an estate in West London, or Dana Lixenberg’s work with residents of the Imperial Courts social housing project in Los Angeles), or on the impact on the built environment of urban development (for instance, Metropole by Lewis Bush looking at developments around central London and Chris Dorley-Brown‘s studies of areas of East London over time).
Lewis Bush, from Metropole series, 2014-18
Chris Dorley-Brown, Middleton Pub, 2014
My work is taking a different direction. A dominant concern is the disempowerment of communities in the urban development process. Producing images with and for communities, to be used in advocacy and campaigning, addresses this in part in terms of action (with much to learn, in terms of both theory and practice, from Martha Rosler’s ‘If you lived here …’ project, see comprehensive account and analysis in Wallis, 1991). It leaves open, though, how my own image making will address this issue. Invoking the passage of time, the interaction of the human and natural in the environment and the social and environmental impact of current and future urban development. The use of digital manipulation, and animation, in my recent work has led me to look at how others have addressed these issues digitally, whilst still aspiring to produce artifacts alongside images (and images as artifacts). Amongst the artists discussed in Wolf’s (2010) survey of photography in a digital age, the passage of time is addressed through composites by Jason Salavon and mapping and algorithmically generated images by Siebren Versteeg.
Jason Salavon, Late Night Triad (detail), 2003
To loop back to the initial question for this week’s reflection, I do aspire for there to be multiple messages in my work, whilst recognising, indeed celebrating, the lack of control that the artist has in the reading of their work, and the possibility that it will produce new meanings for those who engage with the work (see Barthes, 1967, and Foucault, 1977, for critical consideration of the notion of authorship). Intent enhances the coherence and direction of the work, but does not determine its meaning or constrain its potential messages. The process that I am developing acknowledges, and, I hope, is able to be animated by, that indeterminacy. Prevailing social, cultural and economic conditions will always entail that there are perceived better and worse (in the moment, readable and incomprehensible) carriers for these messages, which makes it important to position the work, and index its intent, in relation to other work in the field (see Bourdieu, 1990, for discussion of the notion of field with respect to photographic practice).
References
Barthes, R. 1967. ‘The Death of the Author.’ Aspen: The Magazine in a Box. 5+6. UbuWeb: http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/index.html [accessed 25.03.19]
Bourdieu, P. 1990. Photography: A Middle-brow Art. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Foucault, M. 1977. ‘What Is an Author?’ In D. F. Bouchard (ed.) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 113-38.
Wallis, B. (ed.).1991. If you lived here : the city in art, theory, and social activism. Seattle: Bay Press.
Wolf, S. 2010. The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Digital Age. Munich: Prestel Verlag.
Slade Research Centre, School of Fine Art, UCL, 21st March 2019.
Colour & Poetry Symposium, Slade School of Fine Art, 2019
This was the launch of an inter-disciplinary network concerned with materials research and innovation across the arts and sciences. It was the closing session of a two day symposium on Colour and Poetry, with an accompanying exhibition ‘The Nomenclature of Colours’.
The Nomenclature of Colours, Slade School of Fine Art, 2019
The key message for me was to think about collaboration between the arts and sciences. The session was held in the Slade Research Centre, in the room where Ramsay had his lab and where he discovered the noble gases. Whilst collaboration is growing (the Slade has Scientist in Residence) and there are clear areas of common interest (this network focuses on materials) there remains a gap in conceptual frameworks, language and ways of working.
In my own work, I need to think more about surfaces, textures and colour (an interaction between the nature of the reflective/transmissive surface and the sensitivity of the viewer). Made me think about how I can better use the facilities at the Institute of Making, both in making artifacts and digitising objects. With the recent ‘digital turn’ in my work for this module, a core issue is the movement between the analogue and the digital, and the virtual and the material.
Wolf (2010), in a survey of the impact of new imaging technologies on the art of photography, states that:
‘digital technology calls upon us to rethink previous arguments or ideas about what a camera does and how photographic images function in contemporary culture. It allows us to consider reality as mutable, not fixed, and to think of space and time as fluid, not static’ (p.52)
For me, it is the dialogue between the analogue and the digital, and the virtual and the material, that will drive forward the development of the work, and create the space for collaboration. In the discussion, the role of the artist was seen as providing new ways of looking and making, about exploring and working with materials, doing and engaging rather than prescribing.
