Variant vol.2 no.36 Winter 2009

2009·3.3 MB·English

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cross currents in culture
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VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009 | 3
Variant, number 36, Winter 2009
contents
ISSN 0954-8815
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Variant. All material is copyright (unless stated The Last Days of Jack Sheppard 5
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Locus Of Control 9
Eddie Molloy
When and why did the Russian Revolution go wrong? 12
Brian Pearce, with commentary by Terry Brotherstone
Contact details Vagabonds, criminals, paupers & gangrels? 14
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Between rhetoric & reality 20
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4 | VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009
People should not ask why,
but only say because.
Scotland. autonomy, and there are many scholars like
Public submission
Creative Scotland offers a fundamental reform Raymond Williams who thought that the arms
to parliamentary to a key aspect of democratic society, yet it is being length principle was in fact only a “wrist length”
pushed through as part of much wider bill aiming from the ruling establishment5, the danger of
committee discussions for a whole range of technocratic efficiencies Creative Scotland is more far-reaching than that
which dissolve the arms length organisations – of L’Art Officiel. Creative Scotland opens the door
of Creative Scotland overwhelmingly these are scrutiny bodies at a time to a corporate-friendly Culture Officiel under the
when failure of public accountability is salient. guise of cultural nationalism. This comes just
and the Public Service Although reforms of cultural provision may at the moment when corporate power and the
be long overdue, without a more fully informed rule of markets are increasingly questioned by
Reform Bill, parliamentary enquiry to deepen MSPs ordinary citizens. It would be naïve to assume
discussion about cultural policy, the proposals that an agency set to abandon an already weak
from Variant magazine for the organisation remain premature. The arms length principle in favour of a commercially
lack of parliamentary discussion about how to orientated cultural policy could uphold the very
The Public Service Reform Bill states its
best pursue UNESCO treaty commitments to criticality concerning culture and commerce that
“overarching purpose ... is to help simplify and
diversity of cultural expression (which include is already under threat.
improve the landscape of Scottish public bodies,
the diversity of political expression) has shown
to deliver more effective, co-ordinated government
how far removed Scotland’s civic discourse on Notes
that can better achieve its core functions for
culture remains from a country like Sweden which 1. Following a complaint from Culture & Sport Glasgow
the benefit of the people of Scotland.” Our
pays greater attention to UNESCO standards. (CSG), Variant were informed that the magazine had
submission argues that this is certainly not the
been removed from Glasgow venues managed by
Sweden recognises the need to counteract “the
case in the proposals concerning the formation of CSG following the publication of ‘The New Bohemia’,
negative effects of commercialism”3 and how
Creative Scotland. The bill’s proposals for Creative an article by Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt that critically
Scotland instead represent an historic revision markets may distort and reify culture as a series mapped the political network of CSG. The interference
of global commodities. However, the branding with the distribution of Variant would appear to
and backward trend in cultural policy. We argue
and commodification of culture in Scotland is one contravene the author’s rights to free political
that the organisation of Creative Scotland, as it is expression as determined by the European Court of
of the key motivations for the new organisation.
presently proposed, erodes certain key values, such Human Rights in cases such as Lingens v. Austria
as the arms length principle and the universal Indeed throughout the promotion of Creative (1986), Oberschlick v. Austria (1991). See, ‘Freedom
Scotland the idea of branding has been used of Expression on Trial: Caselaw under European
distinction between culture and commerce.
in an entirely uncritical sense. On the other Convention on Human Rights’, by Sally Burnheim, http://
These first principles were established under
www.derechos.org/koaga/i/burnheim.html (Accessed
hand, scant regard has been paid to popular
popular governments in the UK from 1945 May 2009.) See also, ‘Comment’ in Variant, issue 33. An
onwards and in the UNESCO Convention on the extract from CSG’s complaint to Variant, 23/7/08, states:
Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural “...the unintended “The images you chose to illustrate the piece are in no
way representative of Culture and Sport Glasgow and
Expressions which came into force in 2007. Variant
the work that it does. They would appear to have been
is an arts organisation that depends on these consequences chosen to illustrate the city of Glasgow in a negative
national principles and international standards way and thus associate Culture and Sport Glasgow with
being upheld if we are to survive in Scotland. of an entrepreneurial negative imagery.”
We are already seeing the erosion of our rights 2. Alan Sinfield, ‘The Government, the People and the
to freedom of expression in official interference ideology in the public Festival’, in Jim Fyrth (ed.), ‘Labour’s Promised Land?:
Culture and Society in Labour Britain 1945-51’, (London:
with the distribution of our publication thanks to
Lawrence & Wishart, 1995).
contemporary policy increasingly geared towards provision of culture
3. “The objectives of national cultural policy include
the synergy of a promotional culture in Scotland.1
safeguarding freedom of expression and creating
The pressures now put upon us reflect the have not been tested...” genuine opportunities for everyone to make use of
underlying logic of “single purpose government” that freedom; taking action to enable everyone to
rather than reflecting normative democratic participate in cultural life, to experience culture and
cultural institutions such as libraries and how to engage in creative activities of their own; promoting
values in cultural policy. We therefore object to
popular cultural institutions and leisure may be cultural diversity, artistic renewal and quality, thus
the current proposals for Creative Scotland on the counteracting the negative effects of commercialism;
strengthened and developed.
basis of our human rights. enabling culture to act as a dynamic, challenging and
Michael Russell MSP, Minister for Culture, There is little or no evidence that an avowedly independent force in society; preserving and making
entrepreneurial organisation, more directly geared use of our cultural heritage; promoting the thirst for
External Affairs and the Constitution,
to economic policy, is needed or will improve learning, and promoting international cultural exchange
has stated Creative Scotland is to be “an
and meetings between different cultures in the country.”
existing relationships of sponsorship and/or
entrepreneurial organisation”. Indeed, the design ‘Sweden’s objectives of national cultural policy’, www.
synergies between the arts, culture and business.
of the organisation owes more to a mixture of sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3009/a/72002
In this sense, the development of Creative
bureaucrats and business people than it does to 4. ‘The Quango and the Gentlemanly Tradition: British
cultural practitioners or to those with independent Scotland’s mission, or ‘core script’, appears to be State intervention in the visual arts’, Nicholas Pearson,
more about ideological engineering than economic The Oxford Art Journal – 5:1 1982.
critical expertise in cultural policy. The discursive
necessity, improved service levels, or the public 5. Williams, R. (1989 [1979]): The Arts Council. In:
isolation of Creative Scotland from broader-based
good. Moreover, the unintended consequences Williams, R.: ‘Resources of Hope. Culture, Democracy
debates about cultural policy has impoverished the
and Socialism’, (Verso).
of the shift towards an entrepreneurial ideology
discussion of its functions. The recent Hollyrood
in the public provision of culture have not been
governments that proposed its creation have
tested in free and fair public debate. Marketplace
sought to reconcile economic instrumentalism and
“truths” require far greater scrutiny, as has been
pure artistic freedoms (or “arts for arts sake”).
amply demonstrated in recent months.
