RUA REDSOUTH DUBLIN ARTS CENTRETALLAGHT, DUBLIN, IRELAND

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/Outside the boxHilary Murray

The legacy of modernist architecture on the display of contemporary art cannot be underestimated. The social relation and intimacy previously involved in the making and display of art was greatly altered through this progressive step. The new scale of the gallery and museum meant that curiosity cabinets and sculpture gardens of the 19th Century were seen as oddly diminutive. From the 1940s onwards the artist began to make works for the public setting of the museum rather than the intimacy of the domestic setting. Many of these works could no longer be shown in a domestic setting and had to move from the studio immediately through to the gallery space. A vast number of these works have also remained within the museum and gallery system. As such the referencing framework for the artwork became the museums and galleries; spaces often tied to positions of power and systems of exclusion. In 1967, Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle proposed that ‘images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Debord argues that ‘fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at’. In art-terms the presentation of art in the gallery space provides ‘a monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply’1. The object chosen for display is a fragment of a greater project. As such, the viewer is placed in the ineffective compliance of observer.

From the 1950s a cogent style in art has failed to develop; what has come in its place is a multiplicity of approach that is wide-ranging and dynamic. SFMOMAs 2008 show The Art of Participation 1950 to Now included works by Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Janet Cardiff, Hans Haacke, Allan Kaprow, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. The title of this exhibition alone shows the approach to artwork since the 1950s required a dynamic change, one that is still in development. Prior to this, static work was shown to its full effect in the white walled gallery spaces of the cities; creating a place for pause and proposing a gentrification of the work within the hallowed spaces they occupied. The Art of Participation in its manifold forms opened up further expectations for art – the artists themselves asking more from the artwork-viewer relationship. The failure in the spaces of art to develop into relationship enhancing places has meant that much of this work cannot be shown within the gallery or museum except in their archival form.

Rather than the examination of space directly involved in the display of the work, museums have seen a complete re-evaluation of the external space. The notion of spectacle has been applied to the gallery. Often linked to big-name architects the development of museums have sought to draw the eye to the building itself. Since the Guggenheim in New York, architects such as Zaha Hadid have created buildings with greater and greater complexity, often leaving little attention to the internal dynamics of the gallery space. The gesture here is the building and not the artwork inside. The flip-side of this is the work of Yoshio Taniguchi at MOMA; the architect is quoted as saying: ‘If you raise a lot of money, I will give you great, great architecture. But if you raise really a lot of money, I will make the architecture disappear’2.   As the approach of many to the internal space of the museum remains for the most part modernist in style, the artwork therein, and artwork in general, has been deeply affected. Certain forms of artwork sit well within this type of space and they are the ones that do not require a dynamic exchange between viewer and artwork; painting and sculpture. Because of this genres such as Minimalism and Modernism are now being re-addressed. Minimalism was posited by Michael Fried to be a literalist relationship between artwork and viewer, the relationship between Minimalist object and viewer becoming that of compliant object and observer3. To what extent is this situation posited on the historicity and layout of the gallery space? Space is organized into places often thought of as bounded settings in which social relations and identity are constituted. It remains a designate geographical entity4. What one terms as relational or cognitive space is more complex; this place is defined and measured in terms of the nature and degree of people’s values, feelings, beliefs, and perceptions about locations. Thus relational place is consciously or unconsciously embedded in our intentions and actions5. For such a relation to exist however, emotional cues need to come into play, the lack of visual cues within the gallery space can make it difficult for the space to be viewed in a relational capacity. A relation may exist between the objects within an exhibition however not necessarily with the viewer. If such a relation is obfuscated can one engage properly with the work? What seems to remain the focus of art buildings is more a case of relative space, one wherein the space is devised with a view to location of, and distance between, different phenomena in terms of geographical inquiry. In this case gallery spaces remain just that – a space.

For a nomenclature of place to be proposed a sequencing of personal referents need to exist. This problem of place and the display of art are exaggerated in the case of the rural practitioner in Ireland. For artists working in the countryside the art world focus seems to be permanently fixed on Dublin. A culture of curatorial practice coupled with a wealth of venues; the capital has the means and space to actively encourage a wide range of artistic practices. Also the presence of national institutions such as IMMA, The National Gallery and The Arts Council amongst others, affirm the centralization

of art in Dublin. The development of countryside art spaces in the 21st Century was immediately linked with exciting architects that held a pre-fixed vision of what a gallery space should look like. Though not unusual, these sites did stand in contrast with pre-existing museums throughout Ireland that have utilized existing historical buildings in the display of their collections. Regional hubs were expanded; The Model Sligo, home to the Niland collection was extended and completely redeveloped by architects Sheridan Woods in 2010. Similarly Visual Carlow was developed by Terry Pawson Architects; the scale of whose main gallery is unprecedented. The development of these new vistas within the countryside landscape seems to defy the point. Because of this, the artwork shown in these venues is of a high international standard, works that would usually be shown in large city spaces; there is very little referencing of the environment around the gallery. The landscape is extant but ignored. Just as the museum structure that we know today expanded, the depiction of landscape as a style became undermined. It is as if the contextualization of a vision of the land could not coincide with a futurist building. Complexity exists within the landscape, also a changeability that belies the cool edifice of the gallery space. And yet the land is an important part of the artists work; artists such as Camille Souter, Barrie Cooke, Fiona Woods and Tim Robinson, continue to reference the land in their work and yet this connection to the land is often broken when the work is exhibited. For many rural artists the challenge of the land still exists.

