BPB 2012 – Agents of Change: Photography and the Politics of Space

The Brighton Photo Biennial’s (BPB) title Agents of Change: Photography and the Politics of Space brings the interrelated relationships surrounding the construction and control of public space as understood through photography to the forefront of the fifth edition of the festival. The tag line “Agents of Change” is sourced from an article by Sandra Marie Nurse (published in the journal Tidal, 2011) in the context of the Occupy movement. Nurse’s focus—shared by BPB curators Ben Burbridge and Celia Davies—centred political and social discourse on the physical body as a framework for action and change. In addition to referencing movements such as Occupy and Arab Spring, Burbridge and Davies traced the role of the image within the history and present-day activism and protest in Brighton—from the Squatters’ Network of Brighton and Hove to the activist group Justice?. The relationship between art and action was examined through many different sources: newspaper archives, user-generated You Tube content and artists’ commissions. Against such a backdrop, the festival promised to resonate both globally and locally 

Following Occupy’s emphasis on the ‘commons’ as a site created through bodily presence and social relations, I expected the Biennial to activate the viewer’s physical experience within the exhibition space. The comprehensive and widely inclusive educational programs achieved in inciting discourse and illuminating participants and ideas.1) Yet the cramped venues within which the festival was installed, and the makeshift quality of the public projects that it presented, had the unfortunate effect of neglecting the exhibition viewing experience as a site for action. Edmund Clark’s Control Order House intimately and cautiously investigated the locations in which individuals suspected of terrorism are held under conditions of house-arrest. Images of these loaded yet commonplace rooms were displayed on wallpaper-like vinyl applications, while a small personal TV screened slides of the entire work-in-progress, alluding to a sense of domesticity. Yet the installation’s position in the lobby to the University of Brighton’s Gallery, beside the visually distracting vending machines and student union banners, deprived it of this illusion. The curatorial ambition to present “a provocative, and perhaps irresolvable, tension […] between political process and aesthetic outcome” succeeded in presenting engaging ideas but unfortunately fell short with the viewer’s encounter of the work. Clarke’s nuanced visual and textual exploration of control and confinement thus remained on the level of the illustrative.

The wide range of artists and collaborators selected for inclusion in the festival effectively probed the relationship between art and action as represented in the two-dimensional photographic plane. For Cairo Divided, photographer Jason Lark teamed up with The Guardian’s former Egypt correspondent, Jack Shenker, to document the construction of luxury suburban communities in Cairo and distribute the resulting images as a newspaper throughout Cairo. The newspaper format was also used in the Fabrica produced exhibition, No Olho da Rua (In the Eye of the Street) featuring intimate images by young Brazilians who live on the streets. Yet by presenting these two newspaper projects alongside displayed prints in the gallery space, and overlooking their ability to engage non-gallery audiences, the curators failed to activate the festival’s discursive potential within the three-dimensional space of the exhibition and in Brighton. This potential, however, was achieved with the small newsprint publication, Another Space. With a focus on political squatting in Brighton from 1994 – present, it included many community contributors and was freely distributed throughout the city.

Predominantly using the broadcast model as exhibition format, the organizers consistently situate the viewer as a passive spectator. French philosopher Jacques Rancière famously defined the passive spectator as one who is “separated from both the capacity to know and the power to act” .2) In the one-way conversational format that Rancière challenges with his concept of the emancipated spectator, action comes only from the producers and does not challenge the opposition between viewing and experiencing. Such exhibition formats not only neglect aesthetic dimensions, they fail to acknowledge the potential of a space activated by and for the viewer, and diminish art’s capacity for inciting action.

One aspect of the curatorial theme, “the location of images within space” underscored Corinne Silva’s Imported Landscapes: images of the Moroccan countryside pasted on billboards in the region of Murcia, Spain. Silva’s notable series gave photographic representation to an interest that emerged throughout the festival in mobility, shifting power, and borders. Situating her work at the entrance to the gallery perfectly contextualized her framing of space (landscape), within space (billboard), within space (gallery). Unfortunately this sensitivity to placement didn’t extend to the works in the public sphere. The gesture of placing artworks in public contexts has the potential to activate everyday spaces into sites for discovery and discussion. Yet the works presented in Brighton’s public squares bring to mind the ‘Drop Sculpture’ or ‘Plop Art’ work designed for public spaces in the 50’s, 60’s but without reference to location, context or history.3)

Four Versions of Three Routes, produced by the collective Preston is my Paris, mapped out the debated constituency borders of Brighton. While conceptually contextualized in Brighton, and reflecting the power of the voting public to challenge and re-form political and physical space, in reality, the most visible part of the project was located in Bartholomew Square, a location that seemingly bore no relationship to the piece. In addition, it was presented on mesh banners that were attached with deteriorating bungee cords to a distracting and imposing temporary structure. Four Versions of Three Routes and Whose Streets? (images culled from the Argus Newspaper Archives presented on monolithic structures in Jubliee Square) both had poster components that acted as the site-specific aspects of the project, but when I visited the Biennial they were all-but invisible. I appreciate the blog post by Adam Murray discussing his thoughts on the disappearance of the Four Versions of Three Routes posters; however, it doesn’t shift my stance on the importance of the integrity of the central piece. As before, Brighton was used as a conceptual space to frame the curators’ theme and the artists’ projects, but not as a physical space to activate the works, heighten the viewing experience, or expand audience reach.

The Photoworks magazine-cum-festival guide offers Burbridge’s articulate commentary on the theme and includes many participant interviews, prioritizing the images and the voice of the artists to that of didactic explanatory texts. However, with a theme that professes to focus on the role of the body within the politics of space, the authentic ‘lived’ experience of viewing the festival is one that I believe should be valued over the virtual space of engagement. In the context of our attention-deficit, image-saturated culture, curators today must take pains to contextualize the image, and to create conditions that enable a deep engagement with its content. It is a challenging task for any curator to take on, but if this isn’t possible due to budgetary or venue constraints then an alternative model must be sought out.   

– Persilia Caton