Bent - Sean Mathias

This film is based on a play, which in turn, is loosely based on the book "The Men With The Pink Triangle". 'Loosely' is an accurate word as none of the characters, including Josef Kohout, the main subject of the biography appear in the film. I recognised some of the situations; the long train journey to the camps, the soul crushing physical tasks such as hauling rocks and snow from place to place for no reason but to break their humanity - but other than that the work bears little resemblance. It is a complete re-interpretation.

Watching the film with its limited number of sets and occasional monologues it is quite obvious that the film began life on the stage. The opening scene depicting the infamous Berlin nightclubs was transposed to urban ruins - foreshadowing the collapse of the Weimar republic under the Nazi regime.

I enjoyed the unique viewpoint of the film. The director took the opportunity to explore the difference between two gay men, one who wore the pink triangle badge and the other who managed to con his way to a Jewish yellow star instead. This was a clever device used to highlight the fact that there was status in the camps between badge colours (pink being the lowest of the low) and also that badge colour was not necessarily an indication of sexuality. In other words a green criminal, red political, or yellow Jewish star could easily have also been homosexual - just not criminally charged as one. Sometimes it is easy to overlook this fact.

Some of the Nazi guards would have been homosexual too, as depicted in a conversation between the two gay prisoners; the 'jewish star' had given a blowjob to one of the guards in order to obtain medicine for his comrade. After enquiring if the medicine is working it is pointed out that the guard would only have received a blowjob from the yellow star prisoner, never the pink triangle one. Morality aside of having to prostitute himself for his friend's medicine, these situations highlight the utter hypocrisy at work in the camps. But, I guess, that is the least of their worries.

One description from the book that I have thought about trying to visualise in my BoW is that pink triangle prisoners had to sleep with their arms and hands above the covers at all times, all night, with the lights on - for the duration of their internment. This made sleeping difficult. The accusation was that "filthy homosexuals" would touch themselves or each other during the night. As Josef Kohout pointed out in his biography, being used as guard target practice as they hauled rocks during the day kind of puts paid to any emotions other than survival. In the film this 'no touching' scenario is worked out very cleverly. The two prisoners over time had come to cautiously care for each other as they worked side by side moving rocks. Every two hours they are allocated a two minute break where they must stand motionless to attention. The guard watching over them is some distance away and the two men begin to talk sexually to each other as they face forwards. With their minds and words they explore each others bodies, talking up the sexual tension until they reach physical orgasm. I thought this was a fascinating scene; not only for depicting the ability to connect sexually, mind to mind, without physical or visual contact; but also for portraying the utter inhumanity that was imposed on the concentration camp prisoners where touching and even looking was punishable by death. This scene must have been extremely powerful to watch when performed live on stage.  

Photographs, Museums, Collections: between art and information: Elizabeth Edwards & Christopher Morton

This book highlights the history of the photograph through museums and collections and its shifting status over time. Photograph collections in museums have long been uncategorised and often used as an additional element in a display - a bit like a label than a historical object in its own right. The book uses case studies from real collections and traces their trajectory as photographs have been shunted between departments, re-categorised and often de-coupled from their original source material. Copies of photographs often take on a life of their own creating mini sub-collections and the materiality of the photograph is highlighted by the many marks that are made on the backs and borders of photographs by their curators.

This book made me think about the shifting nature of information as it is repeatedly relayed between sources. The visual and written information from my triangle project has shifted and changed through interpretation over time; Josef Kohout, who lived his early twenties in the concentration camps recounted his experiences to Heinz Heger who wrote the book "The Men With the Pink Triangle". Kohout's experiences relied on personal memory, selecting and self-editing as he told his terrible story. Heger had to shape these memories into a coherent and readable form; no doubt his editor and publisher also had input with an eye to a market for a historical commodity. I read the book many decades after it was published through the lens of my own political and personal experiences of LGBTQ life in the UK. I've taken events from the book that stood out, affected me, and re-interpreted them through a visual medium of constructed photography; the images I made have been discussed at peer and tutor critiques and potentially adapted with a contemporary photography perspective. The work will be edited for assessment before possibly being produced as an exhibition in some form as its final output.

Kohout's original memories have taken a shifting and changing course through several artistic mediums and not only my work. I know that a play and a movie has been made (Bent) that uses the original book as its source material. I have no doubt that the work has inspired multiple trajectories from that original account that I am unaware of at this time.  