However, this dichotomy, which Creative Scotland
The risks of direct political influence over the
is said to transcend, is part of a complex history
arts was a preoccupation of the Arts Councils in
that has still not been fairly debated and assessed,
the UK for many years, as Nicolas Pearson has
as it should be, before making fundamental
charted, from the Arts Council of Great Britain’s
reforms to the ethos of cultural provision.
Eighth annual report (1953): “Every organisation
In his work on the post-1945 period, the
[the Council] assists, large or small, has its own
historian Alan Sinfield summarises the view that
governing body and it self-determined policy”,
democratic culture in the UK became relentlessly
“squeezed between art and commerce.”2 Only by the importance of this being that, “Certain local
authorities have shown an excess of zeal by
ignoring such studies can an entrepreneurially
providing concerts and plays under their own
orientated organisation be projected as a solution
management, an endeavour which could be seen
to a classic issue of cultural policy. Most scholars
to be – even if not designed as such – a movement
of cultural history would call into question the
towards L’Art Officiel, and on that ground as
idea that freedom of artistic self-expression is
dangerous as similar provision by a central quasi-
synonymous with the defence of broader cultural
governmental body such as the Arts Council”.4
rights, yet this is what has been implied time and
However one judges the record of Arts Councils’
again by politicians voicing support for Creative
VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009 | 5
The Last Days of
Jack Sheppard
Interview with Anja Kirschner and David Panos
The Last Days of Jack Sheppard (55 mins, UK, 2009), by
Anja Kirschner and David Panos, follows on from their
recent films: Polly II – Plan for a Revolution in Docklands
(30mins, UK, 2006), a dystopian take on the pirate
adventure which is part satirical sci-fi, part soap opera,
and part Brechtian ‘teaching play’; and Trail of the
Spider (53mins, UK, 2008), a ‘western’ filmed in Hackney
and Essex which transposes western frontier motifs
and the suppressed racial history of the American West
onto the gentrifying landscape of East London.
The Last Days… is based on the inferred prison
encounters between the 18th Century criminal Jack
Sheppard and Daniel Defoe, the ghostwriter of
Sheppard’s ‘autobiography’. Set in the wake of the South
Sea Bubble financial crisis of 1720, the film explores the
connections between representation, speculation and
the discourses of high and low culture that emerged
in the early 18th Century and remain relevant to the
present day.
Filmed in the Chisenhale Gallery space, The Last
Days... was co-commissioned by CCA, Glasgow, and
Chisenhale Gallery, London. It was presented at the CCA
within an installation fabricated from elements of the
original set and a display of archival material, laying
bare the film’s structural elements.
Their three films represent a body of work that
engages with a plethora of historical, literary, and aside. to ‘facilitating’ filmmakers – often with little
popular sources, digging out and radically re-working Anja had already established an interest in purchase on the way their contribution will be
hidden or obscure narratives in a range of different colliding research and fictional narrative that edited and represented. We would also argue
registers. Each film brings to bear a host of allegorical set the stage for our later films in her work that fiction, allegory and satire were always the
associations and narrative forms, but re-fashions Supernumeraries, which used a Joseph Conrad more useful and sophisticated tools for political
them to create uneasy resolutions that probe into story and contemporary reportage on the murder expression and subversion.
the problems and possibilities of class politics, the of stowaways on container ships. Whilst filming
How do you see the development of your work with
boundaries of different genre styles, the false division on board a container vessel, she’d been facing
regard to an ethics of representation?
between high and low art, and the vexed question of similar questions on how to deal with the inherent
After Polly II and Trail of the Spider, we felt that we
‘political art’. voyeurism and artifice of filming the crew at work
were being categorized as having ‘participative’
Admiring the integrity of their approach, the and inserting them into a hypothetical narrative.
practice, chiefly one that involved working class
intelligence and depth of their research, and their She ended up training her camera on the
communities. Yet we don’t really recognize the
consciously radical re-deployment of these resources architecture and objects on the ship, not the crew,
idea of ‘community’ as particularly meaningful
(as opposed to the “mindless citation”2 which is such and constructed a narration, partially based on
(outside of dubious ‘regeneration’ discourse).
a constituent feature of much contemporary art), Neil conversations that had remained unrecorded, but
We were aware that in some instances our work
Gray asked the film-makers to discuss their work. ultimately closer to the dream logic of nightmares.
was being fetishised by ‘official’ participative art
Paradoxically, towards the end of the shoot she
Your work together has consistently dealt with practitioners, and worse, those most comfortable
realised that many of the crew would actually have
the construction, mediation and representation of with the pernicious ideologies of ‘inclusion’ and
been happy if she had filmed them, but preferred
working-class subjects as well as the relationship ‘participation’. We ended up turning down some
to remain anonymous where statements on
between fiction, myth and historical possibility. How exhibition and commissioning offers because we
shipping conditions were concerned.
have these themes developed from your previous refused to have their frameworks imposed on what
work? These experiences prompted us to try and explore we do.
Many of the themes we dealt with in Polly II 3 and some of the problems from a different direction— Ironically, an increasingly public discussion
Trail of the Spider 4 were raised by a longstanding one that might be less earnest, more, dare we say, around the instrumentalisation of socially engaged
engagement with the urban politics of East ‘fun’ and also would allow us to explore situations art has made people very cautious about how
London. From 2000, David had been involved in and histories through recourse to popular genres. they speak about it. We had funders insisting that
The London Particular 5 documentary and research The fictional scenarios would act as a screen; we would not be fitted into some prescribed way
project with Benedict Seymour and others, trying participants could be released from their ‘normal’ of working. However, these supposedly ‘open-
to understand what was driving the millennial identities, yet their experiences could be reflected ended’ processes tended to obscure ideological
regeneration strategies in the area and getting through narrative—perhaps more accurately than assumptions about how one should ‘engage’ or
involved with the struggles around a massive documentary form would have allowed. ‘interact’ with ‘ordinary people’. Ultimately the
sell-off of public assets. The London Particular That said we didn’t go down an open-ended same processes at work in contemporary urban
made two films as part of that project – ostensibly ‘participative’ route. With the films we’ve made regeneration discourse can be seen in the social
documentaries but more like film essays. One of together we’ve always worked from a script as art field; agencies often emphasize choice,
the biggest problems was that of ‘representing’ a way of making our intentions transparent to freedom and experimentation in contrast to an
working class life in the area whilst avoiding whomever we’re working with, although this older ‘bureaucratic’ box ticking approach (i.e.
voyeuristic clichés of ‘urban deprivation’, working has often been subject to changes following you must work with a particular community and
class ‘authenticity’ or ‘local colour’. The essay rehearsals and discussions with those involved. achieve particular aims). But in our experience
film form seemed like a way to show local politics In a way, we found that being clear about where this phoney discourse of openness always tends to
as a systemic process, but this ultimately meant we are standing, and reflecting on actual events obscure reactionary assumptions without being
that the films felt quite detached from the social in the form of fiction, set certain limitations that transparent about it. This pseudo-democracy, with
processes they were describing. As the project were in fact more liberating than a recourse all its ‘creative’ posturing, tends to be a way to
went on, representing what was going on felt less to improvisational and documentary practices. push through a very pre-set agenda about what
urgent than becoming directly involved in it, so These practices can easily slide into a parasitic could be possible, and what subjectivities are at
David got more and more engaged with activism relationship with collaborators, who are expected stake in the process.
