Tag Archives: politics

Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970

11 Replies

I have neglected this site for some time now, in substantial part because of an impending move out of Edinburgh and to a village in the west of Scotland (in three weeks’ time - yikes! It’s probably best not to think about it too much and to write a blog posting about an exhibition instead… oh, look at what I’ve managed to do here!). There is much to say, however: I have two nearly completed (and long overdue) windfarm chapters to publish - which will now come out after the move, I suspect! - and there have been some interesting (to me…) developments and photographs that have emerged in recent times that need some considered attention. But today I want to briefly discuss something that has caused me great excitement on an artistic and intellectual level.

Paris

We are just back from a few days in Paris - a long-planned trip that happened to come at a very good time in relation to the move, offering us refreshment and time to reflect. I took a fair bit of reading with me, and we spent time in cafés and restaurants, in our apartment in the 19th arrondisement (via Airbnb for the first time, which worked well), and wandered through the city a bit. We also went to two excellent exhibitions, the first of which is temporary and well-worth going to if you’re in or near Paris in the next months: a detailed examination of Erwin Blumenfeld’s work at the Jeu de Paume, the French national gallery devoted to mechanically- and electronically-reproduced imagery, especially photography, video, cinema etc. I may come back to write about this at some point in the near future, if my head isn’t too full with thoughts about packing boxes and the like. The second gallery visit we made was to the Centre Pompidou, and specifically to the fifth floor, entitled Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970, and I want to offer some brief reflections on that, related to my own field of history, historicisation and postcolonial theory (don’t be put off…!). The Centre Pompidou is the world’s largest modern art collection, and even on the basis of this one brief visit, I feel the thinking underpinning the exhibits is way ahead of other large galleries that I have visited.

History and modernity

Seen at the airport, Paris

Seen at the airport, Paris

For some time now, more progressive academic historians have deconstructed the very idea of modernity. To generalise somewhat, up until even just a decade or two ago, traditional Western historians tended towards a particular view of the world, that saw modernity as something that the ‘West’ (often undefined, but understood to be Europe, North America, Australasia, and so on, and perhaps, post-Cold War, the more ‘European’ of the former Soviet bloc countries) had ‘achieved’ and others were in the process of achieving. However, this linear form of history bears no relation to the reality as understood by most of the world. Modernity is not a fixed point, but something that is created continually - this might even be one of the few times I find myself agreeing with an institution of neoliberal finance… (this snapped on my mobile telephone at the airport on a moving walkway!).

The consequence of such an understanding is that it is not appropriate to speak about modernity in the singular - if many people in many contexts are creating modernity, then we need to think about multiple modernities. This is something that is gradually making inroads into even the more conservative fields of historical study, such as mission history (the focus of much of my research); I hope I have managed to play at least a small part in rethinking that over the years, disrupting and questioning fixed historiographies and paradigms of modernity. A key issue in such reassessments is the understanding that colonial history, traditionally portrayed as something that involved the bringing of modernity from the imperial centre (Britain, France etc.) to the colonial periphery (everywhere else!) actually involved a two-way traffic - colonial possessions transformed the imperial centres at least as much as they were transformed. A significant branch of postcolonial theory is about uncovering precisely these transformations, and the idea of ‘global history’ is an integral part of this (see C.A. Bayly’s magisterial The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 or the CLIOH World project and (free downloadable!) books such as World and Global History - Research and Teaching that a friend of mine, Seija Jalagin, has been involved in editing).

However, I have not really encountered this kind of thinking in contemporary art exhibitions. Artists are often shown as solitary creatives, and we often think of them or idealise them as such, even if we think we know better. We marvel at the inventiveness of Pablo Picasso, the nuance in Henri Matisse’s work, the delicate interplay of light and colour that Vincent Van Gogh searched for, Wassily Kandinsky’s move to abstraction with painting becoming almost as a form of music - and so on. Some exhibitions will show some of the influences upon these great men (more about men in a moment!), but these are slim and marginal. For example, I recall visiting a gallery a few years ago (I think it was London’s Tate Modern) that pointed to some of the African influences on Picasso, highlighting masks and other items that Picasso clearly referenced in some of his work (art historians even talk about his ‘African period’).

Subverting the idea of the solitary artist

A PhD student that I have had the privilege of supervising in recent years, Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan, has recently completed and successfully defended her thesis, and her work has helped me to rethink copyright in quite radical ways (en passant, I note that this is one of the most rewarding aspects of PhD supervision - having your understanding of an issue radically subverted by a student’s work).

She wrote about Karnatic music (generally known as classical Indian music) and the problems with copyrighting it in the contemporary context. Using Marx, postcolonial theory and understandings of authorship deriving from Benjamin and others, she shows why copyright is problematic in this context. To simplify considerably (I hope she won’t mind this rather brutal summary!), there are two key problems with identifying ownership of this music: (a) it is understood as being divinely inspired and so how can something that originates with the divine, however that is understood, be copyrighted? and (b) the tunes are passed down orally from teacher to pupil, and in turn embellished and elaborated upon according to certain criteria, which makes identifying a single creator difficult. Copyright as a system of ownership linked to a particular individualised understanding of capitalist modernity is difficult to implement in a context that does not subscribe to such principles of individualised modernity.

I would argue that it does not really matter whether we subscribe to the same ideas about divine inspiration of artistic work as Karnatic musicians (theoretically) do, but many of us would recognise that there is some form of internal and/or external inspiration underpinning creative work. Furthermore, I think most also understand the idea of a wider tradition and community that impacts upon artistic endeavour and the creation of a unique artistic expression, giving such expression a context and a framing (though the arguments around these claims are not something I want to develop to any great extent here).

