Thing, Aura, Metadata. a Poem on Making
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THING, AURA, METADATA. A POEM ON MAKING. PHOTOIRELAND FESTIVAL PART I Conceived in 2008, and celebrating its first edition in 2010, PhotoIreland Festival 2 is Ireland’s international festival of Photography and Image Culture. It celebrates THING, AURA, METADATA. A POEM ON Ireland’s photographic talents, presents international practitioners and artists in MAKING. Ireland, creates new avenues for cultural exchange and cooperation, and promotes SEDA YILDIZ a critical engagement with Photography in Ireland. A project of PhotoIreland Foundation, the festival receives support from the Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council and other local and international organisations 4 CIHAD CANER to run the PhotoIreland Festival every year, working with a growing international 8 network of partners to multiply the impact of its programme. DRIES LIPS PhotoIreland Festival has evolved over time thanks to its openness, honesty, 16 RÓISÍN WHITE and critical vision, developing new structures that have become essential elements 24 JESSICA WOLFELSPERGER of the PhotoIreland Foundation portfolio, such as the Critical Academy, New Irish Works, and The Library Project—and more recently, the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Ireland, where this exhibition was presented in July 2019, coinciding * * * with the festival’s 10th anniversary. photoireland.org 30 A SERIES OF FORMULATIONS ON THE MUSEALISATION OF PHOTOGRAPHY NATASHA CHRISTIA 34 ON THE INSTALLATION SHOTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITIONS MAHAN MOALEMI * * * PART II ONE OF MANY SEDA YILDIZ thing, aura, metadata. A poem on making. This is an exhibition with good intentions. And let me finish with a sonnet; It is about images and wonders how images of all kinds operate optically and psychologically. Beyond objecthood and materiality, Photography, you inspire me to write. the exhibition focuses on the process of meaning-making. I love the way you struggle and survive, This exhibition uses form as an instrument, a communication; Invading my mind day and through the night, rather than an object of contemplation. There’s no landing, there’s no Always dreaming about the forehand drive. arrival; an image—like an exhibition—is not an end result. And there lies its charm. Let me compare to you a 3d balloon, You are neither real nor virtual, What would it mean to visit an exhibition on photography today, when Great sun heats the formless peaches of July, imagery is mostly And summertime has the hieroglyphic. produced, 2 distributed, How do I love you? Let me count the ways. circulated, I love your ups and downs, your past and future. consumed in digital environments? Thinking of your hectic life fills my days. My love for you is the soft dentition. Speeding up-Production-Commodification-Digitisation-Consumption- Production-Consumpt- Now I must away with a whirring heart This exhibition believes in the urgency of slowing down. Remember my words whilst we’re apart. It is a place for events rather than things. It comes with a manifestation book —this sonnet is co-written by text generator Yet it does not propose a fixed definition; in fact it is offended by any attempt to define itself. It is an open manifestation that embraces ambiguity and the contradictory. The exhibition speculates on versatility of the photographic medium and aims to provide multisensory experience to its visitors in an intimate setting. During the opening weekend the exhibition hosted a lecture performance, workshop, artist walk- through, and a roundtable discussions on image- making gathering viewpoints from artists, curators, institutions, social media users, documentary makers, media systems, forensic workers—simply who ever uses images to communicate. For more information please visit: museum.photoireland.org CIHAD CANER Photography creates victims. The monsters are back! And they invade the exhibition space to tell us stories and sing opposition songs. For a more beautiful world down with your fear, rising monsters! The ‘others’ of this story are monsters. They frequent places that the maps do not show, the ships are not moored, and the compasses are surprised. It’s a landless country. Where the world ends. Rumour has it that wild things live in a remote realm. These ‘other’ figures are the inhabitants of the border region where the mind is weakened and fantasies flourish. But, how did they become ‘monsters’? The etymology of the word ‘monster’ in different languages corresponds to monstrare 4 (‘indicate’, ‘expose’) and monore (‘warn’, ‘report danger’). In fact the monster has long been in existence in relation to the unseen—seeing, showing and existing. What type of ‘monsters’ do we invoke today? Demonst(e)rating the Untameable Monster is a simple expression of a complex thought—the infrastructure of how images operate. The artist’s response to stereotypes produced in the mechanisms of dominant image production is a symbolic, yet critical opposition. His research-based practice pursues the meaning loaded into ‘otherness’ and the image of