and local working class politics, putting filming to ‘be themselves’ or offer their creativity up In the first two films we were quite careful not
6 | VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009
to create an over-determined or overly procedural As with your other films, Polly II - Plan for a Revolution the nostalgic aura of archival or appropriated
process, and in many ways our methodology has in Docklands (2006) and Trail of the Spider (2008), footage rather than actually detourning it. Our
been very ad hoc. We feel that the structured there is a rich seam of research behind Sheppard, ‘re-enactments’ try to preserve the fictional veil
approaches (‘workshopping’ and whatnot) that which manifests itself via a plethora of textual between history the present, but also ask whether
you see as part of many social art practices tend to appropriations, citations and ‘quotations’. This textual things could have been otherwise. History is
resemble the layers of mediation that middle class analysis runs with the currents of post-modernism mutable, contingent, subject to change, and we do
‘professionals’ working for the state put between in many respects, yet the film is distinguished by a see it as a struggle for the present.
themselves and so-called ‘ordinary’ or working heightened appreciation of the ‘play of signs’ within a Many SI practices (like many of Brecht’s
class people. The ‘consultation session’ ends up world over-determined by capitalist relations (indeed, practices) are no longer particularly novel and
being a false version of a de-hierarchised space the conflation of Jack Sheppard’s narrativisation are widely deployed. I suppose we might have
where power discourses and expertise are hidden within the context of the South Sea Bubble suggests more in common with the SI tradition (rather
behind an artificial levelling. that this may be the central theme of the film). What than the general post modern re-purposing and
With Trail of the Spider, which essentially dealt is your method of working with archival and historical re-contextualising of cultural material) in that
with our experiences with Hackney’s politics, sources? we bring certain economic/political questions to
we worked with actors, friends and people from bear on our work informed by questions around
We tend to put a lot of different elements into play
the campaigns we’d been involved with. With the legacy of Marxism and class politics. Not that
in the films – we take pleasure in opening up the
The Last Days of Jack Sheppard we wanted to shift we see our work as ‘political’ per se. In fact, we
connections between different orders of material
our focus towards ‘acting’ and representation tire of the ‘political’ claims for contemporary art
but also enjoy a certain depth of research. These
as a process per se, rather than the productive works. Most often there’s no indication of what
tensions might not be fully legible in the final
tensions between an amateur cast and an ‘epic’ the ‘politics’ are. The term is more often used as
work but give it a certain integrity which allows
genre, so we worked mainly with professional an empty signifier of some assumed radicalism or
discussions to form about the ideas in the piece.
actors, some of whom were highly skilled in vague anti-capitalism, or suggests some variant of
We think that the films are entirely legible without
18th Century commedia dell’arte and rhetorical discourse/identity politics.
accompanying notes, but we’ve always published
gesture. Polly II and Trail of the Spider had a very That said, we feel as vexed about many political
pamphlets that explore the references for anyone
organic relationship to what was going on in our questions as we do about aesthetic questions. For
who is interested. Publishing the script for The
political lives at the time. It felt wrong to extend better or for worse ‘committed’ artists in the past
Last Days of Jack Sheppard was a way to lead back
the methods we’d used on those films into some applied themselves in reference to the general
to the historical research – revealing the extent to
situation that we had no relationship to. presence of class politics in broader society, and
which the film is almost entirely woven from direct
also tangentially to politics at an organisational
This is a broad question I know, but how do you see citations and visual references from the period.
level (even if only through the membership of
your work with regard to aesthetic discourses around We have a certain fascination with fiction and
parties, public support for strikes, etc). In a ‘post-
realism, modernism and post-modernism? with historical narrative and the way that these
political’ world we have been heavily involved
can shed light on situations in contemporary
We were interested in non-documentary
with local struggles and theoretical debates but
politics. We take pleasure in the contradictions
approaches to contemporary social problems, and
these have often lacked a broader social movement
between speculative (pulp?) fictions of history
not particularly interested in the increasingly
to back them and give them continuity. If during
and ‘empirical’ or ‘factual’ research but we aren’t
worthy or wearing clichés of realism. We are
certain periods we can’t act politically in broader
trying to draw simplistic relativistic conclusions
dealing with a social reality where people’s
society or feel that we are in a pre-political
from this tension between ‘fact’ and fiction.
identity and desire is mediated via popular
situation of grounding a new politics, how can our
Rather we’re interested in the construction
culture, but one that increasingly reflects a
work be said to be ‘political’? Recently we feel
of political discourses, and the mythological
dominant (petit) bourgeois view of the world. We
that we’re more concerned with the problems
dimension to progressive struggles, challenging
wanted to re-appropriate the epic discourses of
of representation per se – in particular the
the authentic bent of many ‘left wing’ ideas. But
cinema and television, and the layers of allegorical
intractable problems that we’ve got ourselves into
also, we’re trying to deploy history in a way that
associations of certain figures and narrative forms,
through trying to explore the class relations of art
is appropriate to film per se, that is, to be aware
but re-fashion them to create outcomes that probe
production and reception in our practice.
of the layers of mythology, genre clichés and
into the problems and possibilities of class politics.
We don’t necessarily have a clear idea of where visual cues available to us, and how these can be In your notes to the script, you cite Christopher Hill
we are heading… In many ways we’ve tried to recombined to ask new questions. and Peter Linebaugh – key figures in the ‘history from
make work that pleases us, that feels like it’s not To what extent, if at all, is your work informed below’ school – what influence did their work have on
entirely bound up with many of the conventional by the Situationist Internationale (SI) practice of your approach to the Jack Sheppard story?
formal approaches in the art world. We feel that ‘detournement’6? They have led us to material rather than
a lot of formal approaches to film have kind of necessarily shaping our approach. With The Last
We do tend to re-deploy archival material in
become empty vessels: no longer really able to Days of Jack Sheppard we wanted to pit Linebaugh’s
textual form or through scenarios. We have
function as critical, but now merely repeated as passionate, somewhat romanticized account of the
appropriated images and music as part of a
ossified gestures. In a way, re-opening questions emergent working class of the early 18th Century7
collaging process, but these elements tend to be
around drama, narrative and performance puts against empiricist history, via a discussion of
used in order to create a contrast with our own
us back within a more mainstream tradition but fiction and representation.
footage, and to create a tension with our own
one that seems less resolved and with greater Linebaugh in particular has some problems
‘amateur’ and slightly clunky reconstructions.
potentials today. These areas provide a fruitful in terms of projecting certain ideas and ideals
Increasingly, a lot of artists seem to trade on
battleground with many new questions and
possibilities, but also they form a path that can
lead you away from increasingly introverted or
rarified art discourses.