Modernités plurielles?

However, Western art exhibitions that I have visited have only ever tangentially recognised this. There is the example of Picasso mentioned above, but the portrayal of influence tends to see the incorporation of ‘primitive’ colonial art into the ‘modern’ art of the European. This is in part a question of the situatedness of the artist and a poor historicisation of their context: for instance, whilst Matisse introduced Picasso to African art, his first transformative encounter with such art was apparently in the context of an ethnographic museum, not an art gallery.

Now, however, we should be seeing and understanding these relationships quite differently, and this is something that the Centre Pompidou has managed to do, and as far as I can tell, do spectacularly well. The gallery - a permanent albeit constantly changing gallery - presents itself under the title ‘Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970′ (Plural Modernities from 1905 to 1970), even in the title recognising that there are multiple forms of modernity being created in similar times across the globe, and the art on display reflects this. Not only do we find French, American, Russian etc. art intermingled by theme, we are shown similar patterns from around the world. From the very beginning of the gallery, global art is included, and whilst many of the traditional descriptions of movements remain (Expressionism, Totemism etc.) these are given a global context. For example, Magic Realism is related to Latin American realist movements, whilst artists from the Middle East and North Africa who developed conceptual art in ways that reflected and expanded upon European conceptual art find their place alongside more well-known (in European circles) artists and their works. A section on French architecture and the creation of colonial cities in North Africa demonstrated the ways in which Arab art influenced French architects, even though they thought they were simply building cities for Europeans in Algeria and other colonial possessions (this process is something that I have written about at length in other contexts). Above all, the global context is seen not as a colonial background for the development of European art, but rather, the global exchanges and connections that many artists were a part of are highlighted in constructive and stimulating forms, creating a fascinating discourse between artistic purity and hybridity. It is worth noting that in many contexts, the global artists’ names are not known and appear simply as ‘anonymous’ - a stark and painful reminder of the European colonial legacy that dehumanised huge parts of the world in the drive to economic and political domination.

“The techniques of European art can be as useful to us in painting as in sculpture or architecture, provided we avoid the danger of stripping ourselves of our own art and personality.” (Leandro M’Bomio, Paris, a quotation on one of the gallery walls)

Another effect of the globalised understanding of art in the Centre Pompidou is the diminution of the traditional emphasis on ‘great men’ of art. They are not displaced, but the inclusion of women from Europe and from around the globe sets them into a wider context. Not only do we find, for example, Sonia Delauney (and it has seemed to me that she is portrayed mostly in relation to her husband, rather than recognised as a great artist in her own right) and Frida Kahlo, but also many other global women, including the wonderful Behjat Sadr (a personal favourite). The global vision on offer here brings not only the whole world to an understanding of art, but that whole world also goes some considerable way to restoring the place of women in art history (nonetheless, only about 50 of the 400 artists on display are women - though a number of the ‘anonymous’ artworks may also be by women, of course).

Some closing thoughts

So is this a postcolonial exhibition? I think it could certainly be seen in that way. It is truly liberating to see an exhibition that reflects a global perspective on art, that sees and understands movements and connections in all kinds of interesting ways, and that thereby offers a far more holistic understanding of art than we might already know. I was not completely convinced by all the connections being made, but I am in no way qualified to judge art history in this kind of global way (in fact, I suspect relatively few people really are, but I’m not even qualified to appreciate Western art history fully!).

The fact that the Pompidou has attempted something so radically different in the context of a permanent exhibition is noteworthy and highly stimulating. Doing so draws attention to the ways in which global traditions have emerged, and privileges understandings of art that include artists that are usually marginalised - women, and men and women from the global context. We may not agree with the exact portrayal on offer, but as the curators themselves say, the exhibits are constantly changing, suggesting that they are themselves not completely satisfied with the portrayal on offer, constantly seeking to highlight and emphasise different aspects of the global narrative of modernity in art. As Nadadur Kannan does in her thesis on Karnatic music, offering this kind of complex narrative of art history subverts the role of the ‘lone artist’ and offers a rich understanding of the significance of relationships and dependencies, whilst allowing for individual creativity - however we understand that - its rightful place in the artistic process.

- - - - - - - -

It is worth reading the Centre Pompidou’s own brief description of the gallery, available here (click the top right language options to see it in English). Alain Seban and Catherine Grenier offer particularly interesting and helpful comments, I think. The press kit (Fr/En) for the exhibition (a 35 page PDF) offers a more detailed introduction to the exhibition.

About these ads

Syd Krochmalny and Simon Yuill: visual cultures in Argentina and Scotland

2 Replies

On Thursday I attended an event organised by my colleagues, Sarah Wilson and Scott Hames. Syd Krochmalny and Simon Yuill addressed the topic of visual cultures in Scotland and Argentina.

Sarah Wilson introducing the seminar, and Syd Krochmalny

Sarah Wilson introducing the seminar, and Syd Krochmalny

Syd is a sociologist and artist based in Argentina; he mostly works on video installations addressing social issues. In Argentina it is very unusual to work in both art and sociology. Simon Yuill is an artist and writer based in Scotland, who has been heavily involved in The Strickland Distribution and Variant magazine. I thought it might be of interest to publish my notes on their two presentations - I make no guarantees regarding absolute accuracy, but I hope to have recorded some key elements of their talks.