References
Wolf, S. 2010. The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Digital Age. Munich: Prestel Verlag.
I’m going to explore the work of the four featured artists, and the manner in which the work is exhibited, in relation to the development of my own work (particularly given the focus of the course material on galleries and the gallery system this week).
Mark Ruwedel explores marks made on the landscape by geological, social and political events. Often he photographs the same place or the same phenomena (for instance, bomb craters or ruined houses) a number of times. I should explore this kind of approach around the estates I am focusing on. One option would be to see what kind of effect is achieved from using the channel mixing process on the same scene photographed with different lighting.
Mark Ruwedel, ‘Artist and Society’
In the accompanying video, Ruwedel observers that ‘Regardless of their intentions, almost all photographs grow up to be documentary photographs’, raising an interesting perspective on the distinction between art and documentary (and other forms of) photography. Ruwedel sees his work being possibly of more interest to geologists or engineers in the future, as opposed to being seen as art. Paul Graham has noted the same phenomena in relation to his DHSS photographs, which are now used an historical record of a particular period of social history. This reverses the passage noted in the Week 9 presentation (in relation to Richard Prince’s appropriation of the Marlboro Man image) from commercial to art photography.
The exhibition covers an number of series of work, and includes books as well as prints (analogue, often with handwritten captions) which stress the craft aspect of photographic practice.
The other three photographers are working in a more conventionally documentary form, and present a range of different media. Susan Meiselas includes films, maps, letters, found photographs, booklets and artifacts. The show emphasises the manner in which her way of working adapts to the project. The map with booklets telling the stories of migrants is particularly effective in combining text and image.
Susan Meiselas, ‘Mediations’
Whereas the the Ruwedel and Meiselas exhibits cover a range of projects, Laia Abril’s exhibit focuses on her On Abortion publication, the first part of her long-term project A History of Misogyny. The longer term project provides an overarching conceptual framework, and the projects are viewed as chapters. This particular project started as an exhibition and became a book. As with Meiselas, there is a mix of images, texts, objects and films, and it is both an emotional/political exploration, and informational (in making certain practices visible). As an exhibition, it allows the viewer to chart their own way through the material, and their own pace, but could clearly be presented in other settings.
Laia Abril, ‘On Abortion’
Arwed Messmer’s exhibit similarly focuses on one particular project, an exploration of the Red Army Faction. Taking the decade from 1867 to 1977, Messmer charts the activity of the group almost in the style of a police or forensic investigation (similar, in this sense, to Forensic Architecture’s work, but drawing on archival and historic material). He presents his work as ‘authored documentary photography’, but with a heavy reliance on uncredited documents and photographs from which he constructs and presents a narrative. Details of what is shown in the photographs is withheld to allow the viewer to make sense of what they see, and to retain the enigmatic nature of photography (details relating to the material presented are given in an appendix). The archive provides the basis for the book and exhibition.
Arwed Messmer, ‘RAF – No Evidence’
For my own work, I have four distinct examples of how a range of media are presented and how coherence is achieved and an audience engaged. As the work on urban regeneration is developing, I need to think about how the different types of work produced can be integrated. If, for instance, it does give rise to a kind of archive (or a number of archives relating to different setting), I have to think about how this would translate into, say, exhibitions, in community as well as gallery settings. The work presented here emphasizes that there need not be a chasm between gallery and other settings. Rather than agonize about the extent to which photography can be seen to be art (as some of the readings and presentations this week have), it is more productive to consider the particular strengths of photography in being able to incorporate and work alongside other media within inter-disciplinary settings (this is reinforced by the manner in which film and photography is used by the Turner Prize shortlisted artists this year, see discussion here).
Exhibition of some of the portraits made with participants and volunteers on the Shed Life project at the Sue Bramley Centre, Barking Thames View Estate. To co-incide with showing of A Northern Soul, and question and answer session with Director, Sean McAllister.
