Reading – Dean, T. and Millar, J (2005) ‘Room Five: Politics / Control’ In: Dean, T. and Millar, J (eds.) Place. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 105-131.

Place is always political.

Even keeping a place empty is a political act.

Myths of a place are for political purposes such as territorial claims or to say which people should be in the place.

Communities can be bound by national or global politics.

Artists mentioned

Thomas Demand

German photographer. Presents work with various tableaux made from paper and cardboard. The places seem bland initially they are taken from recent political events. Demand is known for making photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces, often sites loaded with social and political meanings. He describes himself not as a photographer, but as a conceptual artist for whom photography is an intrinsic part of his creative process.

After perusing his website, the image that drew my attention was ‘Controlroom’, 2011. This is a model he reconstructed of the Fukushima nuclear power plant’s control room. He spends time recreating the model to then just photograph it. He says he does this to “make sense of the chaotic environment we are in”.

Sharon Lockhart

Film – Teatro Amazonas. Shows a building that represents time, and a people that represent place. Taking a cinematic approach to photography, Sharon Lockhart’s photographs are the result of comprehensive preparation and staging. This book presents images taken in Brazil’s Amazon Basin, in a fishing village on the island of Visio and among the rubber-trappers along the river Madeira. Focusing on a balance between composing to bring out certain aspects in her subjects and capturing the natural relationships of people in their own surroundings, Lockhart’s photographs explore an interesting mixture of narrative and documentary. Essays by Timothy Martin and Karel Schampers look at the photos in the context of her previous work and the anthropological significance of her working methods.

Anri Sala

Albanian artist. Single channel video work that explores the transformative effect of politics upon a sense place.

Willie Doherty

Northern Irish photographer. Black and white photos of Derry. Exploring the relationship between landscape and memory, Doherty responds to mysterious isolated settings that conceal a troubled past. Though his primary geographic reference is Northern Ireland, and especially his native Derry – a city divided along sectarian lines during the ‘Troubles’, Doherty has trained his lens on sites of contested history elsewhere in the world, including Granada, Pennsylvania and the US/Mexico border. Studying these terrains in forensic detail, Doherty’s video and photo works reveal the impossibility of objectivity and historical truth, often using diptychs to set contradictory points of view against each other. His videos unfold slowly, sometimes combining material evidence with haunting fictional monologues that speak of shame, deception, brutality and its aftermath, as if leaking the stories contained within the landscape. Assessing how these sites appear to us now, Doherty uses powerful language and disorientating imagery to reflect on how we approach histories of trauma.

Susan Hiller

The J-street project. Over 260 roads in Germany with names that represent a Jewish presence. The J. Street Project 2002–5 is a sixty-seven minute film that consists of a sequence of static camera shots of street signs in Germany that incorporate the word ‘Jude’ (German for ‘Jew’). Hiller found a total of 303 signs in streets, lanes, roads, avenues and alleys scattered throughout the country. The work focuses on the dissonance between these mundane, everyday signs and the memories they trigger of a genocidal history. The soundtrack records traffic noise, church bells and other incidental sounds. For this factual, indexical project Hiller maintained a neutral seriality in her approach. Cumulatively, however, it becomes clear that the signs are loaded with the memory of Jewish presence in the locations, not just from modern times but from thousands of years of history. The tension between past and present in the film highlights the sense of absence and traumatic loss. The place names operate as memorials of erasure.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba

Artist born in Tokyo, now a resident in Vietnam. Work draws on relationships between different cultural points. His works are often generated from multiple landscapes of thoughts combining unlikely mixture into the existing context of local history and issues.

Steve McQueen

British artist. Two related films – Carib’s leap and Western Deep. British artist Steve McQueen’s projected video and film installations are rich in cinematic tradition and compelling in content. Presented as a single installation, Caribs’ Leap and Western Deep are linked by the theme of descent. The dual-screen projection Caribs’ Leap juxtaposes luminous scenes of the beachfront on the island of Grenada—the birthplace of McQueen’s parents—with irregular images of tiny figures falling through a vast sky. The latter pay homage to the island’s indigenous Caribs, who in 1651 leapt to their death rather than surrender to the invading French. In Western Deep, the viewer takes a nightmarish journey into the hot, noisy depths of a South African goldmine. Presented and considered together, these two films suggestively liken modern mining conditions to a historical act of genocide.

References

Nathan Coley is a Glaswegian artist who produces text-based work.