Argentina

Syd gave a presentation entitled The Crisis of Success: Visual Arts in Argentina 2001-2011, describing a move from an art utopia to a market utopia. There are three distinct periods in a chronological account of this period: 1) a social crisis related to the financial crisis of 1997-2003, that came to a head in 2001; 2) an expansion of the art world from 2003-2007, in part as economic recovery happened; 3) from 2005, however, there was a severe fragmentation of the art world. Although the current situation is often seen as beginning with the 2001 economic crisis, the root of this crisis in turn lies in the implementation of neoliberal policies from 1975 onwards that led to the total collapse of the economy in 2001.

Social relationships during the 2001 crisis became critically important. Different forms of art appeared; so, for example, street art that critiqued the social order played a key role in helping a better understanding of what was happening in the country. This was an artist-led movement, and the artists - through mutual recognition and cooperation - were the ones who legitimated their work, indeed, the creativity of their work in itself legitimated what they were doing. This meant there was no need, no call for, no desire for, external and/or institutional legitimation. This is not to say that there were no problems in this period (for example, there were many long debates about the distinction between art and politics, between creativity and social action), but it was a tremendously creative time for a wide range of artists who produced all kinds of interesting visual work that helped to change the way people understood their situation.

Syd Krochmalny (with Sarah Wilson)

Syd Krochmalny (with Sarah Wilson)

As the economy improved (2003-2007), a more formal art market and parallel institutions began to develop. These appeared to increase artists’ opportunities to create. Galleries rapidly made international connections to the global art world and consequently began to direct work to make it ‘fit’ into what was perceived to be an international artistic community, culminating in a 2011 pavilion being bought by the Argentinian government at the Viennese Biennale. However, as artists began to participate in the global art market, it was noticeable that they began to fall into line with the market-led art institutions. Disagreements emerged over how to react to the marketisation: is this art or political action? is it ‘inside’ or ‘outside’? is the creator an artist or a social agent? what has primacy: a love of art or professionalisation? are people (still) working for themselves? Many artists felt themselves to be caught up in a series of contradictions, and struggled to reconcile these divergent positions.

These changes in the Argentinian art world, brought about directly by the commodification of an artistic practice - street art - that had emerged in a context of social action, did not just impact upon the artists of the time, but also impacted upon the new generation of artists. This new generation, however, do not feel the same contradictions about their work as their elders. In part this comes because their work integrates social and political issues from the beginning: in their understanding, activism itself can be a commodity, with artists working with disadvantaged groups in favelas (urban shanty towns), for example. Furthermore, many of the younger artists come from upper and upper-middle class backgrounds whose parents already have some kind of established connection to the art world, perhaps as gallery owners, art editors etc. This essentially makes this younger group of artists an ‘aristocracy’ utilising privileged family connections to further their work. A lack of social movement is the result, heralding a less equal society. Syd termed this ‘social closure’, pointing to the success of the art world in the post-economic crisis period: “The simultaneous qualitative and quantitive growth of institutions, of the market and in the number of artists has produced a ‘social closure’” - of course, this also mirrors wider stratification of society.

Therefore, although there might appear to be a vibrant new art scene that has emerged in recent years, Argentinian art, Syd argued, is actually facing a ‘crisis of success’ as a result of the commodification of what had previously been a means of critiquing neoliberalism. The problem now, he argued, is that neoliberalism appears in many instances to have taken over the critical nature of art, and thereby neutered the critical edge.

Scotland

Simon noted that Scotland has not, of course, had to cope with the same kinds of crises as Argentina. But other crises in the art world have emerged, also centred around neoliberal marketisation. For example, the very idea of there being ‘creative industries‘ is inherently problematic as a means of valorising artists’ work. There is a contradiction in this statement: it appears to be something outside the ‘art world’, but is valorised within it. This leads to ‘organisation isomorphism’, a term that originated with analyses of the co-operative movement. It describes the ways in which the egalitarian and horizontal nature of co-ops began to change to meet the needs of external actors, resulting in hierarchies and more vertical structures (chief executives, spokespeople etc.). Regardless of how an organisation conceives of itself, it is forced to change in order to interact with external agencies. In the art world, this is especially manifested in artist-led groups’ relationships to funders, and there is clear evidence that artist-led groups begin to mirror the structures desired by funders. These market-driven imperatives also then impact upon the priorities of the groups concerned and even the areas deemed appropriate to work in. Jennifer Wolch’s work on ‘the shadow state’ discusses precisely this issue: she shows how governments co-opt critical and liberatory movements, thereby maintaining control over them.

Simon Yuill

Simon Yuill

Simon pointed to two key ways, amongst others, in which this manifested itself:

  • there is a general issue about the access to resources: artist-led groups need funding, and they often need space in which to work.
  • there are also constraints imposed upon artistic expression through the market or the state. Such constraints are often structural (how to organise in order to suit funders, for example, becoming charitable bodies etc.) or situational (relating to opportunities and threats) or operational (when regulatory norms determine a group’s behaviour).

