ARTISTS TALKING

# 59 [26 October 2008]

Congratulations to everyone for their contributions to the White Night debate ‘Make Love Not War!’. This event was a great success. Devised and planned jointly by students of the Critical Fine Art Practice course at the University of Brighton and the Visual Culture Society of Sussex University with myself, it took place in the University of Brighton gallery at Grand Parade in Brighton in amongst the images of Iraq and Vietnam that make up the exhibition ‘Iraq through the lens of Vietnam’ one of the Brighton Photo Biennial exhibitions that make up the War of Images, Images of War biennial curated by Julian Stallabrass. White Night is a new event in Brighton that celebrates putting the clocks back by many venues staying open until the early hours, with all sorts of things happening.

The premise of the debate was to test the proposition ‘Make Love Not War’ and I was billed to chair the event. From the start I had wanted to give the event to students to lead in order for them to experience facilitating a  public discussion of politics within the Institution that is a university. I was interested in what form their political energies take and how they get to be exercised currently.

Esther started proceedings by leading a hand-holding activity which ended with half the group outside the gallery on the street and the other half inside the gallery and the two rows of us facing each other through the glass. I found this strangely moving. We were like two factions or like two different species examining each other.  And the holding of hands created an instant connection and awareness of our interdependence as people.

The second part of the event had people talking to people they hadn’t met before about issues relating to war and peace prompted by keywords chosen by Luska and presented by Lucy. Everyone was talking at once, animatedly, in pairs. This was followed by a viewing of videos made by Thomas Blatchford, aka The Thomas Ferguson Band, consisting of excerpts of interviews, imagery and film relating to questions around war, aesthetics and ethics. A debate rounded off the evening with Thomas taking a lead in prompting the discussion and opinions getting quite heated at one point, which made the event exciting and the issues come alive.

Nothing was settled, no resolution was forthcoming, no motions were passed. Instead various arena were opened up as possible spaces for debate and the smorgasbord of activities kept the event lively and stimulating.

# 58 [25 October 2008]

Comments about Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Incommensurable Banner' from the Fabrica comments book:

"It's interesting how easy it is to become inured to the suffering of others when viewing a block of images such as these and the others in the University gallery. Photography's failure is how it distances you from suffering whilst pulling you close. There is no 'bodily' contact. The record is away and other, these are other people. The presentation of this work in a sort of discotheque of colour lessens the specialness of each individual event. This won't stop now. That would be naive to think. People are resilient and can learn to cope with all sorts of events, perhaps that is why we will continue to experience and perpetrate aggressive events such as war."

"Although this piece is indeed shocking and extreme I feel it does not so much highlight the suffering inflicted by war as create a gallery of gore that appeals to the dark, voyeuristic side of our nature, that which compels us to slow down when we pass a car accident. We are horrified by what we see, yet we cannnot turn away. We are constantly bombarded by the media reports of bombings and suicide attacks, 'friendly fire incidents' and ghosts of past war atrocities yet we do not allow the victims of these awful events to rest easy, to dredge up these images and display them to an audience which has (largely) never experienced the sorrow of conflict firsthand, an audience who will recoil in horror and make offhand statements about the transience of life and exclaim 'what is the point of it all?' before going to lunch, making light jokes about what they have seen is not a respectful treatment of the dead. Would we respond in the same way if it were images of OUR loved ones splashed across the banner? Would we pace up and down in respectful silence, contemplating all the evil occurring in far flung corners of the world, brought to us safely anaesthetised through the medium of our televisions and the omni-net? No. We would fall to our knees and we would wail."

# 57 [25 October 2008]

Comments about Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Incommensurable Banner' from the Fabrica comments book:

"It seems totally surreal and makes you realise how lucky we are to live in a non-war zone!! Well done to photographer - need a lot of courage and bravery!"

"It's horrible, these people's lives ruined or ended."

"It shows the suffering that is hidden by the media so well."

"Lovely colours"

"This is all happening now and in our town EDO/MBM in Brighton manufacturing the components that allow this kind of carnage to continue. SHUT THEM DOWN!"