Whilst photography must, in essence, directly address time (in the moment of capture, for instance) and space (in, for instance, the locatedness of the making of the image), addressing the passage of time and spatial difference has been a challenge, without sliding into other forms of (re)presentation (video, for instance). The most obvious strategy is juxtaposition, the bringing together of two or more images that signify difference or transition (in time or space, or perspective, identity, experience or any other differentiating dimension). As Baetens et al (2010) observe ‘Time and space are the yin and yang of photography’ and that ‘The more you press on space, the more the notion of time will return with a vengeance-and vice versa’ (p.vii).
The use of juxtaposition and the layering of photographic images to convey, and disrupt, a sense of time is exemplified by the two 1931 photobooks of Moshe Raviv-Vorobeichic, Wilna and Paris, the latter with an introduction by the Futurist painter Fernand Leger (the Futurists, of course, had a fundamental interest in the representation of movement and the passing of time in the visual arts, including sculpture, painting and photography) . Vorobeichic studied at the Bauhaus, and, in particular, the montages of Paris display the dynamic exploration of relationships, and contradictions, of the modern 20th Century city.
‘The flashlike acts of connecting elements not obviously belonging together. Their constructive relationships, unnoticed before, produce the new result. If the same methodology were used generally in all fields we would have the key to our age – seeing everything in relationship‘. (Moholy-Nagy, L, 1947: 68)
Pages from Vorobeichic, M.R [Moi Ver]. 1931. Paris. Paris: Éditions Jean Walter.
The form taken by Vorobeichic’s Paris montages also meets the challenge issued by Sergei Eisenstein:
‘montage is not an idea composed of successive shots stuck together but an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another …each sequential element is arrayed, not next to the one it follows, but on top of it’ (Eisenstein, 1988a: 163-164).
These aspects of Vorobeichic’s work are explored by Nelson (2010). The conception of time in this analysis is strongly influenced by the historical materialism of the Frankfurt School critical theorists, and in particular the writing of Walter Benjamin. Contemporary photographic artists, such as Mari Mahr, continue to work with similar forms of montage and juxtaposition, but extending this to include artifacts and photographs as artifacts (see also earlier post about Peter Kennard’s political photomontage work).
Mari Mahr, Life Chances series, 1996
Forbes and McGrath (no date: 2) state that:
‘Mahr’s photographs join the past and the present , the personal and the historical. They might be thought of as ‘”sendings” (envois), which never reach their final destination or reunite with the object or idea they represent (Jacques Derrida cited in Jay, 1993)’.
Whilst I am also attempting to engage with challenge of incorporating a sense of time in my work, I am doing so in the context of contemporary scientific notions of time and a re-configuring of the humanities and social sciences in post-humanist theory (see Hayles, 2018, for an exploration of the relationship between contemporary science and humanities, and in particular the influence of notions of chaos). A key characteristic of current theories of time in physics is that they depart dramatically from our common sense notions and human experience of time. This is explored by Grace Weir in her installation Time Tries All Thingsat the Institute of Physics in London.
This is a dual channel video work, with accompanying sculpture, in which two theoretical physicists explore contrasting ways in which general relativity and quantum theory can be brought together in understanding spacetime (a term which reinforces the assertion that, in contemporary physics, no conceptual distinction can be made between space and time).