Elaborating on these a little more, Simon pointed to some examples:

  • artist-led groups might, for instance, want to make use of collective spaces, but the allocation or continued use of these can be problematic. Long-standing arrangements that might exist (use of unwanted buildings for nominal rents etc.) are subject to sudden and unpredictable change. In Glasgow the city council has a long history of offering artist-led groups cheap rent for buildings they did not use but wanted to keep. However, in 2010 the council created a private property management company and many of these buildings were transferred to it. Two key things have now changed: high rents are being threatened (from a ‘peppercorn’ £1 to a ‘market-rate’ of £700 in one example that Simon gave), and new leases have been issued that include liability for maintaining the buildings, meaning much of the risk in using the buildings is being transferred to the artists. Evictions have become a real possibility.
  • the (former) Scottish Arts Council created a funding scheme to enable artists to be given opportunities to sell art commercially (using galleries and so on). This does not account for artists who may want or need to create art that is not for selling but that might have a different rationale behind it. The marketisation and commodification of art is a long way from the original raison d’être of some of these artist-led groups.
  • a key threat to artist-led groups is the constant worry about the possibility of funding that has been granted then being withdrawn (Simon’s Variant magazine is an example of this). Creative Scotland (the successor to the Arts Council), has been heavily criticised for cancelling a flexible funding scheme that enabled longer-term planning, as it could be used to cover a groups’ core costs. Now Creative Scotland focus only on project funding - and yet core costs still exist, of course. Furthermore, as this is all project-led, the funding is more easily withdrawn. Perhaps most seriously, project-led funding means that every single project needs to be vetted by Creative Scotland, resulting in hierarchical, top-down directing of what artists are doing.

In the wider context there is a suggestion that all of these funding and creative elements are part of an ‘art world ecology’. This kind of language suggests complex, self-sustaining, self-regulating structures - but it fails to recognise that ecology tends towards collapse as much as towards sustenance. This becomes visible in the hierarchy of art schools, through to artist-collectives, small galleries, and then larger (even national) galleries. The ‘industry’ of art managers, curators, funders and so on all play a part in the isomorphism of artistic creation.

In Scotland we have seen the emergence of a reactionary discourse that claims to protect, but actually reins in, artistic practice. The result is that artist-run practice can be seen as a kind of medieval guild system that includes a revival of a bourgeois structure, including hierarchisation and the construction of privileged networks. An increasing emphasis on philanthropy is a marker of this phenomenon. Subversion is claimed as if art is inherently subversive, without actually showing or declaring how this might be the case. The result is the establishment of an order, a bourgeoisie.

Of course, an artist-run space is not inherently subversive. It is more complex than that: subversion needs to be regained, not by invoking creativity per se, but by placing the artist as a worker, albeit a precarious worker (see the recent discussion around the widespread emergence of a ‘precariat’). In so far as possible, removing the effects of organisational isomorphism has the potential to enable the re-emergence of a more subversive art.

Concluding comments

In a week when the Tory Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, Maria Miller, displayed breathtaking levels of ignorance and philistinism in discussing the place of the arts in society (see Tiffany Jenkins’ comment from a Scottish perspective on Miller’s speech), the presentations by Syd Krochmalny and Simon Yuill offered clear analyses of the malign influence of neoliberalism on artistic cultures. The discussion that ensued picked up a number of these themes, but I think it perhaps best to end with a memorable line from Syd that seemed to me to encompass a key point of what both he and Simon were describing:

“Art is the possibility to create, all the time, the definition of art.”

Edinburgh’s Bedroom Tax protests

Leave a reply

I went on the Edinburgh protest against the ConDem government’s iniquitous Bedroom Tax today. I was struck by the creativity of some of the banners and placards, and especially by the mood of the people taking part: there was real anger, and a sense that concentrated resistance to the ConDem government is emerging across many sectors of society. Of course, Scotland didn’t vote for this government - the 2010 Westminster election in Scotland resulted in 1 Tory MP and 11 Liberal Democrats (Labour won 41, and the SNP 6 seats) - and this is one of the factors encouraging the independence movement, as you can see in some of the photos. Several people noted that just as the Bedroom Tax is being introduced, the Deputy PM is taking a wee holiday in a house with 20 bedrooms. Anyway, here are some images from today that I wanted to share:

Wind power

15 Replies

I am realising that the rather depressed tone of my last posting represented the end of a period of feeling somewhat demoralised about what I was doing, and not, as I thought at the time, a statement about being in the middle of such a period. What helped me realise this were primarily the helpful comments to that posting, and several conversations on Twitter - social media can be a wonderful thing!

A few days after that posting we went to Strathpeffer for a weekend (weekends away are a very rare and precious occurrence, given my wife’s work!). This is several hours drive from our home in Edinburgh.

Travel is often productive thinking time for me, and on this journey north an idea began to form. This idea then encountered various stimuli over the weekend, including a conversation on Sunday morning with Iain Sarjeant and Iona Finlayson that touched on some key issues about what ‘home’ was, what and where it could be, and related topics. As we were driving south after that, these ideas became much clearer to me, and I am now able to articulate them in an early form: I want to pursue a detailed photographic essay examining wind farms in Scotland.

What’s so special about wind farms?

If you follow the news in Scotland, you will be aware that wind farms are a very controversial issue, with proponents and opponents disagreeing about whether to support their construction or not. It seems that much heat and little light is generated in these debates. Perhaps, through some photography and writing, I can contribute a little to some light?

