LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

wreckage

STELLA BRENNAN

South Pacific (2007)

Single-channel video, sound, 10’ 30”

Courtesy: the artist & Starkwhite, Auckland. In collaboration with David Perry

The term “South Pacific” is an outsider fantasy of the region of the Pacific Islands; a place constructed by trade routes, European and US voyagers, and perhaps especially the events of World War II. Stella Brennan’s dreamlike South Pacific alludes to the conflict’s legacy in the region by using and referencing sonar, radar and ultrasound – newly invented technologies for making images from non-visual sources and making the invisible visible. Overlaying the visuals run snippets of recalled stories. South Pacific uses the memories and aftermath of war, as glimpsed through the technologies of radar, video and ultrasound, to explore and challenge the antiquated perceptions of a region and its history.

PAUL CHAN

Baghdad in No Particular Order (2003)

Single-channel video. 51’. Courtesy: the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Baghdad in No Particular Order consists of footage that Paul Chan shot when visiting Baghdad as a member of the Nobel Peace Prizenominated group Voices in the Wilderness in the end of 2002. The video essay of life in Baghdad before the US invasion and occupation shows Iraqis engaged in everyday activities during the Bush administration’s drive for war. In 2009 (the sixth year of the war), Chan’s film allows viewers to look back on times of peace and amplifies awareness of the damage inflicted on human lives. Baghdad in No Particular Order fluctuates between a social documentary and an exploration of the possibilities of representing the wreckage and loss that war entails.

HARWOOD, WRIGHT, YOKOKOJI

Tantalum Memorial – Residue (2008)

Installation, telephone exchange, sound.

Courtesy: the artists

Tantalum Memorial is a series of telephony-based memorials to the more than four million people who have perished in the so-called “Coltan Wars” that have gone on in the Congo region since 1998. Coltan ore is mined for the metal tantalum, an essential component of mobile phones, which is now extremely valuable and therefore coveted by the international mining industry and warring militias. Tantalum Memorial – Residue consists of a towering rack of switching devices from a 1938 telephone exchange rescued from the old Alumix factory in Bolzano. The telephone switches are triggered by a computer tracking calls from Telephone Trottoire, a “social telephony” network established by the artists for use by the international Congolese diaspora.

HASAN ELAHI

Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798-2006 (2009)

Map, polycarbonate, bullets. Courtesy: the artist.

Production: LABoral
Acknowledgements: Sociedad Gijonesa de Tiro Olímpico

This project maps the use of US armed forces by means of bullets, which a marksman shot at the location where each incursion has occurred since 1798 into a polycarbonate sheet with an outline map of the world. According to a Congressional Research Service report, titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2006,” there have been approximately 330 instances “in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes”. It is also a map of the expanding sphere of influence of the United States, as its military reach matches its economic scope of activities.

BÁRBARA FLUXÁ

Proyecto Coche: excavando el final del siglo XX (2006-2009)

Car, single-channel video, text archives.

Production: LABoral Acknowledgements: Cecilia Sancho, Carlos Marín, Skimo Sport Pravia Ayuntamiento de Pravia

Proyecto Coche is part of an ongoing series of projects, Des(hechos) (meaning both “waste” and the “deconstruction of facts as time passes”), which focuses on material culture as a reflection of consumer society. Proyecto Coche presents the discovery of an abandoned Seat 127 car in the Nalón River, Asturias. Fluxá worked with an archaeologist to excavate the car and create a video documenting its careful removal and conservation. She also presents her research into this iconic Spanish car from the 1970s and 1980s through six accompanying text archives. Ironically, this car’s specific re-discovery parallels the dawning realization of the automobile’s unsustainable cultural role at the beginning of the 21st century. After Feedforward, the car will be abandoned yet again, this time at a scrap yard where it will be dismantled for re-use.

LANGLANDS + BELL

The House of Osama bin Laden (2003)

Interactive digital animation, digital animation, video.

Courtesy: the artists and the Imperial War Museum, London. Commissioned by Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London. Production: Tom Barker and Niki Holmes. Additional digital artwork and design: Richard Wilding.

This installation consists of three projections and a group of five flags. The core projection, The House of Osama bin Laden, is an interactive 3D simulation of the house in which the Al Qaeda founder lived in Jalalabad, an archaeological endeavour to understand people and cultures through the spaces they inhabit. Zardad’s Dog is a short film from live footage that the artists shot at the trial of a notorious war commander at the Supreme Court in Kabul. NGO is a computer animation based on the signage and acronyms of the large number of NGOs operating in Afghanistan and advertising their presence in the streets. The installation explores the legal, religious and humanitarian complexities of the aftermath of September 11 and the Western intervention in Afghanistan.

NAEEM MOHAIEMEN

Live True Life or Die Trying (2009)

25 digital C-Prints with vinyl, video. Courtesy: the artist

Live True Life or Die Trying is part of Mohaiemen’s ongoing research into “failed revolutions” and the unintended dystopian consequences of the collapse of left movements as well as, obliquely, the role of the documentarian, who is a partisan propagandist. The photographs are from two overlapping and competing protests that took place in Dhaka in January 2009. One is on the university campus, organized by Left coalitions. The other, larger in scope and ambition, is organized by one of the newer Islamist groups. In the latter, the mood is more urgent, the rhetoric sharper, and as Mohaiemen says, when the protesters “argue that gangster capitalism has failed and is dragging down the world, that the global compact is imploding, it’s a resonant message for many.”

PIOTR SZYHALSKI

White Star Cluster: The Third Sonic Reenactment of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2009)

Installation: 16 sound streams, video, custom software, furniture, audio CDs and printed matter.

Production: LABoral

White Star Cluster focuses on footage captured in Ramadi, Iraq, on December 4, 2006, when US soldiers came under friendly fire attack. The spoken texts were transcribed from videos recorded by cameras mounted on the helmets of American soldiers. The dialogue was then performed in the studio by a cast of players. From quiet, intimate voices to aggressive and confrontational language and sounds, the recordings span the range of human emotions as the soldiers’ reenacted dialogue reflects a sobering and at times discomforting truth. Dissecting the minutiae of the adrenaline-induced dialogues, the project follows a slow, labyrinthian path of self-destruction.