The dominance of the space of art and the objectification of the art therein has been challenged in many ways. The ready-made, Kinetic Art to Performance to OP Art are amongst a plethora of genres that have challenged the expectation placed upon art by the gallery space. OP Art defined in basic terms the commercial aspect to the display of a tangible sellable object. Kinetic Art enabled the viewer to mindfully connect with the work and performance art imbuing the space within the theatrical. And yet for each of these references the terms of engagement seemed stymied within the singular – as in it pertains to either the viewer alone or the artist; never both. Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (1998) proposed an art form that required the interaction of the viewer and the work6. Relational practice is wide-ranging and encompasses most social activities; eating food together (in a gallery), sitting and conversing (in a gallery). Because of the nature of this work the referencing of the gallery space was required more than ever; it provided an ‘artwork’ indemnity. Following the success of Bourriaud’s publication and the wealth of relational artists, in 2009 curator Nancy Spector created the anyspacewhatever at the Guggenheim. The exhibition was ‘conceived in collaboration’ with relational artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija7. The Times critic Roberta Smith noted “The goal of ‘relational aesthetics’ is less to overthrow the museum than to turn it upside down, wreaking temporary havoc with its conventions and the visitor’s expectations of awe-inspiring objects by revered masters” “The larger point is to re-sensitize people to their everyday surroundings”8. And yet the biggest convention of all – the museum space, remains more pertinent than ever. Furthermore this overtly relational format has been accused of forcing participation upon the viewer without their acquiescence and full understanding. Such a manoeuvre however does allow for discourses and practices to develop that have farther reaching consequences in the dissemination and teaching of art. This attempt to alter the dynamic of the museum and gallery seems at odds with the fact that the work is resolutely displayed in these spaces, the artists themselves gaining significance through the promotional network enabled by these establishments. Furthermore the relationship proposed by the work is significantly loaded in favor of the artist. In 2012 both Maurizio Cattelan and Carsten Holler had large museum retrospectives in the Guggenheim and New Museum respectively; both shows breaking attendance figures for each establishment.

Rather than the manipulation of the artwork artists have used interventions within the work to manipulate the space itself. Mike Kelley’s Educational Complex (1995) created an architectural model constructed from foam core that amalgamates the floor plans of every school that Kelley attended. The artist reconstructed the floor plans from memory whilst claiming that the spaces he could not remember were sites where he had been abused. In this manner the artist has used emotive referencing for the space rather than referencing the physicality of it. And yet this work was small in scale and elevated in a glass vitrine, the emotive nature of the work being protected and removed from the space of the gallery. During the 1990s Brian O’Doherty used the structure of the labyrinth to alter the manner in which one encounters the gallery. The acknowledgment of geometry here also references the internal mechanism of how one processes visual stimuli. Furthermore O’Doherty’s rope drawings allow for a complexity of spacial awareness that avoids the usual expectation of the basic gallery cube, as such, there is an immediate interaction between the viewer and the space. Jorge Pardo’s 2009 exhibition at IMMA went so far as to completely de-objectify the art work and reference only the space. Reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s 1966 Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds at Castelli Gallery, Pardo wall-papered the entire gallery with 2D images of actual 3D objects. What works were featured were everyday in their focus – tables and lamps. The artist arguing that if the focus here is the space itself than the artist is mere decorator. Irish artists such as Clodagh Emoe, Brian Duggan, James Coleman, Jaki Irvine and Amanda

Coogan have employed a variety of interventions to offset the totality of the gallery format. By filling the space with the work, the artist advances the notion that the viewer encounters the work first, rather than the space. In many cases there is a spectacle to the work that entices the viewer in. The work developed by Brian Duggan for his RUA RED show Three Lives employs a complexity of objects, historical referents and projection to situate the viewer within the work rather than the space.

One does not wish to ascribe homogeneity to either artwork or gallery and one can argue that this constant challenging of the space in which art is shown provides an exemplary point of departure for new and exciting art forms. Admittedly aspects of the everyday in art would make art a more relatable sphere and yet are we downgrading the artwork by allowing this to take place? Art cannot always be placed within the landscape or be ephemeral, tangible artworks do exist and oftentimes need to be protected both literally and historically. The spaces that provide this function are also given the difficult task to display these works in new and inviting ways in buildings not decided upon by either the staff or artists that are left to use them. Such is this legacy that we now have a wealth of venues that cannot adequately address the complexity of contemporary art. What we do not want to see is progressive art forms lost or not fully developed simply because they cannot sit easily within the gallery space.

Notes:

[1] Guy Debord, La société du spectacle, 1967, numerous editions; in English: The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books 1995 

[2] ‘This New House’ by Alexandra Lang, New York Magazine, May 2005

[3] Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p73. 