My journey north and then south again meant seeing a fair number of wind farms on the hills. Just down the road from Strathpeffer it was possible to see a number of windmills on the hillsides. There are wind farms fairly close to Edinburgh. There are plans for more all over the country: last summer on the Isle of Lewis we heard of plans to build a wind farm in the centre of the island. And the windmills themselves elicit strong reactions. I began making some images last weekend, and tweeted about this:

Kath Hudson responded with a visceral comment:

When I said that I had encountered smaller ones in Germany that were still intimidating but nonetheless impressive, Kath wrote back to say: ‘They really did give me that creepy shiver down the spine feeling. They are just unnatural and WRONG. Too big, too alien… ‘

I think many people will relate to Kath’s reactions, but, whilst important, the key issue for me is only partly about aesthetics and emotional reactions of this kind. On another level: it is undeniable that wind farms alter the appearance of the landscape, but so do nuclear power stations (see Bruce Percy’s study of Torness on the A1), or the dirty coal-fired power station at Cockenzie, just down the coast from me and almost always in view, it seems, when I’m on the beach:

Cockenzie power station from Portobello beach

Cockenzie power station from Portobello beach

The thing is… my leftie, green and social instincts all say “nuclear/coal etc. bad, wind/solar etc. good”… and yet, and yet… I do get the point behind some of the wind farm objections. So what I plan to do in this essay is explore some of the related issues around wind farms and reflect on different ways of understanding and interpreting them. If the only perspective, the only quilting point we use, is the idea of despoiling wild land, then opposition to wind farms becomes almost automatic. If, however, we use alternative quilting points, alternative starting points, then we might find our response to wind farms becomes more nuanced. For example, a slightly different perspective that comes to mind is a fairly common one: what about the alternatives - nuclear, coal, but also hydro, solar etc.? However, I am also interested in the question of power, understood in different ways: wind farms generate electrical power, but are also statements of power (over the landscape, in their construction, ownership and so on). How, for example, do these two forms of power relate to one another? Using that question as a quilting point leads to a series of other related questions and quilting points, such as:

  • windmills versus wind farms - why does Germany often have individual windmills, whereas here we seem to go for large wind farms?
  • what do wind farms say about my understanding of my home - how do I envisage and help to create the kind of home I want Scotland to be, for me, for those around me?
  • it is often argued that wind farms are put in places that are ‘wild’, but what do ‘wild’, ‘wildness’ and ‘wilderness’ mean in contemporary Scotland?
  • what is the meaning of ‘green’ in this context - ‘green’ landscape, and ‘green’ environmentally-friendly? I might also add that I recently joined the Green Party…
  • local democracy - who gets to decide on the construction of wind farms?
  • if, as many campaigns seem to argue, ‘there’s a place for wind farms, but it’s not here’ - what and where is their place?
  • land ownership - how does the ownership of particular areas impact upon the construction of wind farms, especially considering much of Scotland’s land is owned by people with no significant connection to it?
  • social justice - in what ways do wind farms impact upon employment, housing and so on?

These latter issues also play directly into the current social, political, civic and ideological context around the question of independence: the 2014 referendum in Scotland will decide whether Scotland continues as part of the union of England and Scotland or becomes an independent country once more. Independence in this context means, for me at least, that Scotland will be free to govern itself without undue interference from Westminster (and in framing the question like this, it will be clear that I am now firmly on the ‘yes’ side!). Over the years I have sincerely sought to understand and reflect upon the ‘no’ argument, a position I almost ‘naturally’ come from, but, with Joyce McMillan, I see a paucity of any kind of positive vision for the future in the ‘no’ campaign, something that the ‘yes’ campaign inspires and addresses in a multitude of ways, sometimes naively, mostly realistically. Decisions about land, home, planning, social justice and all these other issues that make up the kind of society we want to be are issues that play directly into the referendum. How would we think these things through if we could look at them afresh, as a ‘yes’ vote has the potential to allow, whereas a ‘no’ vote is likely to continue with the same rotten system we have now? Using wind farms as a quilting point perhaps has the potential, as the 2014 referendum approaches, to offer interesting insights along the way - at least for me! ;)

There will be many more issues that can be addressed, and I’m sure I’ll discover new quilting points and new perspectives as I go. For some of these issues, I can imagine the kinds of photographs and texts I might create, and for others I have no idea how I might address them photographically, or in any other way! And yet this not-knowing is very exciting. There is no end point, just exploration: I just want to see where all this takes me. Of one thing I can be sure: there will be blog postings about this, and also gallery pages.

As an aside: my new large format camera seems ideally suited for certain elements of this effort: there are certainly going to be elements of architectural photography, and so utilising the view camera’s movements to photograph windmills makes sense. In other contexts, I may find my smaller cameras more suitable.

I’m aware that there are many others who have pursued this kind of project in the past (for example, Rob Hudson recently sent me a link to Francis Hodgson’s piece in the FT on Richard Misrach), but perhaps there is still something new to be explored here, in my context, in my home?

Hollow Water at Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba

Leave a reply

I’m spending a week in Canada at a conference organised by the Canadian School of Peacebuilding at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on ‘Healing Justice Communities’; I’m here because of my own involvement in the Iona Community. Other communities represented here are from Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, France, Israel, and a community here in Manitoba. The purpose of the week is to look at ways in which trauma and healing are addressed in community contexts, and to share understandings and opportunities.

Yesterday we were privileged to spend the day with people in Hollow Water, a First Nation community dealing with incredible external and internal pressures. Hollow Water/Wanipigow is about 200km north of Winnipeg, on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. I have long known of the problems with Canadian residential schools (look that up if you don’t know what I mean), but was unaware that the level of discrimination and deprivation intentionally created by the Canadian government in the past is in large measure still perpetuated today. I didn’t know that the South African creators of Apartheid came to Canada to see how to create reservation and discriminatory systems, for example, and these systems continue to exist, with the provisions of the Canadian Indian Act determining much of how life works for First Nation peoples.