The question of novelty also raises itself here
– the contemporary artistic injunction to innovate.
Maybe our retrenchment with forms that have
been torn up by the trajectory of the avant-
garde and have been off limits for a lot of what
‘contemporary art’ sets as its agenda is a symptom
of the limited horizons of formal play under
capitalism. Art is largely trapped in the same
aporias that shaped the avant-garde of modernism
– art is anti-art. Since Dada, many of the same
fundamental problems seem to recur and delimit
a limit-point for bourgeois art. To us, art must
proceed with a knowledge of its own supersession,
and of the supersession of the categories and
social spheres that shape the art world in general.
But rather than get endlessly snagged on the
impossibility of art a la conceptualism, or sinking
into a formalism that has always been the art-
market’s default position, we are trying to create
work that circumnavigates this. We don’t want
to retreat into formalism or ‘culinary’ prettiness
but neither do we want our practice to merely
announce its own problems and ‘impossibility’.
That lends our films a degree of earnestness that
makes us uncomfortable, but we would like to
make work that could function in competition with
‘popular culture’, and find a broader resonance.
VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009 | 7
that weren’t yet historically possible onto the Talking of Brecht… the non-naturalistic performances
periods he describes. However, he does deploy in the film are excellent. Can you discuss your
theory to create a class history that demonstrates pronounced use of gestural modes in more detail?
certain potentials and possibilities. The empiricist Also, how does your work with professional actors
historians we spoke to during our research in this film differ from your previous work with
were sniffy about Linebaugh’s ‘committed’ and predominantly non-professional actors?
passionate approach, but they also tended to have
We’ve taken different approaches with different
a somewhat reductive approach to history and lots
films: Polly II was all about soap opera modes of
of hidden baggage attached to their apparently
acting combined with Brechtian devices; Trail
‘common sense’ position. So the film staged a
of the Spider introduced a short circuit between
battle between these two positions. We rooted
the players’ own lives and experiences and the
many of our scenarios in empirically verifiable
characters they were playing in a very intuitive
facts (dates, places, actions, etc, are very accurate),
way that was very untutored (whilst also parodying
but created a fantastical, speculative mythology
styles of deadpan and melodrama in ‘Western’
that would raise the political questions through
forms). With Jack Sheppard we were much more
theatrical spectacle.
conscious about performance and acting. We
Rather than singling out particular historians
haven’t self consciously followed Bressonian
and the pros and cons of their perceived
or Brechtian methods, or, for that matter, fully
tendencies, what really interested us was the
developed our own way of working with actors,
contestation between camps and the way history is
but we were definitely after a non-realist, non-
mediated and constructed more or less consciously
psychologised, ‘epic’ form of acting. We wanted
around ideological positions. The problem with
to create a sense of historicity but also a sense
“common sense” is that it sides with the status
of artifice, and we did look at Bresson’s shooting
quo, and frequently tends to eschew critical
methods to highlight gesture and instrumentality.
analysis in favour of the atomized minutiae of
We tried different means to achieve that: working
‘facts’, themselves manipulated by the system
with actors trained in commedia dell’arte, 18th
that recorded them in the first place. While
Century gestural acting, and in the case of Mark
dreading the romantic idealism that can creep
Tintner who played Jack Sheppard – boxing.
into some of the ‘history from below’ approaches,
We worked hard to purge all learnt theatrical
they are operating against history as ‘written by
flourishes from actors’ performances, introducing
the victors’, and as such form crucial antidotes to
archaic language but also anachronisms. We
historic and political amnesia.
are not obsessed with a phoney re-creation of
I suppose Hill’s work on the emergence of a sclerotic view of social relations and have
‘authenticity’ but rather wanted to highlight that
British capitalism as a battle of several forces terrible consequences. But that aside, although
while the subjective/affective experience of a
also interests us, as it does ask questions about we certainly deal with class political themes we
particular historic period will be forever closed to
possibilities, lost traditions. But our interest don’t feel – particularly in this rather bleak and
us, this does not mean that it’s lost its relevance
in history is probably as much to do with uncertain period of history – that we can even
for our critical understanding of our contemporary
understanding the origins of antagonisms that still begin to do more than raise them as questions.
condition.
shape the contemporary world. None of our films can do much more than outline
the contradictions and problematics of these What I was trying to get at was the bodily relationship
Accepting these provisos, did you see the Jack
categories in the present period. between subject and history. The way that hierarchical
Sheppard story as a chance to contest the naturalized
Obviously this puts us in with the dominant social relations embed themselves in gesture…
narrative of the inception of high-finance from the
current of contemporary art – the perpetual We were interested in the two extremes of Gesture.
perspective of a ‘history from below’? Jack’s irreverent
process of ‘asking questions’ and ‘getting Jack Sheppard had a stutter and was said to speak
refusal of labour seems to cut right to the origins of
interested in…’ in an open ended, relativistic kind with ‘the motion of striking’ and we speculated
capitalism – the attempt to valorize itself through the
of way. But the fact that our questions are couched that the social convulsions of the early 18th
regulation of the poor and the formalisation of the
within a particular set of concerns associated century would have produced chaotic physical
wage-labour construct…
with the political as we’ve known it in the 20th manifestations in the emerging proletariat
Yes and no… We definitely enjoyed the idea Century, seems to set us out as downright didactic (something similar happened during the early 20th
that the public’s reaction to Jack’s final escape in a period where most art has no relationship to century in response to the new velocities of mass
was a form of refusal; a week of idleness where radical politics. However, we also reject the flipside industrial society). We then recognised this could
historical accounts tell us that the gentry couldn’t to the lack of radical politics in the mainstream be contrasted to the highly choreographed gestural
get workers to lift a finger, so involved were they art world – the domination of what passes for language of the elite.
in speculating on Jack’s future. However we ‘radical politics’ by aestheticised practices (e.g. We were fortunate enough to find the actor
didn’t want to portray an ‘authentic’ grounded carnivalesque symbolic protests, activism as art, Rufus Graham to help us incorporate this. He
Jack against a mendacious ‘speculative’ Defoe. etc.). Faced with this situation we tend to end up had trained in the classic rhetorical gestures that
Rather, we wanted to show the historic limitations agreeing that aesthetics and politics make very would have been part of the basic education of
to both their positions. As part of a proletariat poor bedfellows. We’ve always liked Shklovsky’s anyone from the upper classes in that period.
in becoming, without the scope to get a sense of inversion of the old dictum, “for the sake of art These gestures were based on Roman figures,
itself and its power, Jack represents a set of desires keep politics out of it”. He proposed instead: revitalized in the Renaissance and dominant till
that cannot find a clearly articulated expression “in the name of propaganda, take the art out of the late 19th Century. Movement and deportment
yet. Defoe might even be seen as part of the propaganda”9. That statement kind of echoes our would have been a crucial part of ‘grammar’
progressive phase of bourgeois endeavor – opening feelings when we’ve been involved with political – and Rufus demonstrated how the same gestures
up new possibilities and problems... struggles at a local level – that artists and media can be seen in paintings and drama as well as
The question of didacticism might be raised in types are particularly quick to try and leverage politics of that period. He gave a talk at the
relation to your work. There is a consistent position of authentic struggle for their own ends rather than CCA in September that really shed light on the
engagement with autonomous class resistance and to actually engage with the particular issues of gestures embedded in the film, particularly in Guy
struggle against capitalist relations. Frederic Jameson organization and resistance. In those periods we’ve Henderson’s performance as Applebee. We allowed
long ago discussed the way that postmodernism tends definitely set aside our artistic identities. these social protocols to dictate his motivations
to reflect and reproduce the de-politicised cultural Finally we’ve become interested in the way that rather than a modern ‘psychologised’ approach.