Family Frames: photography narrative and postmemory - Marianne Hirsch

This book was recommended by my tutor as part of my assignment feedback. It deals with how we relate to family photographs when we look and how looking is mediated through familial conventions and ideologies. The author goes on to discuss strategies that artists such as Christian Boltanski use to subvert these conventions when making art.

One of the most interesting chapters revolved around the architectural and curatorial layout of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington. I was fascinated by the way that photographs rescued from family albums of Holocaust victims and survivors had been used to create a sense of people and place. As viewers moved through the exhibit they encountered the same photographs from both the perspective of the individual (using the conventions of familial looking) and from a distance to indicate that we can never imagine the actual horror or recapture lost lives; when we look at these old photographs and imagine who the people were and what was lost, we are using 'postmemory' to construct an unknown world in order to empathise.

The book goes on to explain the notion of postmemory using the experiences of children born after the Holocaust, that have no memories of the events, but have lived them through the re-telling of stories by their parents. Sometimes the postmemories are so vivid and so often retold that they seem more real than reality itself.

Postmemory as a term has also broadened out and includes art practice that makes work that sits in the disconnect between real and re-imagined events. The book goes on to talk about the ethics of making art via the filter of postmemory. Why it is important to recognise the disconnect to "preserve the shadows" and incorporate it into the work. This phrase "preserve the shadows" really struck me when I read it. It neatly encapsulates what I was trying to explain to members of the TV student group recently. I was trying (badly) to explain why I don't want to anchor my triangle work in a real location like a WWII site; and why I wanted the work to be partly anonymous or 'hidden'. By re-photographing my props and images in an anonymous woodland setting I am removing them from the documentary genre and acknowledging the shadows of postmemory.

A Handful of Dust - Whitechapel Gallery

David Campany is the curator of this exhibition, pulling together photographs from different decades and genres that emanate like a stream of consciousness from one original source - that of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp's 'Dust Breeding'. The photograph taken in 1922 looks almost like an aerial photograph of the landscape with its grid lines and swirling forms. It is in fact a photograph of a piece of art created by Marcel Duchamp that was gathering dust under a bed in his studio. 'Dust Breeding' has had a number of titles and its meaning has changed and been appropriated by various art theories over time.

    'Dust Breeding' Man Ray, 1922.

Campany uses this image as the source of an exhibition of photographs that have featured dust in some way. This idea seems so simple but yet encompasses a fascinating array of images with political overtones regarding man's inhumanity or environmental impact on our planet. An image that struck me early on as I walked through the gallery was a photograph of Mussolini's staff car, covered with dust, as it sat in storage ten years after the dictator was pulled from the vehicle and assassinated by anti-Fascist rebels. This black and white documentary picture links conceptually with other images where political choices have led to major societal upheaval; the 9/11 image of a business man covered in grey dust and surrounded by paper from the collapsed towers; Dust bowl images from the FSA photographer's where intensive farming practice led to the loss of the top soil and exacerbated by the Great American Depression; all these images link thematically back to dust. The chaos in these linked images reminds me that regardless of our actions and great social changes that entropy will take everything back to disorder and nothingness eventually.

Mussolini's Car, Unknown, 1955.

'Allowing dust to gather, as a trace of time is a sort of canning of chance. Photography too can be a way of canning chance. The dust photograph is thus a trace of a trace.' (Campany, 2017).

The title of the exhibition 'A Handful of Dust' is taken from the T.S. Elliot poem 'The Wasteland'. Campany states that:

'Eliot's great poem [published the same month as Breeding Dust was taken] is modern in the same way as the dust photograph - a hybrid work of allusion and association that pictures the world in fragments if not ruin, but sees the world's possible redemption in those fragments too. It's a coincidence I couldn't ignore.' (Campany, 2017).

I found this exhibition to be illuminating in the way that it was put together from so many different types of photography. From documentary to conceptual they all had a common link. I can take this idea of an eclectic mix of genres held by a common concept with me into my own thoughts about making new projects and how to display pieces together in an exhibition. 

Reference:

Campany, D. 2017. '1000 Words' [online] At: http://www.1000wordsmag.com/david-campany/ Accessed on 10th June 2017.

Assignment 3

May 1st:

For this assignment I'm continuing to build on my theme of making props or images to conceptualise the events in the book "The Men With the Pink Triangle". In addition to this, because of the reading I've been doing on my Contextual Studies module, I'm also looking at making a prop based on themes of power and control. I've read Focault's essay on Panopticism and other pieces regarding representation and social control of LGBT issues. I'm yet to write these up and have a bit of a backlog of posts for this blog that I need to do publish before I move back to Contextual Studies.