Hollow Water, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba

Hollow Water, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba

Hollow Water is located on the shores of Lake Winnipeg. The location appears idyllic, but it is a fraction of the space the community traditionally sees as theirs to move in - one of the speakers described the reservation system as an open-air prison.

What was most moving about it all was the resilience and creative nature of what people were doing in Hollow Water as a community to engage with the political and social realities they faced. This is happening with input from the youth and young adults, the parents and elders, all seeking to re-create and re-interpret old societal structures in the reality they find themselves in, a reality that is deeply destructive to their way of life, whether this be the fallout from the residential school years, the industrial pollution of the water, or the discrimination in judicial processes or… That is a common experience in relation to all the communities represented here: on Monday, we heard about Sarvodaya‘s engagement in Sri Lanka, and in the coming days we will be engaging with the other communities here too (my colleague and I from Iona presented on our context on Monday). There are some things that are only possible in community: whether this be confronting the ravages of neo-liberal economics, the trauma of discrimination and extermination, deprivation and de-development in situations of conflict… these things are too strong to successfully face alone (not least since the proponents of these things are usually part of a community too, whether they are aware of it or not - think of collective identity and group-think amongst e.g. bankers to understand what I mean).

Hollow Water, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba

Hollow Water, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba

At the end of the day, we wandered off along the shore of this little section of Lake Winnipeg (if you clicked on the map link above, you’ll realise Lake Winnipeg is enormous!), and in that short time alone with my camera, it was good to reflect on some of the difficult and traumatic stories we’d heard during the day. Having been introduced to Hollow Water’s understanding of the interconnectedness between the land, the water, the plants and the skies, and people’s place in this system - not that dissimilar to ancient Celtic traditions in Scotland and elsewhere, I think - it seemed appropriate to go and wander along the shore for a while engaging with these elements. Given all that we had engaged with during the day, these images for me convey something profoundly political in their representation of this little section of the lake, not least since I now know it is a space that is under considerable threat.

Iona, Helmsdale, Winnipeg

Leave a reply

In June this year I shall be participating in a conference in Winnipeg, Canada, representing the Iona Community, of which I am a Member. I shall be there with another Member, and we have been asked to make a presentation introducing our Community to the other participants. One of the things that makes us quite distinct from many ‘religious communities’ is that we don’t live together in one place - our membership is dispersed all over the world and meets together only occasionally, sometimes on Iona, and often elsewhere. We do meet regularly in local networks, but the idea of a dispersed community, bound by a commitment to a common ideal, is not one that many people find easy to grasp straight away.

Iona Abbey, ca. 1990 or 1991

Iona Abbey, ca. 1990 or 1991

The Community was founded in 1938 by George MacLeod, a Scottish minister, who conceived of a community that would rebuild the ruined Abbey on Iona in order to work at rebuilding relationships within society. He wasn’t interested in rebuilding the abbey for its own sake: rather, this was to be a place where the disconnect he saw in so much of the churches’ engagement with the public sphere was reversed, where prayer and politics met. He was a mystic, activist, saint, thorn in the side of entrenched power and authority - and raconteur par excellence. His telling of the founding of the community in a film available from the Community’s publishing division includes the immortal line that I have often used myself: ‘And if you think that’s a coincidence, I hope you have a very boring life.’

I recently read something about the statue dedicated to the Highland Clearances in Helmsdale, on the far northeast coast of Scotland (past Brora, before Wick) - and found out that there is a partner statue in Winnipeg, where a great many Scots ended up. MacLeod’s line came to mind: if you think that’s a coincidence…!

Clearly, what this means is that I’ll need to make a trip up north to Helmsdale at some point soon in order to photograph the statue there - and then photograph the Winnipeg version in June. For me there are clear links between the dispersed, diasporic community that I am a member of, and the diasporic spread of Scots all over the world, including in - by coincidence! - Winnipeg (though the Iona Community hasn’t ever engaged in the rampant ethnic cleansing that Scots in North America were part of…). I’ve looked into trains, and an 18-hour day with about 13 hours on trains means I could make it there and back in a day with enough time to make some photographs in semi-decent light - I think I can manage that, even in the middle of the teaching semester, if I write new lectures on the train…

——-

A note about the photograph of the Abbey: this is a scan of an 8×10″ print of an image I made in about 1990/1. I can’t find the negative (I wasn’t as organised back then… it is somewhere…). However, I have recently found this print, so for this website that is ok. Although I can’t find the negative I think it will have been some kind of cheap Kodak print film, perhaps ISO200 or 400, which is what I used a lot at that time.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Community, I can warmly recommend this short history by a former Leader, available as a proper book, and as an ‘ebook’. Or visit the Iona Community website. Or write to me!

The text of a letter inviting the ‘taxman’ (or ‘taxwoman’?!) to lunch to discuss my taxes, following Goldman Sachs’ example

Leave a reply

Here is the text of a letter I wrote to HMRC yesterday, requesting a meeting to discuss paying less tax.

My request follows the example offered by Goldman Sachs: if they can negotiate lower taxes over lunch, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to do so. Clearly, the government’s talk of austerity etc. can’t be right if large amounts of tax can be waived over a lunch, and so we should all be able to pay less tax than the calculations offered by tax officials and accountants suggest.

