beneath our skin by pelin tan

8/7/2019 Beneath Our Skin by Pelin Tan

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Pelin Tan

Beneath Our

Skin

"Geographies say there are two kinds ofislands. This is valuable information for theimagination because it confirms what theimagination already knew."

Ð Gilles Deleuze1

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn Martin McDonagh's 2008 film In Bruges,

two hitmen are sent into hiding in the Belgiancity of Bruges by their British boss. Bruges is apicturesque tourist town, the best-preservedmedieval city in Belgium, and the two killers havelittle to do there other than discover the physicalenvironment through their alienation. When Kensuggests to Ray that they visit a cathedral, Rayasks, "what's up there?" Ken replies, "The view.""The view what?" Ray asks. Ray's reluctance toengage with the environment distinctly marksthe unbearable impossibility of forming arelationship with their surroundings. As the story

continues, the two hitmen are forced to reconcilethe fact of their having no more reason to be inBruges than anywhere else with an image of thetown as a specific location. Here, the conditionsof space and subjectivity converge Ð the hitmenand Bruges together ask how it is possible for anindividual to relate to a place without having aspecific role or function in it. In essence, howmight a gap between subjectivity and location bepresented within the image to create zones forother relationships to be formed between them?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn his films Blissed (2005) and Finally (2006),artist Knut •sdam focuses on young people andtheir interactions with the physical environmentof a city. Gestures of looking, walking, andspeaking are performed by a group of youngpeople in spaces with little relation to thesubjects' interactions. From these gestures,•sdam teases out mini-narratives byconstructing monologues from theseinteractions. Set in a commercial city center inhistorical Salzburg, the young people in the filmrespond to each other and circulate throughoutits public spaces. In Finally , the connection withthe spatial environment that its subjects seek

through gesture and language is not found. Thework is one of the finest examples of a gapbetween an architectural environment with itsown conditioned memory (marking the presenttime) and the gestures of the individual. In thescenes, three young people try to communicate,move, fight, and utter monologues that appeal tothe space for a connection when the historicalgarden, sculptures, and buildings around themremain still. As •sdam searches for an aestheticnarrative in a place where the architecture isheavy with a specific history, a loss of

identification with a space (as we find in InBruges) emerges.

e-flux journal #0 Ñ november 2008 Ê Pelin Tan

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Knut •sdam, Blissed, 2005, 35mm film and DVD projection installation. 12 min. Colour, 5.1. surround.

Knut •sdam, Blissed, 2005, 35mm film and DVD projection installation. 12 min. Colour, 5.1. surround.

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Knut •sdam, Finally , 2006, 35mm film and DVD, 18 min. color, 5.1 sound. Courtesy: Cent-8, Serge Le Borgne, Paris; Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona; KlemensGasser & Tanja Grunert, NYC.

Knut •sdam, Finally , 2006, 35mm film and DVD, 18 min. color, 5.1 sound.

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The Atlas Group, My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair , 2000/2003, 100 Digital prints, 25 x 35 cm (each), detail.

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The Atlas Group, We Decided To Let Them Say, "We Are Convinced" Twice, 2002, Color Photographs, 111 x 180 cm. Image copyright of the artist,Courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn Mother's Day (2006-2008), a video workby Smadar Dreyfus, voices of mothers and theirchildren speak over a rough, plain landscapeunder a bright blue sky. The landscape is that ofthe Golan Heights, where for several decades thelocal Druze community has been divided by theceasefire line agreed upon by Israel and Syria.2

Invisible in the video, the people whose voiceswe hear echo in the air and fog are those

engaged in the annual Syrian Mother's Daycelebration, which gathers mothers and theirchildren on either side of the border to exchangegreetings via a sound system set up for theoccasion. The emotional, intimate expressions ofmothers and their children appear totallyremoved from the landscape of the GolanHeights. Yet the possibility of a relationshipbetween this traumatic space and its peopleexists. Unlike in Finally , in Mother's Day theabsence of subjects' physical appearancesallows their voices to transform the meaning of

the land.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI look to the works of •sdam and Dreyfus toexplain the formation of a specific aestheticlanguage in which relationships betweensubjectivity and spatial context are in conflict.Where the two fail to meet or overlap, a sort ofnon-relationship is formed. Concepts such as

empathy and the uncanny (especially in relationto undefined territories, architecture, and urbanenvironments) have often been described fromsubject-oriented perspectives. In both •sdam'sand Dreyfus' works, even though their contextsvary from historic to commercial urban spaces totraumatic forced spaces, they offer uniqueaesthetic approaches that release subjectivityfrom imposed sympathetic relationships to

space.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis broken connection, this "un-relation"to space, if you will, outlines what Anthony Vidlerdescribes as a contemporary sense of theuncanny, which "is not simply a survival of aromantic commonplace, or a feeling confined tothe artistic genres of horror and ghost stories."3