Dowker (2019), in the exhibition catalogue, states that:
‘On the subject of “time”, however, there is not consensus on whether our perceptions can be coordinated with our current best scientific world view. We perceive time passing and make sense of our lives within the context of a fixed past that has happened and an open future that hasn’t happened yet. But the dominant view amongst theoretical physicists is that the Universe is a Block in which the future already exists and time doesn’t pass.’ [no page]
She adds that to seek alternative ways of thinking about spacetime ‘requires new thinking along lines we probably can’t foresee. How do we break out of old ways of thinking and create new knowledge that yet remains disciplined by and true to all that we already know? We need to understand our current best theories , General Relativity and quantum theory, as well as we can … We can also look to art, music and literature to inspire and to challenge.’ [no page]
The departure from human perception of time acts to de-centre the human subject in much the same way as post-humanist theory (and, in a more extreme form, object oriented ontology or speculative realism). In my own image making, I want to attempt to subvert an assumed directionality in time. Global development is intertwined but not co-terminal with human development, and tensions between the natural and the built environment, and human activity within these environments, entail interdependency, indeterminancy and precariousness. An appropriate visual strategy has to incorporate this, and should find a way to explore interactions between and within spacetime. If there are layers and juxtapositions of images, these have to interact and influence each other, ether within the image or in the mode of presentation of the work. The mixing of images that I am exploring produces new images in which the different channels interact. The images are complex, and care has to be taken to make them accessible to an audience, both through the construction of the images, and how they are presented (in themselves and alongside other forms of images, media and artifacts). I’ll explore this in another post.
As with other aspects of my development as a photographer, there is a personal dimension to taking this direction. I failed to learn to read at infant school and was a ‘remedial reader’ in junior school (more on this another time). My way into literacy was through Marvel comic books (I had a bike and did paper rounds from the age of 9, getting paid double by the newsagent if I took payment in comics). I read these obsessively, and when I’d started to get the hang of the text, I transferred this obsession to the local library, where I read my way through the junior library, and then at the age of eleven, I moved over to the adult library, and worked my way through using the Dewey decimal system as a guide (in classic autodidact style). The first section, after General Reference, is Philosophy, Psychology and Logic (100-199) so I have a really good grounding in these areas. One particularly influential book was J.B. Priestley’s (1964) dubiously titled Man and Time (115 in the Dewey decimal system), which explored different conceptions of time in science and the arts (my wife bought a copy of this on eBay a few years ago, and strangely it turned out to be from Barking and Dagenham library).
I went to university to study theoretical physics, but dropped out in the first term, and went to work as a kitchen porter and bingo caller before returning to university later to study education with mathematics and psychology.
Two other co-incidences. There is a programme on bingo calling on the radio as I write this. And, as I watched Grace Weir’s video installation, shortly after she walked across the screen, the door opened and she walked into the gallery (only me and one other person there), took some iPhone photos, watched 5 minutes of the film, and left.
Grace Weir watches Fay Dowker in her installation at the Institute of Physics, 2019.
References
Baetens, J., Streitberger, A., and Van Gelder, H. (eds). 2010. Time and Photography. Leuven Univeristy Press
Dowker, F. 2019. Becoming. In catalogue to Time Tries All Things, installation by Grace Weir, Institute of Physics, London. 21.01.19-29.03.19. [no page]
Eisenstein, S. 1988. ‘The Fourth Dimension in Cinema (1929)’, in Taylor, R. (ed.) Eisenstein Selected Works, Volume One, Writings 1922-1934. London: BFI Press, pp. 181–194.
Forbes, D. and McGrath. R. [no date]. Mari Mahr. London: Architectural Association. [Available at http://marimahr.com/reviews/index.html]
Hayles, N. K. 2018. Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jay, M. 1993. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Moholy-Nagy, L. 1947. Vision in Motion. Chicago: Paul Theobald.
Nelson, A. 2010. ‘Suspended relationships: the montage photography books of Moshe Raviv Vorobeichic’, in Baetens, J., Streitberger, A., and Van Gelder, H. (eds) Time and Photography. Leuven Univeristy Press, pp. 141–164.
Priestley, J.B. 1964. Man and Time. London: Aldus Books.
Vorobeichic, M.R. 1931. Ein Ghetto in Osten (Wilma). Schaubücher 27. Zurich/Leipzig: Orell Füssli Verlag.
Vorobeichic, M.R [Moi Ver]. 1931. Paris. Paris: Éditions Jean Walter.