‘political art’ has tended to fail because it cannot
logic of advanced late capitalism. In this context, an
In 1970, Brian Henderson, posited the lateral tracking
accurately apprehend and represent the complex
overtly political practice – one that attempts to take
shot deployed by Jean-Luc Godard as an aesthetic
abstractions of capitalism, reducing complex
a critical distance from the fragmented flux of the
tactic with the potential of moving cinema, “towards
mediations to crude allegories or moral categories.
present in order to posit a hypotheses linking various
a non-bourgeois camera style”. Of course nothing of
Maybe this problem is inherent to the nature of
historical phenomena under an abstract concept,
the sort has occurred, but I think what he meant was
representation per se. This problem has emerged
e.g. the notion of commodity relations, a mode of
that Godard’s cinema tropes, like Brecht’s theatre
as a dominant concern in our work and to some
production, or capitalism – tends to run the risk of
techniques, attempted to block an audience’s easy
extent is one of the themes behind Jack Sheppard,
falling victim to what Jameson presciently called
identification with the characters as individual heroes,
8 where we tried to put a number of terms in play
“the taboo on totality”. To what extent are you
in order to reveal more of the material conditions of
so that the viewer might begin to tease out the
consciously dealing with such criticism?
their life. To what extent did Brecht’s influence, and
mediations between them. But it is also one of the
There’s obviously a need to critique ‘vulgar’ cinematic appropriations of his methods, have on your
principal concerns for dealing with Bertold Brecht
Marxism, however the critique of ‘totality’ tends to overall aesthetic approach?
in a forthcoming film. Brecht was very aware of
base itself on the crudest possible, un-dialectical
the pitfalls of representing the abstract relations Ironically, it’s only now that we have been poring
reading of what a concept like ‘totality’ might
of capitalism in a concrete form but he still fell over Brecht’s writing in preparation for a film
mean within a Marxist approach. Contemporary
foul of Adorno’s charge that his plays often fail to project about him that we realize how much we
relativism is the cousin of the ‘totalitarianism’
adequately articulate the processes they claim to have re-trodden similar ground. Perhaps this is
implicitly assumed within (bad) Marxism. They’re
depict and reveal. because Brecht is already fully incorporated into
both un-dialectical approaches that produce
our culture, or because we share a similar set of
8 | VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009
interests and dispositions. Either way, our new film broadcasting is a very closed world these days and
looking at Brecht is a vehicle for us to confront the ‘film’ world is increasing conservative in its
the problem of acting whilst also dealing with his ‘populism’. We are interested in those contexts but
methods as historically situated. Acting has been only if we don’t have our hands tied. The gallery
a real difficult area in past films – in terms of and art context still represents a space of immense
getting good performances that feel new, different, freedom compared with anywhere else, but
assured but not too professionalised or slick we’ve never been 100% comfortable with playing
– and this is really because we are still working exclusively to that audience.
through these problems in a directorial sense. By Some work tries to deal with the politics of
confronting Brecht head on, we want to make our distribution but at the end of the day we are quite
selves more conscious of our own process, while content-led in our approach. Trail of the Spider
also asking questions about the relevance of his did have some extraordinary public screenings
of standard ‘humanist’ art-house tropes, and its
approaches today. in Hackney and we felt we’d really achieved an
reference to interior states or transcendent modes
The idea of a “non-bourgeois camera style” audience for the film that we wanted – however
of being. However, many attempts by independent
for us leads back to once radical but now ossified that was very bound up with the themes and
cinema to escape naturalism just come off as
formal gestures – is this really an intrinsic formal context of the film and we don’t feel that we can
kooky and affected, probably because of their lack
operation? In Jack Sheppard the way of lighting, repeat that every time. At the moment, certain
of any relation to a political register. It’s curious to
framing and tracking originated more specifically lines of enquiry are informing our work – the
us that today Hollywood seems to get closer to the
from the idea that the ideologically motivated Brecht film is also not so ‘explicitly popular’ but
kind of epic, non-naturalistic modes that interest
separation of high and low culture performed in allows us to work through specific questions about
us, for instance in the films of Paul Verhoeven.
the 18th Century imposed certain conventions on performance. However, we want to return to some
In many ways ‘epic’ theatre just gets you
performers and audience. These conventions, of other strands in our work in the future, and there
out of the rather unpleasant assumptions that
course, included the ‘fourth wall’, the imposition are other ‘genres’ that we are interested in mining.
are bound up with humanism – its reassuring
of silence, and a move away from the collective
positing of a centred human (bourgeois) subject,
Notes
workshop, ‘troupe’, and anonymous authorship, to
and psychological responses. Psychologised,
1. Cited in, Benjamin, Walter, ‘Illuminations’, Pimlico,
a more centralized concentration of power in the
sentimentalized states are part of the post-war 1999, p.251.
hands of the author or director. To some extent
era – a creation of the subject of liberal, consumer 2. For a stinging critique of this tendency, see, Home, S,
these conventions could be seen as rarefying and
capitalism. Surely at some level epic is just ‘Bubonic Plagiarism: Stewart Home on art, politics &
reducing culture to the status of a commodity for the mode of late-capitalist subjects, and serves appropriation’, pamphlet, Sabotage Editions, London,
consumption. Meanwhile, refusing the idea of the 2006.
them more faithfully now that we are are all
individual hero in favour of a whole visual and ‘decentred’! Brecht even realized that at the time 3. See: http://www.metamute.org/en/Polly-II
social mis-en-scene, or vignette, is something that he was writing – he was seeking dramatic modes 4. See: http://www.metamute.org/en/content/duck_you_
drew us to Hogarth and Breughel – whom Brecht regeneration_sucker
appropriate to the ‘New Man’ and new times.
also loved. 5. http://thelondonparticular.org/items/video.html
The remnants of the set – installed together Your first two films seemed more explicitly ‘popular’, 6. Detournement is defined in the Internationale
with the film – and the deliberate decision to make working their way through radical politics, sci-fi, Situationniste (1959) as, “the reuse of preexisting
actors address the camera directly (rather than western and television genres. This film seems more artistic elements in a new ensemble”, and “a negation
using more mainstream over-the-shoulder & point explicitly bounded as an ‘art film’, shown as an of the value of the previous organization of expression”.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/3.detourn.htm
of view shots) were meant to function to some installation within art institutions. Yet it retains a
7. Linebaugh, Peter, ‘The London Hanged: Crime and Civil
extent as reminders of older forms of dramatic strong political content. Can the projection of the film Society in Eighteenth Century’, Verso Books, 2006.