[4] Geographical Approaches: Space, Place, Identity (e-book) http://socgeo.ruhosting.nl/html/ files/geoapp/Werkstukken/SpacePlaceIdentity.pdf

[5] Holt-Jensen, A. (1999), Geography, History & Concepts, London: Sage Publications Limited, p. 216, 226, 227

[6] Nicolas Bourriaud Relational Aesthetics. Les Presse Du Reel, Franc, January, 1998

[7] theanyspacewhatever, Guggenheim, 2008-09, http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/ exhibitions/past/exhibit/1896

[8] ‘Museum as Romantic Comedy’ by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, October 2008

Its too late now, Installation image, Brian Duggan IMMA Process Room Image Denis Mortell

Hugh Lane: Step inside now step inside. Brian Duggan 2009

‘This short-term evacuation’, Pripyat, Chernobyl, 30km Zone’, 2011 sculpture. 180x165cm dimensions variable. Brian Duggan

/ SOME PRACTICES OF IN-BETWEENfiona woods

Full version of an essay first published in Trans Local Act: cultural practices within and across, aaa, Paris, 2011.

On 1st April 2010, the British Army launched a Defence Cultural Specialist Unit which deploys military specialists in Afghan culture and language to advise commanders on the ground in Afghanistan.

‘The specialists will help build a picture of Helmandi society for commanders in Task Force Helmand and battlegroups across the province to help them identify and understand issues relating to the local cultural, political, economic, social and historical environment to help commanders make better and more informed decisions. . . . . Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations) Air Vice-Marshal Andy Pulford said that a focus on cultural issues is essential to success in Afghanistan. He said: “Cultural awareness has been a weakness in the past. The unit is essential to equipping the military with a better understanding and appreciation of the region, its people and how to do business there.”’[1]

In June 2010 I was involved in a Rhyzom [2] research trip to a long-term art project[3]  in Ballykinler, Co. Down, Northern Ireland which included a guided tour of the British Army base that dominates the village. Whilst there we were treated to a formal presentation by a Lt.Col. of the 2nd Battalion Rifles. He spoke in broad terms about the deployment of the battalion in Afghanistan, and the extent to which they engage with ‘the human terrain’. His account of their work engaging with complex local cultures in order to operate, (similar to that outlined in extract above), bore a striking resemblance to the contemporary discourse of socially engaged art and architectural practice. Perhaps this should come as no surprise. While the methods, tools and forms of knowledge inherited from ‘community arts’ were developed to support culturally marginalised people in their demands for cultural democracy, knowledge can be adapted for any purpose. That those tools are now being used by military strategists seeking tactical advantage in a situation of occupation is only to be expected. Every cultural production has the capacity to double as a Trojan Horse.

Global relations are largely based on the flows of capital, backed by military force as required. Hardt and Negri call this ‘Empire’, “a system of power so deep and complex that we can no longer determine specific difference or measure”.[4]  By operating beyond any detectable horizon, this system of power leaves virtually no outside from which an alternative might be constructed. [5] The example of the British Army above demonstrates how even ‘alternatives’ can be co-opted and put to use by hegemonic forces for coercive purposes. Under these circumstances, how is the relentless march of Capital to be non-violently or creatively opposed?

If change is an imperative, then it cannot be just a subversion or negation of what already exists, and Brian Massumi has pointed to the need to engage ‘with the unfounded and unmediated in-between of becoming’.[6] The idea of in-between as a condition under which properties of resistance can emerge is one that I want to consider, particularly how a ‘resistant in-between’ constitutes and is constituted by a number of architectural and art-related practices operating at the current moment[7]. These are practices that are not defined in relation to any central point or ideology – they are themselves immanent experiments, with their own theoretical positions. Most importantly perhaps, they are not empty experimental forms, but incorporate skilful approaches to living and when viewed in combination they seem to describe a pragmatics of transformation.

Art’s privileged position within the symbolic order has long been used to lend enhanced visibility to all kinds of social and political processes. The status of Art demands a distinction between art and the real which secures the symbolic and exchange value of Art, but at the cost of reducing its political effectiveness. This segregation of art from the real has a limited value for current practices engaging with the in-between as a site of production. They tend to reject such binaries, shifting between action and representation without anxiety, generating use value or symbolic value as needed. These are practices that construct situations, events and images in response to selected local conditions, producing or mobilising spaces in-between where people can identify, and sometimes act upon, points of possible transformation in their own lived realities. They share an orientation towards a social which is part of a complex system of relations that includes the non-human – the virtual, the spatial, the biological, the agricultural, the technological, the terrestrial, the animal etc.

This is Not a Trojan Horse[8]  is a recent work by Futurefarmers, a group of artists and designers who have been working together since 1995. The work takes the form of a large, human-powered, wooden horse, designed with architect Lode Vranken and built at Pollinaria (an organic farm and artist residency programme in Italy). On a ten-day tour through the region of Abruzzo in Italy, this nomadic architectural form became “a physical space with moving edges . . .a vehicle for social and material exchange at a pivotal moment in this region.”[9] En route, it collected “traces of rural practices; seeds,

tools and products to enliven the imaginations of farmers through discourse, artistic production and to parade their truths to power.”[10] The project specifically alludes to the in-between as a place of connection between people and places, not presupposing any existing community but creating space for new forms of social interaction. By drawing on ‘the network’ rather than ‘the community’ as a model, This is Not a Trojan Horse avoids stereotypical accounts of rural as fixed places of tradition and stability, emphasising creative, knowledge-based practices of working land and producing food.The work moves beyond an increasingly common tendency towards  romantic documentation of ‘the rural’ through its sub-title – “Incarnating Nomadic Resistance Against Biopolitics (the discourse of traditional power)”. Biopolitics is largely associated with human life, although Nicole Shukin argues that human social life cannot be ‘abstracted from the non-human lives of others (the domain of zoopolitics)’.[11] While this is contentious, it is clear that biopolitical conditions extend beyond the human, and that by calling upon this discourse, the work of Futurefamers introduces a non-anthropocentric dimension into their considerations of environmental realities.  The three registers of ecology – environment, social system and human subjectivity – which Felix Guattari articulated[12], are not separable in practice.

