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.