representation prior to the ‘fourth wall’ being within the gallery/art institutional context be seen as
8. Jameson, F, Marxism and Postmodernism, in, ‘The
drawn up and silence falling over the auditorium. a retreat from a shrinking screening circuit? What do Cultural Turn: Selected Writing on the Postmodern,
It’s interesting to us the way that Brecht has you hope for in the future? 1983-1998’, Verso, p.33-49.
been kind of absorbed by mainstream theatre and We actually felt that each film developed and 9. Shklovsky, V, in Pounding Nails with a Samovar an essay
film and then forgotten. So many of his methods commented on the previous works. The Jack from ‘Knight’s Move’, Dalkey Archive Scholarly Series,
are unconsciously adopted yet ultimately there is Sheppard film is to some extent a meditation on 2005.
little sign of his influence anywhere today. We’re the problem of ‘collaboration’ and ‘participative
trying to hold out against the naturalist approach art’ in a situation of inequality (see above) and the
that you see in most contemporary arthouse origins of contemporary art discourses. As such,
films. A recent example is Alexander McQueen’s it did address itself more to the gallery. Of course
Hunger, which seemed very conservative in its use we’d like our work to be more widely available but
VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009 | 9
Photographs by
Eddie Molloy
Locus Of Control
Eddie Molloy
Prelude I. Ideology, Physicality & itself signified a radically altered public. The
‘subjectification’ of this section of the population
As Belfast continues to travel the seemingly Development
gave rise to a properly political situation in
inexorable road toward ‘normality’, ‘stability’
“We transform ourselves through transforming our which the previously un(ac)counted stepped into
and ‘peace’, the past dies. Or, more accurately, it
world (as Marx insisted).” the breach of what has been called the ‘empty
becomes delocated. Delocation does not destroy
David Harvey (2001) Spaces of Capital (London: universal’5, in which a certain section of the
the past but rather shifts it, sanitises it, builds over
Routledge) p.24 people invoke the mantle of ‘the people’, thereby
it. Is this the true meaning of ‘progress’, setting
displacing the supposed legitimacy of the existing
adrift the present from our shameful past, itself To locate ‘control’ it is necessary to peer beyond
order. Rancière characterises the politicisation
constructed from a conflict that had become the glass and concrete facades of the modern city
of the situation (i.e. the challenging of the status
shockingly banal? If so, then what we (Belfast) are and look to the configurations that arise in the
quo by an internal albeit excluded portion of the
experiencing now is something not delocated from swirling mist of a forgotten and often distorted
population) thus:
the past but a process that has never stopped. history. Not only do we transform ourselves
Did not Henry Joy McCracken (that ubiquitous through the forging of our environment but we “… it is through the existence of this part of those
figure on the Belfast scene) proclaim unswerving can be forged through the transformation of who have no part, of this nothing that is all, that the
faith in that illustrious idea?1 What other grand that environment. Although this is clear, the role community exists as a political community.”6
notions could have filled the mind of that great ideology (overt and implicit) plays in this process
bourgeois Edward Harland as he presided over is not. A town so dominated by and bound up Excursus I. Sailortown
Belfast’s industrial heyday while the Socialists and with the history of Unionism cannot then in its
The history of Sailortown in the Belfast
Papishts were beaten on the docks and burnt from physical and structural elements be immune from
docklands reflects these trends clearly. For it
their homes? Progress! Aye, a noble idea. Sure was that stated ideology. Nor is Unionism itself a free-
was here that a section of Belfast’s maritime
it not progress too that inspired the young British floating self-contained body of dogma that stands
working class experienced the industrialisation,
technocrats high on LeCorbusier during the heady aloof from any external influence, but rather it
pogroms, hardship and eventual delocation that
days of mass housing, when the working class itself operates as the articulation of a certain self-
informed the history of Belfast’s working class
were no longer to be feared but something to be justificatory Weltanschauung of a section of the
population. The forcible exit from the east of the
controlled, catalogued and collated in accordance Belfast bourgeoisie. Dependent on the contingent
city where industry was strongest; depression
with their ‘naturally’ conceived divisions. circumstances, it regards itself on the one hand
and unemployment; solidarity and community;
And now, it can perhaps be said, Progressus Vicit: as the guarantor of civil and religious liberty in
finally, forced dispersion around the city. The
the ancient divisions have been overcome in an this British dominion2 and, on the other, as the
destruction of Sailortown in the 1960s illustrated
orgy of vulgar consumerism. United not by the guarantor of the ethno-religious hegemony of
the adaptation of official state ideology to the
common name of ‘Irishman’ but rather by the sub- Protestants ensured through an exclusionary all-
conditions of modernity in which the values of
nomen ‘consumer’. The End of History. A future class alliance.3
community and solidarity were subordinated
defined by the objects of intended acquisition The primacy of ‘control’ in this ideological
to those of individualism and consumption. The
or intangible ‘lifestyle indicators’ such as ‘gym configuration is clear: first, the control of
exchange of Sailortown for the M3 was a powerful
membership’, ‘time shares’ or the accumulation of the majority of the working class through a
metaphor for the values that were coming to
‘air miles’. Past is become invisible: religio-cultural identification with the State
dominate the perception of space in the city. As
itself and, second, the maintenance of an
“I used to live here.” Guy Debord noted in 1959:
economic environment conducive to high rates
“You used to live under the motorway? You must have of exploitation (due to the depression of wages “The breaking up of the dialectic of the human milieu
been very poor mummy.” created by the existence of a Catholic underclass in favor of automobiles (the projected freeways
How can anything intrude into such a timeless which served as a reserve pool of labour).4 in Paris will entail the demolition of thousands of
zone? A politics without history lacks all but the
The space of the city then becomes a constant houses and apartments although the housing crisis is
bluster of an interminable, mindless discourse. It
battleground of transgression and manipulation continually worsening) masks its irrationality under
ceases to exist in all but the minds of its supposed
leading to an inevitable carve-up as zones are pseudopractical justifications. But it is practically
practitioners.
marked not only by social status but by allegiance. necessary only in the context of a specific social set-
It is here that art appears once again on
This process (begun at the very beginning of up. Those who believe that the particulars of the
the fringes of society’s hetero-mediated self-
Belfast as an industrialised city) continues right up problem are permanent want in fact to believe in the
representation. A society that believes itself to the present day as ‘peace lines’ are still erected permanence of the present society.”7
to have vanquished history or at least that it is
in the name of social stability. “In this way, necessity becomes implicit in the official
now strong enough to confine history’s existence
The increased levels of ghettoisation that took discourse to ensure that no other option seems
to certain places and moments where it can
place in the late 1960s and 1970s were indicative possible. The importance of the task at hand will
be suitably ignored and forced once again into
not only of heightened dissatisfaction with the therefore override all other considerations because
intermittent invisibility.
status quo by all sections of the working class but history and the impermanence of the particular
The articulation of the inaudible, the
it crucially signified the failure of Unionism to circumstances that exist at any one time appear as
visualisation of the invisible, the materialisation
contain the tensions implicit in the foundation fictions whose use is long past.”8
of a collective memory subsumed by a mountain
of Northern Ireland. The corporatist ideology This is how Sailortown could be destroyed
of neon-encrusted guilt, facing the present with all
that informed its functioning could no longer without consultation and even with the trust of the
the force of the future…
exclude the growing and increasingly educated inhabitants.