Futurefarmers is a hybrid network, drawing people together from a number of fields and disciplines in the construction of spaces and events which respond to the local conditions of a given context or situation. Its productions are collective assemblages that work towards the creation of commonality and/or commons. In opposition to current economic and political structures, which render the natural world and all of its inhabitants as resources from which profit can be extracted, practices that engage with the in-between operate contrary to forms of enclosure. In some cases this involves documenting and understanding mechanisms of enclosure, in others it is about developing counter-strategies, carrying out or documenting contrary actions. It can be a way of modelling or producing commons, or opening a space for discussions of what is common, including whether or not the commons is restricted to humans. The in-between is what is not (yet) owned, or what can still be made common.

A creative and intellectual commons movement is already well developed: the concept of information sharing and open source predates computer technology, and its principles extend well beyond the free software movement. There is talk of an ‘emerging commons paradigm’ [13] manifesting as local resistance to the politics of water, to the corporatisation of natural resources, to the enclosure of public space, the privatisation of the internet etc. However, anti-commons is a powerful force. The internationally influential US Patent system, which issues 3,500 patents a week, generally favours the rights of property over those of common interest, with little non-patentee input into policy or decisions [14]. In the 1980’s, when the patenting of biological matter was legalised in the US, the huge economic potential of biodiversity and related traditional knowledge led to rampant bio-prospecting (or biopiracy as it’s known to its opponents), with patents on living matter extending to thousands. The simple act of seed-saving is now a potential criminal act in many parts of the world. Even for those who are not interested in biodiversity, these developments shed light on the knowledge economy as a mechanism of enclosure. Anti-commons exposes Capital at its most voracious.

HURL (Home University Roscommon Leitrim) is “Ireland’s newest university”, formed in 2009 in rural north-west Ireland by a multidisciplinary group of individuals committed to the ‘exchange of soft knowledge’[15]. HURL does not commodify knowledge, but seeks to facilitate its transfer from person to person, placing an equal value on abstract knowledge and know-how. The model of education proposed by HURL identifies every private or public space as a potential place of dynamic knowledge exchange. This transmedial practice operates both inside and outside the space of art, using forms of assembly that are real and virtual.

HURL invites others to create their own version of Home University, working towards the establishment of a Home University network. By acting in common with others, this and other practices in-between find ways of generating and sharing knowledge, ideas and productions across time and space, involving fluid sets of actors and incorporating lived and sensed experiences. They engage with issues, sites and groups of people that are ‘local’, but they operate within a trans-local condition so that there is no fixing of place or community identity but an opening up to displacement. Arising from the productive tension of local / global, displacement allows new narratives and thought forms to be assembled from previously limiting binaries such as local/global, rural/urban, tradition/innovation, knowledge/imagination, human/ non-human etc.The Herbologies/Foraging Networks recently emerged from the Baltic region, initially from Finland and the Kurzeme region of Latvia. Composed of a transnational group of practitioners, operating across multiple platforms, it explores the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants through events and workshops, placing that information within the context of online networks, open information-sharing and biological technologies.

“Herbologies refers to the different ways of knowing about plants and their extracts (as well as sometimes fungus and bee products), as wild and cultivated food, medicine and related crafts. Foraging Networks raises awareness of organised behaviours and practices in gathering wild food, potential networked actions in micro to macro ecosystems or socio-political levels. The slash in the project name indicates the uneasily-reduced connection between cultural knowledge, social practice and extended resources in these subjects. Combining with the fields of social/visual arts, craft, cultural heritage, media, network cultures and technology, the programme has directed attention to the  different  ways of sharing knowledge, especially within the Baltic Sea region and between different generations. Furthermore, it has also been initiated from the position of ‘not-knowing’, and being an immigrant to a landscape and environmental habitat.”[16]Situating knowledge of the edible qualities and useful properties of wild plants within a cultural commons, along with aesthetically inclined ways of knowing, or know-how; “how to gather, how to prepare, how to use, reflections on use and how such knowledge is learned”,[17] Herbologies/ Foraging Networks responds to a developing interest in sustainable food production, and forges a trans-generational link between traditional knowledge and innovation that can be reproduced in multiple localities.

Practices engaging with the in-between as a site of production, including many not mentioned in this text, might be described as forms of action-research in the way that they combine deceptively simple actions with multifaceted inquiries into the working of things. They are collective productions; they are neighbourhood events. They are assemblages of human, non-human, material and immaterial forms; they are art and farming projects. They are hybrid networks of culture, nature, science, discourse and technology; they are communal gardens and discussion groups.

Forms of attention lie at the heart of aesthetics, and these practices employ the embodied inquiry of aesthetics to consider both what is, and what is emerging. In so far as they place an emphasis on skilful living, as opposed to competitive advantage, they function as nodes for the emergence of possible change.

Notes:

[1] British Army website, http://www.army.mod.uk/news/20420.aspx accessed August 2010

[2]  www.rhyzom.net

[3] The artist Anne-Marie Dillon has spent a number of years working with micro-communities of interest in the village of Ballykinler which owes its existence to, but has a complicated

relationship with, the local British Arrmy base.