I’m working on a protocol to follow for the production of images in the different settings I’m exploring using the channel mixing approach. For the moment I am going to focus on monochrome images (colour would, in this method, be artifactual in any case – I’ll post something about this later, as it relates to the nature of digital, as opposed to analogue, images, and to contemporary debates in the philosophy of photography). In each setting I will produce three images which vary with respect to time (either through connotation, or by incorporating archival images of the past and CGIs or sketches of a projected future). The images will also explore other relationships, for instance between the natural and the built environment. Whereas photomontage and other photographic techniques layer or juxtapose images, channel mixing creates an interaction between the images which is not simply additive or subtractive, thus better reflecting contemporary notions of the relationship between space/place and time. Small changes in the prioritisation of particular tones in specific channels can create very different (but clearly related) images (as in the examples here). Whilst I want to retain a degree of chance, I also want to be clearer about the kind of images that will work best together to get the effects that I want in invoking the different relationships between communities and regeneration that I have identified. To that end, I’m experimenting with the process with some relatively simple images.
The process I have followed here is to take the following photographic image and create three images by horizontal translation (so each is a slightly offset version of the other).
The images are assigned to the red, green and blue channels in Photoshop respectively. Using a monochrome conversion layer, different composite images can be created by different mixes of the channels. To get a sense of how the channels interact, I produced four images and combined them in an animation. It works best in full screen mode.
Next step is to work with more complex images, and then, once I have a better sense of how the mixing process shapes the resulting image, with images produced in each of the settings.
No formal task for the reflection this week, so I’ll just briefly reflect on the development of my work over the past week and point to other relevant posts. I have posted reflections on the portfolio reviews and the skills building workshops at the Falmouth Face to Face.
Arriving, Falmouth 2019
The former were really useful in reflecting on my current work, how I will develop this over the next module (Surfaces and Strategies, with a focus on different ways of presenting and making images material) and how to prepare (in terms of development of my practice) for the FMP. The latter helped me to develop skills in producing, processing and presenting images, and get to know other participants and tutors on the programme. I have written about The Living Image conference and how the themes addressed relate to the development of my own work here.
Over the past week I have been able to develop my thinking and practice in relation to a number of the issues raised last week. Time and the archive have been major themes. The Moving Objects Symposium raised questions about the place of the archive in the life of displaced communities, including those in refugee camps, and highlighted the role that the creative arts, and arts based methods, can play in understanding and empowering communities. More detailed consideration of this, and the Moving Objects: Stories of Displacement exhibition are posted here. I also went to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019 shortlist exhibition (reflections on that are here) and Grace Weir’s installation Time Tries All Things at the Institute of Physics (reflections on that here, in relation to the theme of spacetime and photography). I also took part in the London Prosperity Board Prosperity Index Users Group workshop at the Institute for Global Prosperity, which provided a good opportunity to strengthen links with with community and local authority stakeholders around the Olympic Park and in Barking and Dagenham, which I will need for my FMP, and to help shape the use of the Index in east London.
The major development in relation to my own work was studying the work of Moshe Raviv Vorobeichic, and in particular how he deals with time through photomontage in his two 1931 photo-books, Wilna and Paris (see discussion of this work in Nelson, 2010).
Pages from Vorobeichic, M.R [Moi Ver]. 1931. Paris. Paris: Éditions Jean Walter.
It was good to discuss this in relation to my own composite images with Michelle at the 1 to 1, and I’ll develop this further. In particular, I want to consider how I can juxtapose images with the composites (we decided that to put the constituent images alongside the composites would be distracting). In response to developments in contemporary understandings of spacetime, I am also thinking about pulling out smaller sections of the composites (a technique that was also used by Vorobeichic).
In relation to practical image-making, I attended a session on the ethics of exhibiting human body parts and spent half a day with students at the UCL Pathology Collection, photographing items from the collection that they will use in their presentations next week.
UCL Pathology Museum, 2019
This collection is not open to the public. I have spoken to the curator about the possibility of working with the collection in producing artistic work, and she is keen to do this.
Hand, UCL Pathology Museum, 2019
I’ll follow up, and could possibility use this as a focus for the activities and portfolio work for the Surfaces and Strategies module.
References
Nelson, A. 2010. ‘Suspended relationships: the montage photography books of Moshe Raviv Vorobeichic’, in Baetens, J., Streitberger, A., and Van Gelder, H. (eds), Time and Photography. Leuven Univeristy Press, pp. 141–164.