I've had an idea to a make prop to represent a machine that can take hatred and bigotry and turn it into edicts that sound logical but are based on ideology. A lot of Nazi propaganda was issued in the run up to the war that severely restricted the movement and freedoms of Jews and other minorities. Book burnings took place and art shows were held to highlight degeneracy. These were all attempts to enforce control and a particular way of thinking on the mass public. My machine will have keys like a typewriter (or an enigma machine) and uses the framework of science and religion to convert bigotry into law.     

I'm quite looking forward to making a new prop.

May 10th:

I've started work on my Education machine today. I drew some sketches and spent an enjoyable couple of hours working out the dimensions and cutting out the shapes and constructing the pyramid.

I'd already sourced some typewriter style keys (missing the arms) so needed to find a suitable replacement to stick them to. Thankfully some wooden bamboo skewers from the kitchen drawer were perfect.

It's just a case of spray painting them black so they look right and re-assembling the machine, ready for photographing.

I had an idea to use the tile wallpaper to cover the machine instead of keeping it plain grey. I'm not sure if this idea will work visually but I will give it a try. I can always change it.

May 15th:

As well as the Ediction machine I am making some digital images using the human body. This is to represent the illegal and unethical medical experimentation that was conducted on the pink triangle prisoners. As horrific as the experiments and human suffering were I don't think I could ever convey the depths of such depravity in a photograph. I can only hope by using my constructed images to convey a sense of the injustice and repulsiveness of such an act. I'd thought about using clear medical tubing containing the barbed wire that I'd obtained previously. I thought juxtaposing the tubing against naked body parts would make a powerful statement.

I did a shoot on the kitchen floor with my model laying on top of strips of the kitchen tile wallpaper. This gave a backdrop that had a sense of a clinical environment. Then I placed the barbed wire tubing around the body. Once I had my images I then digitally manipulated the limbs and areas of the body to create new organic forms that looked familiar, strange, and slightly grotesque. The idea behind this piece is to convey the futility of the hormone experiments that were attempting to cure Homosexuality and the unsound science behind sexuality conversion and eugenics. A lot of time was spent working digitally on three images. By the time I'd finished the third my skills had improved and the first one looked weaker than the other two. I will need to re-assess at some point how to use these images.

22nd May:

Today I began scouting for suitable locations to photograph my triangle props. I had a choice of two nearby woodlands, both with different types of tree cover. I packed up my equipment (the Ediction machine in a plastic box to safeguard against accidental knocks and damage) and drove out to my first location. I was hoping for grey, even, bright light but it was partially sunny. It didn't take me long to find a couple of tree trunks that looked interesting and with enough space to not make the photographs look too crowded in. After all my thinking and planning there is no substitute for actually getting out and making work. I also wanted to test my machine design of white sides with gridlines. I can't decide whether to keep this design or spraypaint it gun metal grey. Only by taking photographs could I hope to make a decision.

My trial run made me realise I would have to get down quite low to include the distant treeline. This meant laying flat on my side or front at times. Although I'd thought about tough jeans and boots I should also have brought along some sort of ground sheet. I ended up getting quite muddy. Lesson learned for next time.

I packed up and moved to my second location and walked around for a bit looking at different scenarios. I took more test shots and again, it was only by being in the woodland environment that I began to see different visual possibilities for each of my props. For the Ediction machine I've decided to use a backdrop that includes paths and trails because they make me think about train tracks and columns of prisoners marching to and from the internment camps. More organic backdrops that would include twisted tree trunks and limbs could be used for the medical experiment triangles that I have yet to make. There is no way I could have sat at home and thought up these scenarios. The visual stimulus of actually being at the sites fed into my creativity.

I need to make several more visits and make another prop or two, but I am on my way with this assignment.

23rd June:

I made my third visit to my chosen woodland today. This time I took along the Ediction machine (now covered in grey paper) to try some more test shots. The previous shoot made me realise that the angles I was using for my composition gave me the backdrop I wanted but the machine's pyramidial form was somewhat lost. I've decided that at least one of the Ediction machine shots needs to be a downward facing image to capture this quality. By having possibly three shots of the education machine I hope to illustrate my intent whilst showing form in a way that would be too difficult to convey in one image.