Vidler further focuses on the architecturaluncanny by giving the differences from themodern urban experience: "From the 1870s on,the metropolitan uncanny was increasinglyconflated with metropolitan illness, a

pathological condition that potentially afflictedthe inhabitants of all great cities; a conditionthat had, through force of environment, escapedthe overprotected domain of the short story. Theuncanny here became identified with all thephobias associated with spatial fear, including'la peur des espaces' or agoraphobia."4 As a

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The Atlas Group, The Sweet Talk File (Plate 544), 1991-2005, digital color prints, 117 x 117 cm.

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The Atlas Group, The Sweet Talk File (Plate 363), 1991-2005, digital color prints, 117 x 117 cm.

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representation of a mental state, these feelingsof the uncanny often describe theunrecognizable conditions of urban space.However, the impossibility of relating to spaceremains more about conditions thanrelationships between subjectivity and reality.These are conditions that require specificgestures and aesthetic languages as corecomponents of their becoming.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn a lecture on items from the Atlas Grouparchive focusing on the visual documents ofruins, car bombs, and buildings, Walid Raadexplains, "Since 1994, I have accelerated thepace of my shooting. I have felt and continue tofeel an urgent need to document in particularBeirut's streets, storefronts, buildings, andstatues Ð but not so much its residents."5 As in•sdam's work, where visible individuals seek aspecific verbal or body language in their spatialenvironment, and as Dreyfus asserts thepresence of invisible people through their voices,

Raad engages a concrete relationship betweenthe image and space in which the image is nolonger a recording, but also a representation ofimpossible access. In turning his attention awayfrom documenting citizens in favor of a spatialenvironment, he speaks to a desire to findspaces and materials to reflect relationships,rather than people and their subjectivities.Through a refusal to identify with the alienationcaused by trauma, he effectively erases his ownposition and attempts to allow space, material,and events to speak in autonomous voices.

Smadar Dreyfus, Mother's Day , 2006-08, three channel HD videoinstallation with 5.1 channel audio, 15 minutes, video still.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Atlas Group has always used foundimages, clips, and archival works of Beirut duringthe civil war between 1975-1991.6 Raad saysabout The Sweet Talk File (1989), which featuresharshly cropped fragments of buildings, "Thecrops don't represent the buildings, but the cityÐ the un-presentation of the building of thelabyrinth time, the chronology of the withdrawal

of the building and an experience of its ownruin."7

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBeginning in 1920 with the story of the firstcar bomb on Wall Street, Mike Davis in his recentbook Buda's Wagon explains the particulareffects of car bombs when used within an urbanenvironment: "The car bomb, in other words,suddenly became a semi-strategic weapon that,under certain circumstances, was comparable toair power in its ability to knock out critical urbannodes and headquarters as well as terrorize the

populations of entire cities."8

In The Thin NeckFile (1975-1991) Raad, as both citizen andphotographer, focuses on the phenomenon ofurban car bombs.9 Raad also points out in hislectures that the city, as a concrete politicalnetwork, is effectively broken apart by the use ofcar bombs, which serve to shatter the divisionbetween private property and public space Ð thesimple fact of owning vehicles which couldpotentially become weapons automaticallyforced neighbors to become suspicious of eachother. "Every neighbor is under scrutiny for

owning a car, even in the absence of crime. Theshift from private to public has alreadyhappened."10 In an urban space re-defined bycatastrophe, the bond between subjects andspaces is effectively severed. Yet in Raad'sworks, the image re-emerges as a form for thisotherwise unavailable condition.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn a video installation by artist Cevdet Erekentitled The Second Bridge (2003), a questionconcerning the relationship between a space andthe accessibility of the past is presented. Howcan a real moment be captured by an image thatpoints to the impossibility of such a momentwithin the social sphere? In The Second Bridge,an image of a found photo depicting a bridgeundergoing construction is paired with a secondmoving image of a national flag in an exhibitionsetting. A remote past and a national historyreveal themselves through the urban landmark ofthe bridge, while the ambiguity of the imagesuggests a broken, impossible relationshipbetween a viewer and a spatial context. In eachof the works I focus on here, I see possibilitiesnot only for several different ways of expressingdynamics of time and space, but Ð perhaps more

importantly Ð a possibility for gestures thatconstitute "non-relationships" with space.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn Michel Houellebecq's novel The