Vorobeichic, M.R. 1931. Ein Ghetto in Osten (Wilma). Schaubücher 27. Zurich/Leipzig: Orell Füssli Verlag.
Vorobeichic, M.R [Moi Ver]. 1931. Paris. Paris: Éditions Jean Walter.
9th-10th March 2019, Falmouth University, Institute of Photography
A great opportunity to get to know the work of the tutors better, and hear from students in the later stages of their work. Plus three stimulating presentations online from the USA. I’ll need to revisit this on Canvas, so just sketchy notes at this point, particularly in relation to development of my own work.
Jesse. Offered us a virus metaphor and explored Dawkins’ idea of the body as a vessel for genes, and the passage of the meme (as learnt memory gene). Raised issues for me around the toxicity of analogue photographic processes (related to the pollution around the former chemical plants on Barking marshes) and the vulnerability of the photographic print (and the print as artifact, which resonates with my current work with prints).
Stella. Exploration of hybrid photographic processes (eg. 3D in photoshop, alignment of fine art and commercial photography, combination of analogue and digital (could use this as part of the narrative around Barking marshes in relation to the passage from material to symbolic production, and from analogue to digital photography). Traced the emergence of New Media Arts and changes in the production and distribution of art in the 1980s. Follow up her paper on moire effects and errors, and the idea of asignifying semiotics. Also Hito Steyerl’s ‘How not to be seen‘. See notebook for others.
Paul. Frank exploration of his own biography and the photographic exploration of Blake’s passage along Stane Street. Great images, including shots from the annual Blake graveside gathering.
Michelle. Traced her pathway into photography and interest in sub-cultures and people on the margins. Interesting work on body-change, fragility and transition from childhood to adulthood. Check out 2006 monograph. And Multistory in West Bromwich for art projects.
Katerina. Traced through her MA work on moth trapping. Made reference to post-humanist theory and de-centring. Interesting array of outputs from the project: prints, archives, a small book. Interesting video of stills with music.
Gary. Good insight into his own work and re-photography more generally. Check screenshots from forthcoming book. Interesting exploration of work on Flickr and Instagram. See notes. Check Kedra, 2018, What does it mean to be visually literate, Journal of Visual Literacy, 37(2):81.
Clare. Re-enactment, memory and critique. Ref to Benjamin and Deleuze, and to the work of Jo Spence.
Karen. Short videos. Interviews, and adapts methodology to subject and collaborator. Explores physical space in relation to psychological sense of self. Seeks to use material in an informative and compassionate way.
Cemre. Photographs as objects. Explores how photographs play a part in intimate relationships. See Milktooth and Lohusa films on Vimeo. Double portraits without presence of either (eg umbilical cord as representing a relationship) – links with object related work. Explores changing roles and relationships in ageing. Check filbooks.net.
Mark Klett & Byron Woolf. Traced development of their work from survey to more creative exploration. Look at Drowned River (2018) with Rebecca Solnit. Overlaying of images. Now working in digital. Used portable printer in field to produce in situ panoramas. See notes for references.
Charlotte Cotton. Explored background and follow up to Public, Private, Secret at ICP, New York. Noted oblique approach to surveillance. Reference to alterity and othering. Check Zuboff on surveillance capitalism.
FMP candidates. Really interesting and useful insight. Will incorporate into later posting on FMP.
Chris Coekin & Noel Nasr. The Distance is Always Other. Insight into the process of development of the project. Check out book published by Dongola Press. Good on the development of a ‘visual strategy’ (and relationship with temporal and cultural shifts though re-photograph and dual image making). Strong rationale given for the combination of images taken by Noel and Chris at the same time with the same type of camera and film (relating to photographers from different cultural backgrounds addressing the same scene).
Coekin and Nasr, The Distance is Always Other series.
Also insight into how they incorporated sound (including field recordings). Noel’s earlier work also interesting in the use of archive material, printed over his images of scenes of assassination in white ink).
