Contemporary Photography in Northern Ireland

AFTER THE AGREEMENT: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY IN NORTHERN IRELAND SARAH TUCK A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy JUNE 2015 THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON IN COLLABORATION WITH BELFAST EXPOSED ABSTRACT After the Agreement: Contemporary Photography in Northern Ireland This thesis utilises Ariella Azoulay’s proposition of the ‘event of photography’ as a critical research method and curatorial framework to explore the affective meanings of photographs in the context of the aftermath of the Troubles signalled by the Good Friday Agreement. It examines the implications of staging the ‘event of photography’ as a curated research process and dramaturgical methodology in order to explore the political temporality of post Agreement through a discussion of the affective meanings of the work of six photographers - John Duncan, Kai Olaf Hesse, Mary McIntyre, David Farrell, Paul Seawright and Malcolm Craig Gilbert. The curation of three staged events – Spectrality and Urbanism, Place as Archive and Between Memory and Mourning - attended by a cohort of co-researchers from across disciplines (literature, architecture, law), the arts (curators, writers, visual artists) and communities (loyalist, nationalist) is both the analytical framework and the analytical subject of the thesis. In making the co-researchers response to the images central, this thesis attempts to explore how the affective meanings of images record the effects and social and cultural conditions of living after the agreement. As an agonistic process it examines the complexities of decentring the memories of the past as the politics of the future, whereby post Agreement is understood as a political project, premise and practice of thinking about the past and the future. By translating the ‘event of photography’ into the politics of communities and public institutions this thesis considers how images provide an amenable site for civic negotiation that questions the forms of social identification and cultural enunciation that emerge from the discontents of national longing and belonging. 2 DECLARATION I declare that the research contained in this thesis, unless otherwise formally indicated within the text, is the original work of the author. The thesis has not been previously submitted to this or any other university for a degree, and does not incorporate any material already submitted for a degree. Signed Dated: July 17, 2015 3 CONTENTS Introduction 1-17 Chapter One The Event of Photography: A Methodological Approach 18-37 Chapter Two Introduction: Spectrality and Urbanism 38-44 Spectrality and Urbanism 44-89 Chapter Three Introduction: Place as Archive 90-97 Place as Archive 97-135 Chapter Four Introduction: Between Memory and Mourning 136-142 Between Memory and Mourning 142-193 4 Conclusion 194-232 Appendices Appendix 1 – Images 233-267 Appendix 2 – Invite 268-269 Bibliography 270-276 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research was supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Award with Belfast Exposed and in the initial stages was supported by Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham City University and in the latter stages by Brighton University. Additionally the research was supported by an Arts Council Northern Ireland SIAP (Support for Individual Artist Programme) Award. I am indebted to the support I received from my supervisor Darren Newbury throughout the process and to the generosity of the photographers John Duncan, Kai Olaf Hesse, Mary McIntyre, David Farrell, Paul Seawright and Malcolm Craig Gilbert and to the co-researchers who gave their time, thought and commitment to the project. 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig 1.1 David Farrell The Swallowing Tree 31 Fig 1.2 Roger Ellis Family standing on rock on beach at sunset, rear view, silhouette 33 Fig 2.1 John Duncan Red Paint Marks, Fast Friend Les Dawnson 45 Fig 2.2 John Duncan Fast Friend Les Dawnson 45 Fig 2.3 John Duncan South Studios, Tates Avenue, Trees From Germany 46 Fig 2.4 John Duncan Boom Town 54 Fig 2.5 John Duncan Highpark Springmartin, Bonfires 57 Fig 2.6 John Duncan Newtownards Road, Bonfires 61 Fig 2.7 John Duncan Closing the Ring, Film Sets 66 7 Fig 2.8 John Duncan Girdwood Barracks, We Were Here 69 Fig 2.9 Kai Olaf Hesse Drawing Office, Topography of the Titanic 73 Fig 2.10 Kai Olaf Hesse Underpass, Topography of the Titanic 77 Fig 3.1 Mary McIntyre Aura of Crisis 97 Fig 3.2 Mary McIntyre A Complex Variety of Greens (From Emerald to Viridian) 98 Fig 3.3 Mary McIntyre The Underpass 100 Fig 3.4 Mary McIntyre The Dream 1 104 Fig 3.5 Mary McIntyre Interior Landscape 1 108 Fig 3.6 Mary McIntyre Untitled (after Caspar David Friedrich) 1 108 Fig 3.7 Mary McIntyre The Mound 1 112 Fig 3.8 David Farrell Colgagh, Innocent Landscapes 117 8 Fig 3.9 David Farrell Oristown (graffiti), Innocent Landscapes 119 Fig 3.10 David Farrell The Swallowing Tree 122 Fig 3.11 David Farrell Small Acts of Memory, Coghalstown Wood 129 Fig 4.1 Paul Seawright Sectarian Murder Series (Ballysillan) 145 Fig 4.2 Paul Seawright: Martyrs, Conflicting Account 152 Fig 4.3 Paul