Jeebesh Bagchi jeebesh at sarai.net
Sun Jul 28 14:39:45 CEST 2002
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dear friends,
Wth the emergence of the exemplary idea of `shared footage` from neeraj,
gurpal, setu and others, i would think the discussion on cultural production
has gone up a bar. Thanks. Maybe all these images, testimonies etc can give
rise to a shared space of interaction with people at large.
Here i would like to share the formal strategies of two installation that i
saw in Documenta 11 @ Kassel. These installations make one re-think the terms
of engagement with a public through images, testimonies, text etc.
1) Muliplicity's installation called `Solid Sea` about the forced drowning of
`illegal` immiigrants into Italy in the Meditterean sea. It is a
collaborative project between architects, mapmakers, and researchers.
The materials in this installation were:
- testimonies of people connected to the incident like relatives of people
who never reached the coast, the captain of the ship and others.
- a text that elegantly combined the factual detail of the incident, the
silence that surrounds it, with reference to the turning of the `fluid space`
of the sea to a `solid space` that has borders and territories.
- underwater footage of the debris of the drowning. Here we see shirts,
slippers, trousers, baggage floating with organic life under the sea.
- a sattelite image of the Mediterean Sea.
The arrangement: You enter the space to see a huge wall of the text. Written
in white on black, it dominates the space. This text wall also divides the
room into two spaces. One side are video monitors with all the testimonies.
You can clearly hear each sound but also get a sense of `restless memory`
from the overlap and layering of sounds on sounds, voices on voices.
The other room had two large projections of opposite each other of the aerial
footage and the underwater footage. Standing in front of the screens were two
TV sets with the text about the incident. A darker space than the other room.
After one enters, the experience is intensely immersive - the spatial layout
is the form of the work. Simultaneously, you are mobile and continiously
making new conjunctions and meanings. So many conversations emerge from that
space. The important implication of this being an installation (which is up
for a while) is the capacity to re-visit the space and re-new the
conversation.
2) Park Fiction's installation on a struggle to save a working class
playground from builders in Hamburg
This is again a collaborative installation by a group of people (architects,
filmmakers, writers, lay people who joined togetjer to keep a park in public
use).
Here the material were simple stuff that we all in india are familiar with:
- photographs, slides, and films (short and long)
- material that emerged during a long struggle (pamphlets, drawings, tool
kits, writings, correspondence etc)
- books that are singnificant and often read and circulated.
- maps of the spaces and the dimensions of the struggle
- the letters to the bureacracy, petitions, etc.
The arrangement:
- nicely designed tables with provision for filing cabinet kind of file
rollers and a covered edge that can house a small TV monitor.
They had about seven such long benches. The visitor comes and sits and moves
through the files, sees slides being projected inside the covered part of the
table, small Tv monitors running films, goes through maps, reads the books.
What was really amazing about this installation was it's ability to get a
small kid excited about it's materials as much as any interested adult.
Further, it opens out the space of interpretation around the struggle and
brings alive the process and complexity of the struggle. Again here you can
hang around, move between things and come back to it.
I am sure practitioners here can innovate and bring in approaches and methods
to create open and stimulating spaces of interactions, especially now that we
have shared material.
For those interested, this link leads to a substantial review of Documenta:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0227/levin.php
best
Jeebesh