"I've recently graduated on Media and Popular Culture at Leeds Met ... My final year dissertation on film, more exactly, the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and its representation in fiction both in Spain and abroad... It's been a long struggle, most of my life, to know and learn about the recent history of my country: this was banned for ages because of Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975)... Still is kind of difficult to talk about this with both of my parents... Still is hard to today for most spaniards to talk about this... Although the images in today's exhibition made me cry, not much seems new to me and yet, tears can't be prevented from coming out of my eyes 'seeing' what human beings still are inflicting onto other human beings ... yet (and again) these horrible images, perhaps in a smaller size are shown to us everyday through the media and it seems to me that perhaps we have grown blind and deaf and mute as if our hearts have stopped beating as if we too are dead!"

"Thanks for putting this up in Brighton. This reality needs to be seen."

"This is an important work. Please take away the wall!"

"Shocking but very valid."

"I started out being brave to view these images and halfway along I was suddenly being confronted with a very sick feeling in my stomach (literally a physical sensation of sickness and pain!!) These images are that powerful!! In reality all these are even hundreds of times more shocking and dreadful. Gruesome."

# 56 [25 October 2008]

Comments about Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Incommensurable Banner' from the Fabrica comments book:

"Truth at last."

"Bold and uncompromising, if a little obvious. This is just one truth, framing in an exhibition in that most liberal of cities distorts the message of the piece to bend it purely to one end of the political spectrum. Where are the Al-Queda victims in this picture? Very provoking piece, though, expertly realised."

"Incommensurable!"

"suitably disturbing . . .

comment though that the biggest casualties of war by the end of C20 are civilian 90% i.e. women, children and ineligible' men (UN) . . .

one thing stands out is the absence of caucasian victims thus the exhibition and war is ... someplace out there far away ..."

"resist the bomb makers - smashEDO"

"Unbelievable - war is disgusting - humanity can be evil. 'War' is an abstract word - until you see these images."

"very good X"

"War is so evil."

"Nauseating and overpowering. This is an exhibition that needs the widest possible audience. If we could get the likes of Blair, Bush and Brown to understand the consequences of their actions."

"If everyone saw these important images there would be no more war!"

"It's good to show the real horror of war - if it's done in our name we should know what it means."

"Powerful and eye opening. I am forever affected and want to make the world a better place. Peace and love is the only way..."

"Appalling and necessary - but I was not sure if the pictures humanised the victims of war or de-humanised them. Not nice. But how could it be?"

# 55 [24 October 2008]

response from Alice Flight, artist:

"I don't usually look for what people have written about things but wanted to to this...felt like I wanted to join in a communal response to these images...not in my name...didn't feel any responsibility or anything  but just wanted to see what people wrote....it was weird having my back to the images to start with. I felt like that felt insensitive to start with when I turned and looked at the books on the table where the images are. I could sort of feel the images there behind me....the faces....that was sort of the thing to me....afterwards I walked along the seafront and past the children's playground on the front and all the kids running around in the sunshine which was heaven."

# 54 [24 October 2008]

On Tuesday a group of photography and art students from BHASVIC (Brighton and Hove 6^th Form College) came to Fabrica for a workshop with their teacher, Polly.  I was nervous about the session because I was curious to see how what a workshop would be like where it was possible that not everyone would have seen the exhibition. Since everyone who enters the Fabrica exhibition has the choice as to whether to go in and see the banner or not it was important that this group had that choice too and that the individuals in it did not feel that they all had to look at the images just because they were there as an organised group.  I think the session went very well in the end and the students were very articulate about their thoughts and feelings about the work. They had to come up with a brief for a new piece of work involving photography and their ideas were great. They suggested putting on a multi-voiced outdoor exhibition in as a protest against war using a stage and projections representing different views in the same spirit. Another idea was to throw paper aeroplanes from a tall building each with handwritten message on it protesting about how it is never the sons and daughters of those in power who are sent off to war to be killed. They thought it important that the messages be handwritten so that there was a personal touch to the planes and they pointed out that the planes would remind people of war. Someone raised the doubt about how to get so many messages handwritten and one fo the group really impressed me with her matter of face response to this that all you had to do was involve loads of people. She made it sound so easy to involve loads of people and spoke with such assured confidence which was really inspiring. 

# 53 [24 October 2008]

Friday 24 October

5.55am

posted 17.15

We have had no internet connection at home since Tuesday evening. This has left me with no chance to write this blog since my usual blogging times are late at night after the working day when I have some peace and solitude. However, it occurred to me last night that I could write something anyway and take it into college with me and send it from there. It is interesting how not having an internet connection made me feel that I couldn’t write anything at all. I even considered writing something in an notebook to be typed up later as if I were unable to use my computer at all without internet access.