Possibility of an Island, Daniel 25, the 25th cloneof Daniel 1, decides to leave his nativeenvironment to discover the world outside afterreading the diary of Daniel 1. The world he findsis ruined, and as Daniel 25 possesses no humanfeelings, he attempts to come to terms with hisnew environment by positioning himselfaccording to his lack of feelings, and not againstthem. In the end, however, he discovers

completely new feelings that don't correspondfully to those of a normal human being, and in

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Cevdet Erek, The 2nd Bridge, 2003, two channel DVD installation. Photograph used as video frame.

photo: Aysel Erek, Rumelihisarõ, Istanbul, 1987.

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effect discovers a space somewhere in betweena particular spatial condition and his ownsubjectivity. Similar to the operations I discussabove in artworks, Houellebecq's Daniel 25, inspite of being unable to place himself firmly in a"space," nonetheless discovers forms for his own"un-relation" to it. David Harvey has remarkedthat spaces often elicit modification."Complications sometimes arise from the

modifications (which all too frequently getomitted in the telling or the writing) rather thanfrom any inherent complexity in the notion ofspace itself."11 These complications tend torepresent attempts to clarify meaningsassociated with the ways subjectivity isconsidered to relate to spaces and locations. Ifwe understand space as a given set of meanings,then we naturally assume an existing relationbetween spaces and subjects. But perhaps thereare moments Ð conditions of space Ð in whichsubjectivity relates to space through an

incompleteness, though infinitely incompletegestures.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×

Pelin Tan (Hilden, 1974) is a sociologist/art historianbased in Istanbul. She is co-editor of Muhtelif

Contemporary Art Magazine and a book about publicspace and contemporary art (Istanbul:ÊBilgi Press,2008), as well as guest editor of a special issue on theeconomy and politics of contemporary art for thejournal Rethinking Marxism. She has been aResearcher at ITU Institute of Social Sciences,Architecture Faculty, Istanbul, since 2001, and is avisiting guest professor in theÊArchitecture andÊUrbanStudies MA program at theÊArt Academy ofÊNŸrenberg.


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ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islandsand Other Texts 1954-1974, ed.David Lapoujade, trans. MikeTaormina (NewYork:ÊSemiotext(e), 2003).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2When, at the end of the 1967Arab-Israeli war, an Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line and a UNpatrolled demilitarized bufferzone were established on theGolan Heights, they cut right

through the land of the localSyrian Druze communities,separating many families. When,in 1981, Israel unilaterallyannexed the Golan Heights,most of the Syrian residents ofthe Golan refused to take Israelicitizenship and officially remainof "undefined" nationalitystatus. In the absence of a peaceagreement, traffic across theceasefire line is near impossibleand telecommunications areseverely curtailed. However, overthe years other forms of cross-border communications weredeveloped which enabled theDruze families to stay in touchwith their relatives on the other

side. The most remarkable ofthese is the practice of callingout through megaphones acrossthe ceasefire line fence at the"shouting hill" facing the Druzevillage of Majdal Shams (locatedin the Israeli controlled side, atthe foot of Mount Hermon).(Information provided by SmadarDreyfus, Extra City)

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3Anthony Vidler, The ArchitecturalUncanny: Essays in the ModernUnhomely (Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 1994), 12.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4Ibid., 6.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5Walid Raad, Introduction to ÒTheWithdrawal of Tradition Past aSurpassing Disaster,Ó (seminar,unitednationsplaza, Berlin,January 31, 2007).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6http://theatlasgroup.org

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7Walid Raad, "The Withdrawal ofTradition Past a SurpassingDisaster," (seminar lecture notesby Pelin Tan,unitednationsplaza, Berlin,February 10, 2007).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8Mike Davis, BudaÕs Wagon: ABrief History of the Car Bomb(New York: Verso, 2008), 5.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9→http://theatlasgroup.org

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10Walid Raad, "The Withdrawal ofTradition Past a SurpassingDisaster," (seminar lecture notesby Pelin Tan,unitednationsplaza, Berlin,February 7, 2007).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11David Harvey, "Space as a Key

Word," in Spaces of GlobalCapitalism: Towards a Theory of

Uneven GeographicalDevelopment (New York: Verso,2006), 119.


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