When scouting the woodland floor for the shoot I noticed an area that had a thick covering of dead leaves. I thought that they would make a good juxtaposition for the Edicition machine and the devastation caused by the implementation of an ideology based on Panopticism. The image below came from today's shoot. The Ediction machine is starting to look a little battered by its travels around various woodland locations and being in the boot of the car. I noticed in this shot that the symmetry is a bit ruined because the machine's keys are becoming a bit wonky. This needs addressing  so some salvage work needs to be done before I take the machine back out again.

Edit 24th June:

Today I took the triangles that I made in assignment 1 out to the woodland. I played around with placing them in rows or on tree stumps but wasn't happy with the results. They look forced. Eventually I tried leaving them in a pile. Looking through the camera lens I could see the possibilities for this image. I was reminded of the photographs of piles of bodies taken in the concentration camps. I think this is quite an effective image in that respect.

  

Edit 26th June:

I showed the above image to a number of OCA students who's opinion I value. There was a consensus that there is something not quite right about the image. I had this sense myself and comments ranged from "It looks like it is floating" "Reminds me of the intro to Star Wars" and "The object looks too disconnected from its environment". I agree with these comments and went back to the woodland this morning for a re-shoot. This time I made sure that the leaves either touched the base of the machine or they reflected light and shadow onto its sides to help anchor the object in place. I also added a further element, a piece of barbed wire, to the background. I think this shoot has been worthwhile and I am much happier with the images. I'm really glad that I put up my orignal image for discussion. It has been most worthwhile.

Edit 30th June:

Back to the woodland today with some of the other images that I've made. As well as presenting them  as images in their own right I wanted to re-photograph them in the woodland setting too. I'm quite pleased with the results. The horror and suffering in the images is somehow magnified by the quietness of the natural setting without being more graphical. I chose to use barbed wire to hang the images to reference the concentration camps and as a visual link to some of the other images. I have about 12 images I'm think are ready to present for assignment so these will be sent to the online printers and along with my notes sent to my tutor for comments.

18th April:

I've finally returned to update this post almost a year later. My time has been mainly spent on completing my Contextual Studies module and completing my dissertation. I've also completed assignment 4 for this module and have a breathing space to update the backlog on this blog. My tutor feedback for assignment 3 mostly revolved around my need to justify my choice of a woodland setting for photographing my props and images. I've been asked by both my level 3 tutors about the possibility of using a woodland in Poland, nearer to the historical Nazi concentration camps. My response to this argument has always been that I do not view my work as documentary. It is primarily conceptual in nature. I chose a woodland for its anonymity. I want the work to be displayed in a space that has no name or location. The reason for this is that the project's foundation is in LGBTQ hidden history, but I don't want the viewer to draw a line under this event as if it is a closed chapter. LGBTQ oppression around the world still continues and the events of Nazi Germany could happen all over again, anywhere.

Alain Resnais script for the 1954 documentary 'Night & Fog' which looks at the aftermath of the camps draws attention to this misapprehension:

'There are those who look at these ruins today
As though the monster were dead and buried beneath them.
Those who take hope again as the image fades
As though there were a cure for the scourge of these camps.
Those who pretend this happened only once,
At a certain time and in a certain place.
Those who refuse to look around them,
Deaf to the endless cry.'

Alain Resnais, Night & Fog. (1954)

My BoW tutor's feedback also mentions that it may be helpful to think where the work is located in terms of other precedents of practice. Now that my dissertation for CS is almost finalised I will have more time to do more research into this aspect.

I also need to think about how the work might be viewed or engaged with, in terms of who the spectators might be and what I am expecting in response to the work. This aspect makes me feel slightly nervous. I know from reading the PhD dissertation of Nigel Hurlstone, who has undertaken similar work involving oppression of gay men in Nazi Germany, that he experienced homophobia and attempts to have his work removed from exhibition. Hurlstone's work took place in the UK between 1996 & 1999 so attitudes have changed somewhat since that time.

I primarily make work for myself and would also particularly like for it to inform a younger LGBTQ audience too; It is clear that those who are unaware of their own history, and kept in the dark, are often not politically motivated enough to stand up for their rights. Rights and privileges that minorities have often had to fight hard for every tiny step forward. It would be complacent to think that the human rights we have today are sacrosanct and could never be taken away. I need to think about engaging with an LGBTQ based art group of some kind. I will look to doing this fairly soon.

The reception of my work by a wider audience is partly dependent on location; a small provincial town, a coastal enclave with an art's based community or somewhere cosmopolitan like London, will have different perceptions and internal biases. All these issues make it difficult to think about the perception of the work by a larger audience.

I also need to relook at Heidegger as one read through is not nearly enough!