I am, of course, very happy to pay my fair share of taxes, but the word ‘share’ is key: it presupposes that others will also pay their fair share. If they are allowed to pay less, then I should be allowed to do so too.

Dear Madam/Sir,

National Insurance number: XXXXXXXXX

Following recent news reports, I am writing to request a reconsideration of my tax affairs.

I understand that representatives of the Goldman Sachs bank recently arranged a lunch with the director of HMRC and negotiated lower tax payments for themselves. If such high-income entities are permitted to pay less tax on the basis of a lunch with the director of HMRC, clearly the government does not need as much tax income as both the media and my tax liabilities in recent years have led me to believe it does.

The basis of the UK’s taxation system is loosely based on a progressive ideal – higher incomes result in higher taxes and lower incomes result in lower taxes. Therefore, if a high-income entity like Goldman Sachs is entitled to pay less tax than the relevant calculations suggest they should, it is only logical that I will also be entitled to pay less tax than the relevant calculations indicate. Presumably HMRC will want to treat all taxpayers fairly and you will therefore be inclined to acquiesce to my request for lower tax liabilities; this means we simply need to come to an agreement about the new level of taxes I should now be paying. Following the Goldman Sachs example, I presume we should discuss this over a lunch, and I am therefore writing to arrange this.

I should point out that as I am in full-time employment, on PAYE, and earn less than the 40% higher-tax threshold, my tax affairs have hitherto been fairly simple. As I expect the director of HMRC to be very busy with the complex tax affairs of high-income individuals and companies taking up most of his lunch-times, I would not expect him to be able to meet with me personally.

However, I would be happy to meet with another representative of HMRC to discuss reducing my taxes. Also, as my tax affairs are so straightforward, I would tentatively like to suggest that a full lunch might not be necessary: a quick coffee and cake would probably allow sufficient time to discuss the reduced taxes I would like to be paying in the coming year. Whilst this would free up HMRC staff to engage more fully with other taxpayers, if HMRC policy is that such arrangements can only be discussed over a lunch, I am happy to identify a suitable (vegetarian) establishment.

Please contact me to arrange a meeting. It would suit me rather well if we could meet before mid-February, and, of course, I would be most grateful if a meeting could be arranged near to where I live.

I should add that I imagine some of my friends and colleagues might be interested in making similar arrangements. I am therefore posting the text of this letter to my blog, and would expect to post your response and the outcome of our meeting online too. Perhaps this will help them in arranging their reduced tax liabilities.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

I look forward to seeing what, if anything, comes of this - and I intend to post responses from HMRC on this website.

A photograph of my politics

Leave a reply

I love this graffiti at the end of Portobello beach in Edinburgh - not least because a good part of my politics is summed up in this one line! I think it’s probably only something worth photographing on a grey and gloomy day, and so today was perfect.

Capitalism isn't working...

Capitalism isn't working...

I very much hope the Council isn’t going to be removing this any time soon…

On the independence of South Sudan

Leave a reply

My Sudan involvement in the ’90s led me to think I’d never see South independence, but here it is!

In the mid-1990s I worked for the UK churches, lobbying on three key issues:

  • Israel/Palestine (for example, remember Baruch Goldstein’s multiple murders in Hebron? I was involved in lobbying the UK government on that, and trying to generate action against the illegal settlers in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories)
  • Iraq under Saddam Hussein (especially on the Marsh Arabs - Saddam Hussein was draining the marshes and depriving an ancient culture of their natural environment)
  • Sudan.

I have never been to Sudan, but various Scottish and other UK churches have long-standing connections to both North and South, and my boss at the time, a visionary individual called Robin Ross, asked that I help some of these disparate connections to come together. I helped to call some initial meetings of what became the Scottish Churches Sudan Group, and a newsletter was started which the very gifted Edward Thomas edited and I published (Edward went on to write a PhD on a prominent Sudanese thinker). Bearing in mind the internet was not really available to many people, a newsletter involved real printing, real envelopes and real posting, as well as faxing copies all over the world. I eventually organised an email account (through Edinburgh University’s Centre for African Studies) and we also began to send the newsletter by email to a select few. The focus was on news, and comment/opinion that might help to encourage peace: at the time, a terrible civil war raged between North and South - and there were no signs of it ending. Through meeting countless Sudanese in the course of my involvement with the SCSG, I learnt a great deal about Sudan and its people, and my wife and I were privileged to be lavishly welcomed on more than one occasion by Sudanese families far from home, longing for the opportunity to go back should peace return to their land. These encounters, more than anything, made me realise how much more there was to Sudan than the war that was being reported on in the mainstream media (albeit infrequently, hence our newsletter). Sadly, I have mostly lost touch with these people over the years of moving around and doing different things; my work has led me to focus much more on Israel/Palestine.

Nonetheless, I have, over the years, followed events in Sudan, and it is fantastic that independence for the South is now becoming a reality - at midnight tonight local time (that’s about an hour from now!). I find it tremendously emotional, and although I’m sure it will be a long hard road ahead for the South (and the North, in fact), it is nonetheless a wonderful next step that is worth celebrating now. I hope South Sudan will develop and grow and that the wonderful people I encountered all those years ago are celebrating appropriately and looking forward to a new future.

I will certainly be raising a glass tonight and wishing the new South Sudan and its people well! And one day, I hope to visit…

Some reflections on representation

2 Replies

In my day job I have rather reluctantly found myself teaching on a course entitled ‘Global Cinema and Visual Culture - Looking and Subjectivity’ - not my specialist field at all, though I find some of the issues extremely interesting.