the HAD CANER I ‘other’ as a monster that finds itself in such mechanisms. C Cihad Caner presents a conversation between fictitious monsters and animated avatars in this two-channel video installation. These monsters are unfamiliar; they differ from the images that society and power have made of the images that represent them in mainstream media targeted to shape our minds. The body of the monster is a political claim on its own; they threaten the known with unknown. Right here they do not want to be represented, but appear in order to exist. They occupy exhibition space and ask us to witness their existence. They sing for us; Love me, you better love; because I’m not going anywhere without you. Inspired by various monster illustrations in ancient manuscripts, such as Acaibu’l-Mahlukat and Garaibu’l-Mevcudat by Zekeriya ibn Muhammed Qazwini, Siah-Qalem’s drawings and Japanese yokais (monsters and supernatural characters) and? Gazu Hyakki Yagyō written by Sekien Toriyama, Cihad Caner invites us to an encounter with the ‘other’ and rethinking the meaning loaded into their otherness. Cihad Caner gave a performance lecture on Friday 5 July 2019, at the exhibition space. DRIES LIPS Photography is labour. As a contemporary alchemist, Dries Lips attempts to see beyond the appearance of things using photographic technology. His work is an invitation to question the ephemerality of photographic materials and conditions. The initial question of whether photography can capture processes takes us back to the technical and experimental origins of image-making. Yet the artist further points to the future of photography by exploring the potential of rapidly advancing technology. One could indeed speculate that 3D scanning and printing is just the next evident step in the history of photography. Through these technological advancements, the parameters of artistic production and its reception have changed enormously in 21st century. Playing with the dichotomy between craftsmanship and digital technologies, Dries Lips questions what artistic practice is. The artist looks to the alchemist tradition and makes use of oppositions. 8 He processes through advanced technology, as opposed to one of the oldest and most basic natural process—the transition of water from a solid to a liquid state. Working with a fluid material—melting ice— becomes a metaphor for the disposability and ephemerality of images in this digital age. Dries Lips presents a one-shot, 90min long documentary that focuses on the moves and gestures of a traditional sculptor, while sculpting a sphere out of an ice cube. In another video, we see the experiment the artist carried out in his studio—24 cameras captured the very same ice sphere melting in order to convert this process using 3D technology. The viewer becomes witness to how this work further evolves as works are added for as long as the exhibition runs. Thinking on the critical and creative use of photography’s reproducibility and the slippery ground between the original and copy, one might ask; is artistic practice a manual labor, or intellectual? Or rather, a mechanical reproduction? The artist does not offer a clear answer to these questions; artworks might transform, diminish or ripen as well. And thus, here the focus will be on their temporal and spatial fluidity. Visitors are welcomed to return to the exhibition and experience a continuous evolution of display works; or come back later to witness how they alchemise. RÓISÍN WHITE Photography is a long-lived marriage, of traces and tricks. ‘A couple about to be married should not get photographed together before—sign they’ll never be married. Neither should they present each other with anything holy—Rosary—Prayer book, etc. or with anything with a point—a pen or a brooch or a penknife or a manicure set holding a scissors. As all these points ‘cut love and turn it to hatred.’ —Local Marriage Customs, The School’s Collection, National Folklore Collection Róisín White revisits Irish folklore, local tradition and superstitions, taking much of her research from the National Folklore Archives. The archive is a repository for stories that were gathered by primary school children; handed down by grandparents, or teachers, or a story recited to them at bedtime. The story goes on… 16 I Think I’ve Heard this One Before is not an illustration of this archival material or oral history, topographical information, folktales and legends gathered between 1937–39; rather an attempt to explore the potential role of images in circulation of myths and knowledge from past to future. It poses questions of what might get lost and/or come into existence oscillating between archive and memory—memory and public information, pointing out counter narratives. Much of the folklore functions as cautionary tale disguised as a children’s story and many have haunted into adulthood. Rituals, customs, and storytelling are passed down through generations by word of mouth; a tandem narrative. I Think I’ve Heard this One Before is a story with many doors; a juxtaposition of what came before and what comes after; a documentation and fiction; or fiction and documentation.