[4] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, New York: Harvard University Press, 2000, pp 210 – 211[5] This is of course debatable, particularly in relation to the question of whether the challenge to ‘Western Capitalism’ posed by Islamic Fundamentalism constitutes an ‘outside’ or only an inversion.

[6] Brian Massumi, ‘The Autonomy of Affect’, in Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham: Duke University Press, 2002, p 31[7] The reference to practices located ‘in-between’ first came to my attention in relation to the work of aaa in ‘How to make a community as well as the space for it’ by Doina Petrescu in Space Shuttle, eds. Peter Mutschler and Ruth Morrow, Belfast, 2007. Also available on http:// www.re-public.gr/en/?p=60, accessed August 2010

[8] Futurefarmers, This is Not a Trojan Horse htttp://www.futurefarmers.com/ thisisnotatrojanhorse/about.html accessed August 2010

[9] http://www.futurefarmers.com/thisisnotatrojanhorse/about.html

[10] http://www.futurefarmers.com/thisisnotatrojanhorse/about.html

[11]  Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital: Rendering life in biopolitical times, University of Minnesota Press, 2009, p 9

[12]  Felix Guattari, Les Trois écologies, partial translation by Chris Turner, 1989, Paris: Galilee: full translation by Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton, London: The Athlone Press, 2000

[13] On the Commons website - ‘About the Commons’ http://onthecommons.org/about- commons, accessed August 2010

[14]  For further details see The Public Patent Foundation website  http://www.pubpat.org/About.htm, accessed August 2010

[15]  Home University of Roscommon and Leitrim website, http://hurllearning.wordpress. com/ accessed August 2010

[16]  Andrew Gryf Patterson, ‘Introduction in English’, Herbologies/Foraging Networks website http://herbologies-foraging.net/about/introduction-english accessed August 2010

[17]  Gryf Patterson, Introduction http://herbologies-foraging.net/about/introduction-english accessed August 2010

It’s practically standing still now.

They’ve dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship, and they’ve been taken a hold of down on the field by a number of men.

It’s starting to rain again; it’s—the rain had slacked up a little bit.

The back motors of the ship are just holding it just, just enough to keep it from — It burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it’s falling, it’s crashing! Watch it! Watch it, folks! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie! It’s fire—and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my, get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames, and the—and it’s falling on the mooring-mast and all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. [Indeciperable word(s)] It’s–it’s–it’s the flames, [indecipherable, possibly the word “climbing”] oh, four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it ...

it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s flames now ... and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here.

I told you, I can’t even talk to people whose friends are on there. Ah! It’s–it’s–it’s–it’s ... o–ohhh! I–I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it’s just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk, and the screaming.

Lady, I–I’m sorry. Honest: I–I can hardly breathe. I–I’m going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah—I can’t. I, listen, folks, I–I’m gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.

Herbert “Herb” Morrison (May 14, 1905 - January 10, 1989) was an American radio reporter best known for his dramatic report of the Hindenburg disaster, a catastrophic fire that destroyed the LZ 129 Hindenburg zeppelin on May 6, 1937, killing 36 people. Morrison and engineer Charlie Nehlsen[1] had been assigned by station WLS in Chicago to cover the arrival of the airship in New Jersey for delayed broadcast.Radio network policy in those days forbade the use of recorded material except for sound effects on dramas, and Morrison and Nielsen had no facilities for live broadcast. Still the results became the prototype for news broadcasting in the war years to follow. Morrison’s description began routinely but changed instantly as the airship burst into flames:

Game Over Brian Duggan. Collection of game over titles, ongoing 2012

Door, 2005, Brian Duggan, Digital video, [1:39], 2/ edition of 3, aspect ratio 4:3, Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Purchase 2006. Digital still image courtesy the artist and IMMA

/Brain Duggan & Hilary MurrayFebruary 2012

HMI feel that often in your practice you are challenging the gallery space; attempting to offset the historicity and static nature to the space. However recently you were given the opportunity to present your work in the evocative space of Earlsfort Terrace - your work was quite different here; it was almost reverential. How did you feel about this space and is the space in which you’re showing an important factor in the development of your work.

BDThe space is important, structurally and formally, but perhaps a more significant element is the context and then of course the content of the work. I trained as a sculptor originally for my degree, doing all the traditional things like bronze casting and life drawing in the Crawford Art College in Cork, but then moved into digital video, performative scenarios and installation work around the time of my MA in IADT. So I suppose I’m interested in space formally, and what you can do with it, what an exhibition can do within this arena. However the other contextual elements of an exhibition or an artwork, and what the work is about, are important and are vital to be aware of.

It’s interesting you call the piece that was shown in Earlsfort Terrace reverential. I haven’t heard that before. That work was a departure, it was a change in a number of ways; not least nothing had to be plugged in. It was also the first time I had focused on a real world event. I had some good discussions with the curators Christian and Jota as the commission developed and we all agreed that with the subject matter [post the Chernobyl disaster] in this case less is more. It’s a tricky subject matter, so it’s important to think through all the elements, and what people have gone through who were there when the accident at Chernobyl and the evacuation happened.

But reverential to the space itself....hmmmm...not sure if I can stand behind that charge.