Coley’s exhibition A Place Beyond Belief was first shown at Haunch of Venison in 2012 and included a range of photographic and sculptural work relating to the ritualised nature of protest and mourning. Included in the show was an illuminated, scaffolded text, A Place Beyond Belief, which was originally sourced from the testimony of a New Yorker describing a subway journey she made in the days following the 9/11 attacks. An edition of the work was also unveiled outside Kosova Art Gallery in Prishtina, Kosovo on the occasion of their independence from UN supervision.

A young woman sits in a New York subway carriage, a number of days after the terrorist attacks on the twin towers. It is early morning, and the city is grudgingly back at work. Like many of her fellow passengers, she is tired, emotionally fragile, confused and angry – still trying to come to terms with what has happened to her city. A Sikh man sits opposite her, wearing a bright orange turban. There is a strong tangible sense of hatred from the passengers towards the man – a feeling of raw anger and disgust. The mans eyes are averted, the commuters stares un-replied. His head is bowed, he is sobbing. The train travels on, stopping at the next station, the doors open and close, passengers get on and off. After a few stops and more torturous minutes, the man gathers his belongings and gets up to leave. Standing by the exit is a young black woman with a newly born baby. As the man approaches, he reaches into his pockets and takes out a handful of dollars. Without saying anything, he shoved the money into the folds of the baby’s clothes and exits the train. The doors close, and the remaining passengers burst into tears. At that moment, the woman realises that for New York to get past the attack, to move on and rebuild itself, it has to think anew, it has to look again. It has to get to a place beyond belief.

https://www.studionathancoley.com/works/a-place-beyond-belief-freiburg

After listening to the monologue, I question how far we have progressed. The 911 attacks were in 2001 and I don’t think we are at that healing point of moving beyond belief. There are still hate attacks, instances of homophobia, racism, xenophobia and people attacking people from another place. Listening to the dialogue almost seems idealistic and preachy, with a hint of naivety.

Coley’s Website

On Coley’s website are more details about the piece.

Nathan Coley made the piece after listening to people talk about the 9/11 attacks.

…the woman said she realised that for New York to be the beautiful place we know, it had to find a way to become a place beyond belief.”

He then made the piece in Kosovo, between new government education buildings, the Kosovo art gallery and a ruined Orthodox church.

To site the piece using a reference from the 9/11 attacks in the midst of building destroyed by the Kosovo war gives it a different meaning.

It highlights the worldwide issues that war causes, we often see acts of Terrorism and war as the immediate impact, but these effects are felt the world over. It gives the piece a whole new political stance, by comparing the situation in Kosovo to terrorism it highlights an area of the world that many don’t know about. The 9/11 attacks are known by most people in the western world but the situation in Kosovo is not so much. Why is it that we seem to care more about certain countries being attacked than others?

I think contextual information is vital for understanding political pieces like this. I do think it should be an essential ingredient. Of course, people should be able to make their own interpretations and views from a piece but it is important to understand the context that the artist used to create it.

Other work by Coley

‘I Dont Have Another Land’ was a piece of graffiti found on a wall in Jerusalem in the early 2000s an Coley now placed it in Charleston, East Essex, England.

The bold proclamation in the sculpture at Charleston could be interpreted as a reference to the climate emergency or the current refugee crisis. Perhaps it will encourage visitors to reflect on Charleston as a haven – a place of refuge for queer artist Duncan Grant and his friends, at a time when their identities and lifestyles were criminalised.

Nathan Coley website

Connections between works – Coley uses phrases that take on a new meaning in each place they are exhibited. They are statements that can be taken lightly, or in a very political manner once you know the context behind them.

The use of text is a common motif. He uses text as it has been directly said, he doesn’t translate or edit it. The text doesn’t always make grammatical sense. The words don’t make up a traditional sentence as there is no verb or punctuation and it is written in capital letters. The work immediately makes the viewer question where this ‘place’ is, and what belief does the artist mean?

Reflections – I am really moved and inspired by Coley’s work. On one level they are simple, it is words, illuminated on scaffolding. However, they have a deeper political meaning that makes people question world situations. There is a sense of worldwide community, that these words travel across continents but still have meaning.

References

Coley, N. (n.d.). A Place Beyond Belief. [online] Studio Nathan Coley. Available at: https://www.studionathancoley.com/works/a-place-beyond-belief [Accessed 18 Jul. 2022].

Higgins, C. (2012). Nathan Coley’s Kosovan sculpture: a beacon in bulbs. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/sep/23/nathan-coley-kosovo-sculpture-beacon [Accessed 18 Jul. 2022].

National Galleries Scotland (2019). Nathan Coley. [online] National Galleries of Scotland. Available at: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/nathan-coley.