Catholic population whose very articulation of
10 | VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009
II. Culture, Hegemony & Resistance authoritarian unity, rather (as Harvey points out10) manufacturing output has risen by 25% in the past
there exists a dialectical relationship between few years; and exports have doubled in the past
“In losing their ignorance, the bourgeoisie have
community formation and the institutionalisation ten years.
become impenitently malign.”
of that community. Such a dialectic creates Crucially, he also highlighted the role the
Theodor W. Adorno (2005) Minima Moralia (London: an internally dynamic process of formation, bourgeoisie play in structuring (both economically
Verso) p.34 expression and supercession of the origins of the and physically) the ‘new Belfast’:
However, the ghettoisation of Belfast was by this community itself which persist through often
“…we have seen time and again that business leaders
stage firmly entrenched. The geographic structures heroic founding myths that serve to justify the
constitute some of the strongest voices urging
implying power relations old or new began to authorities indigenous to the community. This
Northern Ireland’s politicians to do the right thing.”
serve a radically altered purpose as zones that process is also replicated at the level of the
“Business men and women focus year in and year out
emerged as accidents of history started to develop physical, i.e. in the fluctuating persistence of the
on the bottom line; in doing so, they probably best
a community possessing subjective agency. mural through time:
understand what can be gained – and lost – from any
This process too was developed and reflected
“Although the painting of a mural may appear to given situation. Economic progress is measured in
on a physical basis through the visual self-
constitute the finished artefact, it actually may be just profit margins, productivity, returns on investment,
representation of communities that were becoming
the beginning of a complex social life, which may well and other tangible indices. This progress manifests
more and more solidified through political actions
continue long after the original painting itself has itself in the wider community through higher incomes
and allegiance. been over-painted or destroyed.”11 for families, home and car sales, more theatres, shops
The painting of murals was central to this The life of the mural as it is reinvigorated by
and restaurants in thriving neighbourhoods. In both
process of self-creation and self-representation. the community provides a potent reminder of the
these realms – that of the economy and that of the
Indeed, the existence of such displays transformed possibility of that community fading away or losing
community – we have seen direct benefits from
the very nature of the place that was inhabited: ‘it relevance to those who construct it. Its physical
the peace and stability created by the Good Friday
is the public space in which the [mural as] artefact nature betrays an underlying fragility that is
Agreement.”14
is sited that is changed.’9 exposed to shifts in values and the supposed Peace and stability, then, form the basis from
So, the existence of murals as the physical imperatives of economics. which a successful consumption-driven society is
expression of the community also allows
established. The language used in Haas’ statement
Black
the community to transform itself. This does
Mountain, 2008. Excursus II. Barracks is clearly illustrative of the nature of the ‘right
not imply however that what had developed
Photographs thing’, as he calls it. For the ‘right thing’ in this
by C. Devlin were homogenous communal blocs acting in “To dedicate a new school is not the same as to convert context is clearly the ending of widespread, non-
& C. Gillen. a military fortress into a school. We intend to continue
state violence15 so that an arena might be created
converting even the small barracks into schools,
that would allow a correctly consumerist model to
because every town no matter how small, had military
arise.16
barracks.”12
What then emerges from the economic
Throughout Belfast the British military presence development that corroborates, justifies and
looms large in the form of barracks (some empty defends the ‘peace process’ is an arena that in
some occupied). In Andersonstown, the barracks
fact disguises the social relations that sustain it.
was closed in 2005 but its status is still contested Thus the reality of antagonism is automatically
by the local community who have repeatedly expelled from the city centre as public sphere.
demanded (through community groups, political The intrusion of the political is prohibited by the
representatives and popular mobilisation) that
instrumentalisation of the public sphere for the
the ground on which it stood be handed over to purpose of a consumption that effectively ‘de-
the community as a whole. However in recent publicises’ the public. This de-publicisation has
years the Minister for Social Development has a number of facets. Firstly it locates the coming
twice attempted to allow the space to be acquired together of disparate persons into a unity only by
privately, most conspicuously by the Carvill
dispelling any intrinsic commonality by replacing
Group.13 it with an extrinsic identity forged through the
The continued resistance to the Andersonstown experience of sociality as mass consumption.
Barracks site remaining outside the control of the Secondly, it supplants the critical (that is to say
community reflects the process of forming and democratic) potential of an experience of the
maintaining a community mentioned above. The public. Such a critico-democratic potential exists
creation of such a subjectified public demonstrates in the very possibility provided by the coming
the impetus to maintain a physical community of together of disparate individuals into a public
resistance that demands to recreate itself and its mass that by its own existence legitimates and/or
environment on its own terms. The physical nature challenges dominant ideas and institutions. In
of this process becomes clearer due to the rapidly this way the mass or active public is replaced by
changing landscape in Belfast. That a community the homogenising aggregation of individuals as
can articulate (and recreate) itself on such a undifferentiated consumers.
basis also points to the fragility of the processes Furthermore it should be clear how this
that give rise to spatial conflicts like this one. For corresponds to the intermittently hysterical praise
through such a struggle, the reality of the changing of the stability provided by the ‘peace process’
shape of Belfast becomes apparent, and the and the all but non-existent critique. To this fact
fictions that inform its seemingly timeless centre can be added to the striking absence of any real
are exposed. debate on the causes of the current economic crisis
and its relation with the political institutions and
III. Middle Class Ascendancy, or the policies that have been followed with so much élan
by the political and business elite. It must then be
Dominance of a Fiction
understood that what is happening here is very
“… the ‘middle class’ is, in its very ‘real’ existence, the much tied up with the process of the de-publicising
embodied lie, the denial of antagonism… [it] presents of the public mentioned above. For only in this way
itself as the neutral common ground of Society.” is it possible to appreciate the wilful blindness
Slavoj Zizek (2000) The Ticklish Subject (London: Verso) that has infected the entire body politic in this
p.187. time of economic woe and the terminal inability
The ‘common ground of Society’ in Belfast is, of politicians in Ireland to come up even with a
according to conventional wisdom, anything but coherent criticism that does not entirely reek of
‘neutral’. Contestation and transgression are the crass opportunism, never mind an economic plan
watchwords of present-day Belfast as consumerism that does not seek recovery in the exploitative
attempts to bring everybody into its indiscriminate speculation that characterises mainstream
embrace. The emergence of Belfast as a focus economic and political discourse.
for production and consumption can be directly In terms of the ‘visual’, this process can be seen
traced through the development of the ‘peace in the fact that displays that on a superficial level
process.’ Richard Haas (then US Government’s may seem to have some political import (such as
representative in Belfast), in an address to the anti-war demonstrations that have occurred
certain businessmen in 2002, highlighted the occasionally over the past number of years) are
great increase in production stemming from the met with placid support at best or more often with
‘peace process’: foreign investment has created total disinterest by people who are after all in the
31,000 new jobs since 1998; Northern Ireland’s centre of Belfast to consume. Thus what may seem
VARIANT 36 | WINTER 2009 | 11
‘The Mountain as Notice Board’,
Hatchet Field, West Belfast Ellis,
Dessie, ‘I would rather die than be
Extradited to Britain’.