HMDublin Contemporary saw you install a Ferris wheel (a mock-up of the abandoned Ferris wheel of the evacuated city of Pripyat, near Chernobyl ( This short-term evacuation, 2011). This element of petrifaction associated to that which was once so animate reminds me of some forms of archival performance work, in that I mean it has elements of the event and yet it is a false remembrance of it, in that manner it is upsetting. The decaying structure employs the notion of nostalgia yet retains the draw of the oddity, as if one say suddenly came across ones old toys in the attic, they are linked to a person that you no longer are – the uncanny aspect to your work makes for an emotive viewer. There is a pull to the work, but in equal measure repulsion. Both aspects to an equal relationship; with this level of engagement in mind, do you think the modern viewer has in some respect become detached from art?

BD For the work this short-term evacuation, it was these type of contradictions that drew me into making this work and everything about the work all the way along held that. It was exciting making it, but also awful in a way, and the scale and detailing that went into it, brought in a tactile component, but also inversely a repellent element. As for the modern viewer and their attachment to art... it’s hard to say, sometimes it seems more, sometimes it seems less important to them.

HMThe ‘Ferris Wheel’, the ‘Trapeze’ and the ‘Wall of Death’; much of your work references historical oddities – objects of fascination that often have an element of danger or fear attached to them. The ‘Wall of Death’ however you used in your Golden Bough installation at The Hugh Lane Gallery was quite different. Whilst you did use a structure that most people would recognize, few would approach the work with an emotive character. The ‘Wall of Death’ is such an exaggerated event – one that most people will never attempt, in this sense the viewer is adequately removed from the work and can truly enjoy it. For artists the notion of a ‘Wall of Death’ in a gallery-space provides an amusing jibe at the process of art presentation. How do you feel about the museum method of acquisition and display; do you think this approach is tenable when dealing with new developments in contemporary art?

BDThe Museum and contemporary art, discuss...how long do we have? ...There is a long history of debate in this area, and there are a multitude of reasons for and against the idea of the ‘Museum’ as an institution, and large organisations are slow to change. To date the projects I have done with the Irish Museum of Modern Art or the Hugh Lane have always worked out well, and been productive. But the ‘Museum and its method of display’ is a dissertation in itself.

HMFollowing on from this I would like to ask you about your recent ARP residency at IMMA. This aspect of the remove as seen in The Golden Bough installation is not present in your work for ARP or the work for DC2011. For ARP you reconstructed the Circus trapeze within the space of the Process room at IMMA. You imbue your work with nostalgia, and yet there is also a sense of morose, the odd juxtapositioning of that which we fondly remember coupled with an element of fear is a constant focus to your work. There is a duality present in your practice. Can you comment on this?

BDIt’s important for me for a work to have many things contained within it, and for it to keep changing, not necessarily formally, a simple piece can contain lots of ideas that develop over time, including inbuilt contradictions and shifting sands. I’m thinking of artists like Like Bas Jan Adder or Tony Oursler’s work, or Roman Singer’s sculptures and videos. In a way, the IMMA /ARP installation It’s too late now, (2011) is based on simple recurring interests, but could be understood as metaphors, or leading questions to wider issues. This is just the start of how it develops.

HMThe work of Fischli and Weiss uses the static nature of the snap-shot when dealing with the funfair; a stultified image of the past – the acknowledgement being that the only way one can remember one’s childhood is a false one. In your work you seem to attempt to resuscitate the event, in this manner we are faced with a re-animated form of something that we remember quite differently. Our memories are often static images (glimpses) and yet you are challenging this – changing it.

BDPerhaps that’s where I’m starting from, for some projects, but it’s also about the ‘here and now’. Present circumstances, for the viewer, and also for the work itself. It’s true, memories do change over time, and it’s the break in what we remember and what we come back to, is an interesting area to look at. The wall you fell off into a bush of nettles was huge, but now it’s not so big.

HMThe Spectacle and the performance are both aspects to your work. The work fills whichever space it is that you are showing in. For Guy Debord in his essay ‘the society of the spectacle’ the spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living1. For Debord this presentation of images – out of context, once cobbled together present a false reality, one that the viewer has no choice but to observe and agree with. In contrast to this object-observer relation proposed by Debord; Rancière writes ‘We have not to turn spectators into actors. We have to acknowledge that any spectator already is an actor of his own story and that the actor also is the spectator of the same kind of story’2. In this respect the artist has no obligation to truth, as life is a play of events one that both the artist and the viewer are already engaged in. Do you think the artist has an obligation to truth?

BDNo...no ...no …

Well...perhaps... If I’m working on a project, I have an obligation to the work itself, so there is some sort of honesty there. But ‘truth’? It’s not really possible, which is one reason why it’s worth doing. There are some interesting artists working in this area, Aernout Mik from the Netherlands does really intriguing films and installations which question this.

HMThe multiplicity of forms employed by your practice means that you are in-effect creating an event. For Badiou the truth of the event is that of its participants: it should be sought for or listened to in the living words, rather than in the detached commentaries produced by historians (3). There is immediacy to your work, an insistence upon the engaged viewer and yet when the work is over, in its place there is a sense of untruth in its retelling. How do you feel about the art archive and the representation of performative works in the museum?

BDWith performance there is always going to be ‘right here right now’ or it will be a recreation if it’s after an event. It’s something that people who do Performance Art must work out, ‘where does performance art sit within a museum?’. And a lot of early video art came about because it was a method of recording ‘happenings’ and ‘situations’ of the performance, to show people what it was like. Although, this was problematic in a way as many performers were doing this kind of work, to get away from the art object, the

recording or anything that could be bought or sold. These records have also become valuable as an archive, for artists who come after. They show what’s come before, and what battles the artists previously had.But I don’t have any problem with restating or re-presenting work, if it makes sense.