Seawright And, Conflicting Account 154 Fig 4.4 Paul Seawright Between, Conflicting Account 155 Fig 4.5 Paul Seawright Memory, Conflicting Account 158 Fig 4.6 Malcolm Craig Gilbert To Stifle Paranoia, Post Traumatic Exorcisms 164 Fig 4.7 Malcolm Craig Gilbert Remembrance Day, Post Traumatic Exorcisms 165 Fig 4.8 Malcolm Craig Gilbert Generations 1, Post Traumatic Exorcisms 166 9 Fig 4.9 Malcolm Craig Gilbert (IV) A Report of a Man Approaching Children in an Alleyway, Flashbacks: Irrational Fears of the Ordinary 168 Fig 4.10 Malcolm Craig Gilbert A Report of Youths trying to break into a Garage, Flashbacks: Irrational Fears of the Ordinary 169 Fig 4.11 Malcolm Craig Gilbert Memories of a Mortar Attack, Flashbacks: Irrational Fears of the Ordinary 169 Fig 4.12 Malcolm Craig Gilbert The Patsy, Post Traumatic Exorcisms 177 10 After the Agreement- Contemporary Photography in Northern Ireland Introduction Post-Agreement in Northern Ireland not only denotes a time, after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, but also a set of political arrangements and expectations. It also carries with it the assumption of ‘agreement’, which as the text of the Good Friday Agreement makes clear is at best partial and is to be resolved at a later time. This deferral of agreement ushered in by the Good Friday Agreement not only keeps live the contestations of ethno-nationalist claims of identity and belonging, it also sets aside and resets the more troubling questions of reconciliation in the aftermath of violence and the continuing political and social divisions of Northern Ireland. In titling this thesis After the Agreement my concern is with what comes after – how the indeterminacy of living within ‘post Agreement’ is to live within the indeterminacy of the agreement – the political and social agreement that is yet to be achieved. The Agreement signed in Belfast on 10 April 1998 and agreed through multi party negotiations, the Irish and British governments and approved by referenda in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland provides the legal framework for power sharing in Northern Ireland. Consociationalism1 as the logic of post- conflict resolution asserts the apparent antinomy of the two communities, nationalist and loyalist - ‘the substantial differences between our continuing, and equally legitimate, political aspirations’2. Without this assertion, in the logics of the Agreement there can be no agreement. The conflict, remaindered as cultural 1 Consociational theory was first applied to Northern Ireland by Lijphart in the British Journal of Political Science - see Arend Lijphart, ‘Review Article: The Northern Ireland Problem; Cases, Theories, and Solutions’, British Journal of Political Science, 5 (1975), pp. 83–106. 2 The Good Friday Agreement, April 10th 1998. For the full text see http://peacemaker.un.org/uk- ireland-good-friday98 For a comprehensive reading of the text see: After the Good Friday Agreement: Analysing Political Change in Northern Ireland (eds) Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, University College Dublin Press, 1999 1 After the Agreement- Contemporary Photography in Northern Ireland and political difference, is maintained but pacified through power sharing and the possibility of future referenda to determine Northern Ireland’s identity and belonging. Being in common and the processes of reconciliation is therefore analytically divested, since the Agreement affirms and codifies being, subjectivity and mythos as identity, ethos and political aspiration in two directions, from the past to the future and from the future toward the past, from expectation toward memory. The Good Friday Agreement not only inaugurates and authorises power-sharing it also proposes and agrees upon ethnic identity claims essentialised as political ontology. In this intensely polemical situation the peace process citizen is already accounted for in terms of ethno-nationalist affiliation and political aspiration. The political circumspection of ‘our continuing, and equally legitimate, political aspirations’ not only warns against overstepping the limits of electoral and party constituency, but also provides in many ways the primal scene of post-Agreement, as it gathers together internal security and desire to delineate between the two communities, nationalist and loyalist. In making the correspondence between community, desire and security coterminous, the two communities are encoded in a settlement which allots political representation only on condition that representation conforms to the ideological register of the Agreement. The peace process citizen is therefore faced with an abrupt question that submits the writing of history to identification through filiation (a knowing your place and being in and from your place). This process is enacted and displayed throughout the city of Belfast by the centralisation and minimisation of contact points between the two communities. The city centre reopened as a shared shopping area whilst the outer ring of the city subdivides between residential communities of loyalist/Protestant and nationalist/Catholic (the sectarian/politicised subject).

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