The first session I took was based on an essay by Homi Bhabha, which appeared at first to be saying interesting things about stereotypes and imagery, but on more thorough reading, was mostly vacuous waffle (an extremely generous statement! I have found certain older texts by Bhabha interesting and useful, but this essay is certainly not in that category).

Thankfully, the second and third sessions are proving to be much more stimulating, and involve more substantive theoretical texts. The themes are broadly centred on gender, sexuality and race, and are welcome new approaches to this subject material for me (Jackie Stacey and Jane Gaines being the main authors involved). In this context, I’m also ‘teaching’ three films: All About Eve, Desperately Seeking Susan and Mahogany (a first for me, since I’ve never taught film, and actually agree entirely with Stephanie, my 2009 muse (see below!) and brilliant film-scholar friend who derides many academics’ desire to ‘teach’ film just because they enjoy watching films - my excuse is that I had no choice in the matter!).

What this long-winded introduction is leading to is a comment about how interesting I have found it to compare and think about issues relating to films/movies and the way in which these are represented, and the connection to photography and the way in which it is represented - it reminds me of a recent discussion I have been part of. I sell my art through RedBubble, which is also an artistic ‘community’ - artists can comment on each other’s work, and there are diverse interest groups. I recently joined a new group, called ‘Religious Architecture’. A common pattern for many groups is to have little symbols (called avatars on RB) to mark when an image has been ‘featured’ each week. This new group created a challenge to decide on a new avatar for this purpose. Now I am no good at creating this kind of icon/avatar, and know it. But all of the entries in the competition bar one were of Christian churches - at the time I wasn’t sure what this last image was. So I raised this as a concern, and questions of representation and interpretation ensued in a way I had not expected. You can read the full forum discussion here.

What amazed me was the unreflective nature of so many of the comments. Understandings that for me are part of the norm - that everything is political, that all images have an ideological context etc. - and that are with me almost every time I squeeze a shutter, appeared to be completely absent for most of the other correspondents, as exemplified in comments such as:

  • ‘This is a simple group of artists.’
  • ‘I am here to show my art, not to get into a religious argument because I might offend someone because I am a white protestant.’ and later: ‘You should realise that Redbubble is an ART site, and not a platform for dismissing other peoples cultures, religions, and beliefs.’ (not, of course, that I was doing the latter - quite the contrary! It is worth looking at some of the symbolism on this person’s RedBubble home page for more clues about his attitude to such issues…)
  • ‘I don’t think most of us are thinking that deeply on the subject…’
  • and so on.

In the context of this short exchange, I was amazed that several very naive views on the place of art in society emerged: the idea that art can exist in an ahistorical and apolitical context is surely not that widespread, or am I just very out of touch with the vast majority of people?! Even if not everyone would articulate it in this way: don’t people realise that all images are always linked to questions of gender, politics, identity, race etc., and are contingent upon historical circumstances? For example, the image I had just submitted to this group was of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and there are clear political and religious elements to such a photograph, not least since the mosque itself and the vantage point I used to photograph it are in illegally occupied Palestinian territories held by Israel since 1967 in contravention of international law; Israel restricts Muslim access to worship, and forbids many Palestinian Muslims from exercising their right to pray there. How can my image be properly appreciated for what it is without reflecting on the political and religious circumstances that surround it?

Stephanie in the garden

Stephanie in the garden

Or take this image of Stephanie from last summer, on which I have recently been carrying out some post-production work. This photograph is undoubtedly about voyeurism, the male gaze and even quite overtly, sex… Stephanie’s closed eyes, her pursed lips, her naked shoulders, the tight necklace (actually a bracelet!), the playing with her hair, and her stretching are all elements in an explicitly sexualised pose, emphasised in various ways by the way in which the photograph has been taken and then processed. These elements reflect a certain dynamic between the model and the photographer: there is undoubtedly a sexual tension here, and although this was obviously ‘just’ a photograph, there is an awareness of all the complications that result from such an approach. You, the viewer, act as voyeur with me, her photographer, as Stephanie exposes more of herself than she might normally do - questions of responsibility, ownership, permission etc. arise (see also this posting). I have been hesitant about making this image public for precisely these reasons, and have only done so after showing it to her. Yes, she likes it, and yes, she is happy for it to be made public, but it is still a revealing image, one that communicates gender and sexual identity issues in a very overt way, as well as telling us something about the trust and openness in the relationship between photographer and model. Awareness of and reflection upon such issues is something I take for granted, but clearly, if the sample of photographers commenting on this RedBubble page is anything to go by, I am in a minority.

And yet, the place of conscious reflection on imagery, whether in a film such as All About Eve or in still photographs such as the two I have mentioned here, is so vital to appreciating and comprehending what we think we see. There is much that can be read into and derived from an understanding of the signifiers in an image, and to ignore this is not only to perpetuate ignorance, but also to deprive oneself of the further delights that an image is offering the viewer. Sometimes this will jump out at you (as with the image of Stephanie - partial nudity, sex!), and sometimes it will require context and interpretation (as with the Mosque - occupied beauty). Not only is such an understanding conducive to assisting in the appreciation of the image and the values it represents in the first place, but it also gives us insights into the photographer, her or his subject, the approach, the relationship between photographer and model, and so on. And this, in turn, is about being aware of our own place in the world as conscious human beings.

I find it sad - and even rather frightening - that awareness of such issues does not seem to be important to some who engage with photography and artistic creation in a serious way.