HMWhat I have noticed about your work is that you fill the gallery space – in this way you immerse the viewer within the work immediately; the totality of the work seems to dislodge the idea of gallery and artwork interaction and enable viewer-artwork interaction. What is your view on the dynamics of the gallery space and how this affects the production of art?

BDIn relation to my own work, this is just something that has developed over time. As well as working making my own work and projects, for 13 years I ran Pallas studios, Heights and Projects up to 2008. Which I co-founded with Mark Cullen, and later also ran with Gavin Murphy. I co-curated nearly 50 exhibitions over this time, and ran galleries and project spaces as well as other events. So within this type of activity you learn how exhibitions work, how space works physically and how to build walls and cut through concrete. The manual labour to do artists run projects in odd non-functional cold spaces does take a lot of work, but I learnt a lot from working with great artists like Garrett Phelan, Niamh McCann, Margaret O’Brien, George Bolster, Will Cruickshank, Sarah Browne, Gatrreth Kennedy, John Lalor and many more. During this time, I also began to understand how the nuts an bolts of exhibitions work and it’s not always about scale. It can be more the ideas behind the work and seeing them realised properly. While major institutional white cubes can have a great impact, small domestic spaces can work just as well and have an amazing lifespan, look at the Wrong gallery. A locked door in Chelsea in Manhattan by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnik, that ran for 3 years, and ended up in the Tate at one point.

In the RUARED gallery, it was initially that the people who run the space were genuine and I liked their enthusiasm, and what they were planning to do in the gallery. Also, I have had a studio here for a few years, but never proposed anything until Karen the Director and Carolyn the other Curator approached me to think about a proposal, and outlined their ideas behind the future development of the space. The volume of the gallery was exciting and unique, but really the ideas and the work itself was dictating the scale of what was and wasn’t appropriate. Occasionally though I wish I could just do smaller works in a frame, that you can hang with one nail. Perhaps someday...

HMNow I would like to ask you about your new installation for RUA RED entitled Three Lives. The most obvious components are a labyrinth construction throughout the space and a suspended Zeppelin. The labyrinth reminded of the work of Brian O’Doherty. Why is this exhibition called Three Lives?

BDOf course I’m aware of Brian O’ Doherty’s important work, and I know him a little, some of his work is inspiring.

This exhibition has come about from a few converging roads, and at the moment I’m still building it. It’s an unusual one in a way in that I know it will work, and can see it in my mind, but actually I have never made a Zeppelin so it’s learning by doing, which is a little stressful three weeks before the show. I’m even using Pi when I’m working out calculations, for the first time ever since leaving school 22 years ago, which is a revelation.

But to get back to your question, I’m quite interested in things that go wrong, times of stress, accidents and disasters, grand historical incidents and the overlooked personal misfortunes, both before and after events. These spaces that one can recognise with hindsight, or ‘prior to’ and sense are about to happen. Within these scenarios there is an opening that I think is an interesting place to work in. People recognise this, but also are slightly unbalanced by it. Some time ago late one night, I saw a film called Farewell (2009) about Lady Grace Drummond Hay and the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin. The film was composed entirely of archival footage with narration based on the writings of Hearst reporter Drummond Hay, and tells the story of Graf Zeppelin’s round the world flight of 1929, two months before the stock market crash and start of the great depression, (Directed by Ditteke Mensink). At one point the Zeppelin is blown off course and is drifting without power over the Pacific after leaving Japan on the way to the US. It just stayed with me as a dramatic moment when things are not quite over, but almost !

And then this started me researching the famous crash explosion at Lakehurst in New Jersey that many people will know. The Zeppelin burst into flames killing 35 people onboard and one person on the ground. The extraordinary commentary of Herbert Morrison who was commentating for the radio at the time, is where the famous line “Oh the humanity!’ comes from. So from that moment on the Zeppelin was always seen as a tragedy, but also seen as a spectacular failure. People now may be surprised to know it was already in use as a transatlantic passenger carrier, and had flown several times over to the US and South America from Europe. It was a seen at the time as a craft of the future, and they still look futuristic even now, but after that event they became known as a failed dream. And for me it has a certain tone or quality worth looking at, it was a clear mark where you can say this is the end of something.

So at the start of my plans for this project we have this grand spectacle, but I was also interested in this space of impossibility and seeing if there was a way of creating something new. So for a while I’ve been interested in the idea of second spaces provided in digital arenas. Not necessarily by ‘Second Life’ or ‘Sims’, but more the idea of it. Reading about these early games like ‘Pac Man’, which was created never to end, once you had one life you could theoretically play indefinitely. You just were meant to keep playing until after a perfect play. After 255 levels, you got to this infamous level of a split screen which once you got through you started again.

But for most players of early computer games in an arcade when I was a kid, (as no one had them as home), was you got three lives, and that was that. When you died in Astroids or in the Star Wars game, that was it. I seem to remember always seeing a promised land just behind the credits when you died. When they asked you for more money or credits, but you could see the next level tantalising out of reach. So my idea for the show was to build this next level. To pause the ending of a black screen and enter into this area. So the title came as a kind of poetic nod to the early games I played, where you had three lives and anything was possible even for a few minutes. Which goes back to your earlier question about memory and being an unreliable witness to the past.