I took part in three reviews. In each case I focused on the more experimental channel mixing work, to get some feedback on this and how I might develop it. I got useful comments from each session, and will think through how to respond to these constructively.
Portfolio, Falmouth, 2019
(i) Gary, Katerina and Clare. The focus in this session was on how to present the range of outputs from the regeneration work. Clare suggested a website. Gary suggested something more like an archive, which has physical presence, and whilst more difficult to access, is more difficult to destroy. My thoughts are that it might be possible to produce something that can be configured by others in different ways (according to their interest in the work). This resonates with my thoughts about using photography as a heuristic device (whilst critiques of the photography as representation abound, the alternatives proposed are either performative or introspective: photography as a heuristic offers a more social and potentially transformative alternative). Gary’s observation was prompted by my use of the archive box I made a London Book Arts, and I could certainly make a number of these in which to present prints (and this links with my focus on prints as artifacts). I’m also still considering handmade books. I need to look again at Christian Boltanski‘s work (I have one of the boxes he produced for the Whitechapel exhibition in the 80s). Other artists to follow up: Taryn Simon (suggested by Katerina), Andrea Luka Zimmerman (Haggerston Estate work, suggested by Clare), Mary Evans (on archives, suggested by Gary) and Mat Collishaw (suggested by all). We also discussed Forensic Architecture’s Turner Prize installation (see also my earlier post on the Turner Prize shortlist) and the use of timelines and time-codes. The overlaying of a map with historical settlements also holds potential for my work, I think. Could chart changes of use in the area over time, and link to other images and documents. This also links with the work with JustMap creating a community map of the Barking Riverside area.
(ii) Steff and Michelle. I wanted to think about the form and content of my WIP portfolio in this session. Comments received reinforced the need to focus more tightly on a particular part of the project. Reflection on this has strengthened my commitment to focussing on the level of my own creative work produced in response to the my experiences and work in regeneration areas. I need to make sure that the intent in making these more experimental images is clear (there is a strong expectation, I think, that photographic work in these contexts should take a particular form, as explored in my earlier oral presentations). I think there is also a concern about the complexity of the images. Michelle expressed concern about the descriptiveness of the images and lack of clarity about what I wanted the viewer to feel, for instance, was the intention to present a dystopian or apocalyptic vision. She suggested zooming in on a parts of the image (maybe those where there is ambiguity) and consideration of the political dimensions of Robert Rauschenberg’s work (also, complexity). And another recommendation to look at Taryn Simon, as well as John Stezaker (collage, and complex images) and Brian Griffin (for instance, The Black Kingdom). The images presented are just exploration of process at this stage, so useful to think through this issue now, which I will do in a later post. If I continue with the channel mixing idea, I need to think about whether (and if so, how) the constituent images are presented alongside the ‘mix’ (or mixes), also discussed in this session. It is also possible to animate the mixes, bringing particular aspects of the image to the fore, which could address the concern about the focus of the image (which would change as the interaction between the images changes). And I could incorporate sound, as with the Roding Valley Park work. Others in the group agreed that the images might work best if printed large.
(iii) Wendy and Stella. I wanted to look forward to the FMP stage in this session. Wendy’s comments helped me to be more confident in the research dimension of the assessment of the FMP, and reinforced the the need to ensure that this was clearly articulated with the image making. We discussed the possibility of printing the images on perspex (or on acetate) as another way of invoking interaction between the images. Stella was concerned about the arbitrariness of the colour aspects of the channel mixing approach, which worries me too and which leaves me with monochrome images. I think that is fine, but I need to work through the rationale and effects of the process, perhaps in relation to the production of ‘fictions’ that project backwards and forwards from a point in time (to a constructed past and an imagined future). Am looking at Stella’s paper on Moire. Wendy confirmed that not all the work presented in the FMP has to be done in the two semesters, for instance, where the project is longer term and developing over the course of the programme. There must, however, be significant value added to the project over the course of the FMP (it can’t, for instance, be an existing body of work that is ‘tweaked’ in the FMP). The presentations by current FMP students at the conference were particularly useful in seeing how the FMP could develop.