Anyway, it’s been a very frustrating experience not to be online (as it always is now) and it makes me realise how dependent on the internet I have become. At the beginning of the week I developed some thoughts that I wanted to tell you about but the energy of that thinking seems to have dissipated somewhat and I haven’t been able to do the research (another late at night activity) to back it up.

It was to do with a news report I heard on R4 about The Foresight Commission which has come up with evidence of the links between a ‘mentally healthy’ populace and the economy. The representative of the research was speaking quite shamefacedly about how what he called ‘mental capital’ pays directly into the economy as revenue to the government. This, in conjunction with all the government sponsorship that is going into researching what creativity is led me to see how ideas are the next booty to be plundered by governments. As natural resources dwindle and it becomes increasingly perilous to get our hands on them without costly and unpopular wars we have to find another kind of asset to translate into dollars and what better material than people’s ideas. So I came up with the idea of ‘intellectual colonialism’ for this approach. I seem to have had several conversations with artists in various situations over the past year or so about our creative processes and have often detected a reluctance to give up the goods (as if they were secrets) of  what one’s processes actually are. There is plenty of money going into university and schools projects aiming to find out what creativity is. Since the thinking goes that if we can turn ideas directly into capital in this technological age then to wrest how those ideas come about from creative people is the key to future economic wealth.

As I say, I have to research this more myself to see if there is any basis for some kind of theory.  But if you have heard anything that would back this up then do get in touch.

# 52 [21 October 2008]

Judith Kazantzis, poet, has sent me a response to the Incommensurable Banner as well as the image that accompanies this post, which is entitled 'war is pants':

"I meant to send this pic earlier, the woodcut  I did after the 2 million march of  03. I am not familiar with pdf files but I think you can print it out for the banner you are making. I do hope that is going well. This last week I have been back to Fabrica to look at the show again (and with Cecile's brilliant tech help to ready a short light projection piece on art/war I want to start with in my 'War and Writing' workshop); for the first time I really made myself walk the length of the banner and look at every picture. That was on the third visit! I think the writeup on the website was very good, didn't mince matters. I look forward very much to visiting your blog, and thought I would try this out first on you. There are at least 3 other woodcuts all about Iraq, (jpegs) but this was the one I mentioned when we met."

Judith's own blog:

www.judikaz.blogspot.com

# 51 [21 October 2008]

Taught my Critical Fine Art Practice students today all day in Fabrica sat around the large round discussion table in the gallery. It was part of my plan to explore new environments for teaching in. It went very well. The students fed back at the end of the day that they had enjoyed the round table and being in a 'proper gallery' and that it was good to be working and thinking about photography near Hirschhorn's banner, which was indeed a constant reference for our discussions.

I found myself saying at one point that the more I have thought about the banner the less I know about it. That it seems as if my thinking has broken down, is broken, like the bodies. And that if one of the bodies were to get up and reconstitute itself what radical potential there would be for new thought.

The students introduced very interesting perspectives on their own practices via texts they had chosen for presentation to the group. We looked at Mary Midgley's examination of human nature in 'Beast And Man', David Green's short essay 'Moving to Manual Override', an  extract about gypsies and their persecution and extermination by the Nazis taken from 'The Gypsies' by Jean-Paul Clébert and Fredric Jameson's reading (in 'The Deconstruction of Expression') of Heidegger's reading of Van Gogh's painting of the peasant shoes.

# 50 [19 October 2008]

I can't articulate my thoughts because there are too many in my head. About the role of the artist and the privilege that is still assumed to accrue to that role. Questioning that. I've tried just now to sketch out some questions about this but there's too much for now. I need to let it settle.

Some gold shoes.

The camera had trouble focussing on Georgia's shoes because they sparkled so much.

Been thinking a lot today about The Feminine, with a capital T and a capital F. About Ingeborg Bachmann. About using textiles. About domesticity. About wearing the trousers. About evading the role of the perpetrator in favour of occupying the territory of the victim. About Hirschhorn He and Diab She. About polarities and ambiguities. About the idea of keeping to an 'eye-line' - Whose eye? Whose line of vision? About aiming and firing. About shooting and framing.

Wondering how to get past and over it all.

Thinking about how little I know.

Disappearing. Like she did.

Between Ivan and Malina*

Into a crack.

But, how that is history.

We've progressed beyond that. 

We learn, we move on.

You think?

*The two male protagonists in Bachmann's novel 'Malina'.