The ending of computer games is an interesting area. Many games like Grand Theft Auto and some of the multi-player worldwide games like World of Warcraft, are created to never end. If you leave and come back months later your character is there waiting for you to pick up and keep going. In some ways the traditional classic ‘game over’ screen is being phased out. There are even some now like Heavy Rain, that are seen as hypertext in a visual narrative.

A hypertextual story is essentially a non-linear narrative, in which the events that occur within the story and their outcomes are determined by the reader.[1]

This idea of a hypertext story, which was introduced by Jorge Borges in the short story ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ 1941, which many digital practitioners will know of. One of the ideas from this story is that of the structure of the book is a labyrinth “a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression”(2). Flann O’Brien did this expertly in The Third Policeman, which he wrote in 1939 but wasn’t published until the ‘60s. Which leads me back to the exhibition and the structure, and the multiple ways you can go in and out of the exhibition within the maze. In some ways you are always within it, you can’t get out, or the circular ‘Wall of Death’; in perpetuity you just go round and round.

HMIt was the footage of the Zeppelin’s crash in New Jersey that signalled its end-point, it reminded me of the 2000 Concorde crash in France which was viewed all over the world, the shock of it meant that no other reaction could be possible but to ground it immediately. If we move this scenario to the world of art production - do you think the archiving of performance art could actually initiate its demise? And yet for a work such as Door, 2005, that is in the IMMA collection, you filmed yourself performing; the work itself is shown as a projection. In the case of this work it was your choice to present it in the form of the archive rather than the institutions.

BDWell, not really, no, archiving performance would lead to its demise? I wouldn’t think so. If you archive something it doesn’t automatically follow that it ceases to function as an artwork. It can be argued that by archiving it you increase its lifespan. Some works are built to be temporary and transient, so if there is no record they’re lost.Pallas did a project with Paul Murnighan in Pallas Heights many years ago. I think it

was the last project in the gallery (pallasheights.org). We gave him a budget and the keys of the gallery. Something happened, but he never told us, that was the deal. We don’t know if there is any record of it, or even how long it may have gone on for. It might have been a show, or a painting, or music or even an opening...but we will never know. We trusted him to do something. It’s one of my favourite projects, (if it was a project).

In terms of Door. This was part of a number of works I did over a few years that was performative in nature, but they were always made as video works; I never had any interest in doing the actions in front of a live audience. In some cases it would be impossible even if I had wanted to, so the video was the work.

HMThe Zeppelin crash became the event and it became historised – the radio quote as you mentioned and the news images, and yet the object at the event’s core was displaced. It reminds me of the art object; it seems almost incidental to the canon. Like when we think of Abstract Expressionism we think of Pollock, or with Minimalism, Sol le Witt.....never the works of art themselves; is the product incidental to its production?

BDHmmmm... I would think of the works themselves. If someone said Sol le Witt I couldn’t not think of the pieces I have seen....is the product incidental to the production? At times yes, it’s all about the production. But then in the end there is always something, there is some record, even if it’s a tale or short story.

HMThe maze has a rather aristocratic, intellectual quality to it. Do you think the same applies to art?

BDIt can do, but it’s nothing to be scared of. The aristocrats did make nice mazes though. My maze will be democratic rather than aristocratic, or perhaps socialist.

HMIn contrast to much art production today there is functionality to the works within your installations. I have noticed a trend in contemporary art that employs the ‘non-functional’ machine – a work that is mechanical and circuitous with no end-point. By contrast in your practice there always seems to be a legitimate functionality to the work and because of this an end-point. Your work for me is finite, it has a point, it engages the viewer and then removes itself from them. How do you feel about this?

BDWell for me to put all the time and energy into a project, it has to have a position, it has to work. There is a genuine desire for the work to connect, or communicate something. For me exhibitions are all about asking questions. Otherwise what’s the point?

Taken from an e-mail conversation between artist Brian Duggan and Curator Hilary Murray in February 2012. To see more of Brian Duggan’s work visit:www.brianduggen.net

Notes:

[1]  Guy Debord, 1967; ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ Translation: Black & Red, 1977

[2] Jacques Ranciére ‘The Emancipated Spectator’ ArtForum 279 March 2007

[3] Badiou, 2006 Being and Event Continuum; First Edition March 1, 2006

Brian’s notes:

[1]  Invictus, Sol. Classifying Heavy Rain: Movie, Game, or Something Else?, http://hellmode.com/2010/06/06/classifying-heavy-rain-movie-game-or-something-else/ June 6th, 2010.

[2]  Borges, Jorge, “The Garden of Forking Paths”,El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, Trans. Anthony Boucher, Editorial Sur (1941).

The artist would like to thank Alexandra Caccamo, Paul and Simone for everything, Ciaran Duggan, and Duggan family. Michael O’ Connell, Pallas, all the Staff and Tenants of RUA RED, technical team for exhibition Hugh McCarthy and Paul Heary, Video tech Marc McDonald.www.brianduggen.net

The RUA RED installation images are by adam patterson. Other images are by the artist.

Published by RUA RED with kind support from the Arts Council. Installation images by Adam Patterson. Copyright @ RUA RED. ISBN 978-0-9570777-2-0

RUA RED, South Dublin Arts Centre, Tallaght, Dublin 24 / www.ruared.ie