Interview with Dessie Ellis, An
Phoblacht / Republican News, 8th Nov.
1990, Sraith Nua Iml 12, Uimhir 44, 9
privatised public of the centre. In this sense the Notes
de-publicisation of the centre becomes the vehicle 1. McCracken was one of the founders of the United
for the re-location of the (political) public. The Irishmen, leading them in the Battle of Antrim in 1798.
ever-nascent public then repeatedly attempts to He was hanged by the Market House in the city centre.
overcome its destruction by insisting on being 2. “Northern Ireland is the one part of the United
Kingdom which has a written constitution - the
heard on its own terms.
Government of Ireland Act, 1920. This Act specifically
What Gilen’s work evinces then is a referral to a
prohibits the Northern Ireland Parliament from making
point in the past when that same mountain was the any laws which endow one religion or discriminate
focus of a public in action, evoking the formation against another. Any such Act could be challenged in the
of the United Irishmen on nearby Cavehill or the courts and ruled to be inoperative. A similar prohibition
applies to executive acts.
use of the mountain as a signifier of a community’s
In effect, the Government is not entitled to do what
support for the republican hunger strikers in 1981. Parliament is not authorised to permit it to do. If there
On these occasions a line was drawn that marked were such illegal actions by the Government, any person
the transformation of a people from subjected has the right and the opportunity to challenge them
before the Courts.” Ulster Unionist Party (n.d. 1968?)
mass to subjectified agent. The significance
Northern Ireland Fact and Falsehood: A frank look at the
of such allusions today must surely rest in
present and the past. (Belfast: Ulster Unionist Party).
the stultifying atmosphere of a consumer-led http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/quotes.htm
strategy for growth in an entrenchedly sectarian 3. As Craig insisted: “All I boast is that we are a Protestant
environment (an aspect further highlighted by the Parliament and Protestant State.” Quoted in Jonathan
location of his work directly above the so-called Bardon (1992) A History of Ulster. (Belfast: The Blackstaff
Press) pp. 538-539.
‘peace line’ separating the Ballygomartin and
5. Slavoj Žižek (2000) The Ticklish Subject (London: Verso)
Whiterock Roads) and the dissolution (though
p.179ff.
not disappearance) of the prospect of reclaiming
6. Jacques Rancière (1999) Disagreement (Minnesota:
the space lost from the public in the name of a
University of Minnesota Press) p. 10
universal yet concrete enterprise.
7. Guy Debord, Situationist Theses on Traffic, see: http://
libcom.org/library/internationale-situationiste-3-article-2
IV. Space, Conflict & Art, or Towards 8. Herbert Marcuse (2002) One Dimensional Man (London:
to be political becomes in fact a mask with which
Routledge) p.97. He points out the danger of such
to disguise the absence of the political. And it is the Future
technical rationality when he writes, “If the linguistic
this very absence that defines the public, defines it In light of the continued economic decline, rising behaviour blocks conceptual development, if it militates
in the sense that it negates it. against abstraction and mediation, if it surrenders to
unemployment and halted development, it is not
This is not to say however that the real the immediate facts, it repels recognition of the factors
without interest to reflect on Haas’ words to the
behind the facts, and thus repels recognition of the
antagonisms that underlie the politico-economic
Belfast bourgeoisie in 2002. Although it was clear facts, and of their historical content.”
fabric have evaporated. Rather, they have
that ‘peace and stability’ would be necessary for 9. Neil Jarman, Painting Landscapes: the place of murals in
expression in the persistent sectarianism that
a properly thriving capitalist economy in Belfast, the symbolic construction of urban spaces http://www.cain.
recently resulted in the murder in Coleraine of the other factors at work in such a building process ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals/jarman.htm
Kevin McDaid as two police officers stood nearby; (such as the concrete potential and structural 10. David Harvey (2001) Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical
circumstances disturbingly similar to those Geography (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)
necessity of crisis enmeshed within the very
in the murder of Robert Hamill in Portadown p.192
framework of capitalism itself) were flagrantly
twelve years ago, and only days after the public 11. Neil Jarman loc. cit.
ignored. The concomitant suppression of the
inquiry into Hamill’s death heard evidence of 12. Fidel Castro (1961) http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/
expression of individual and cultural difference
police collusion. The recent spate of racist attacks castro/db/1961/19610128.html
as anything other than oppositional identity that
in Belfast further confirms the violent reality 13. See: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ni/?id=2008-11-
is inscribed into this process further exposes the
10.8.13 for details.
underlying increasingly hollow official statements
vacuity of the rhetoric of progress and normality.
heralding official recovery and political progress. 14. See: http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/15318.htm
The reality of the situation continues to reside
The question then becomes one of whether it 15. It is interesting to note in this context that later in his
at street-level where the hegemonic ideology is
statement (ibid.), Haas sees the “normalisation” of the
is possible to challenge the violent, exploitative
both affirmed and resisted in a continual interplay British military presence as a prerequisite for “moving
nature of the status quo at all, or whether the of images, texts and fragments whose very the peace process forward.”
retreat into sectarianism and racism are inevitable
existence attests to the conflictual nature at the 16. See Jean Baudrillard (2005) The System of Objects
outcomes of a situation whose own logic demands heart of reality in present-day Belfast. The official (London: Verso) passim.
the eradication of these features yet depends on non-existence of that ideology is attested to by 17. http://www.investni.com/index/locate/why_northern_
them for its very existence. This reality is evident the facts of loyalist decommissioning and Sinn ireland/competitive_costs.htm
in the marketing of Northern Ireland as an Fein/DUP scrambling for US dollars. The reality 18. Jacques Rancière (2004) The Politics of Aesthetics
essentially low wage economy17, a situation directly (London: Continuum) p. 3, p 70.
is however made clear by the new inscriptions
derived from a sectarianised conflict that both 19. “Kill All Huns [Protestants]/ Kill All Taigs [Catholics].
that dominate working class communities where
divided the working class and created a climate of naked sectarianism (in the form of graffiti stating 20. The most common annotation of this is the ubiquitous
underinvestment. U[p]T[he]H[oods].
‘KAH’ or ’KAT’19) vies for importance with the
21. Gilligan is the Director of Big Picture Developments,
affirmation of the supremacy of the (secular)
who were responsible for a major apartment
Excursus III. New Protest in Belfast ‘Hoods’20 – a final victory over divisive ideology!
development at the former Ormeau Bakery in south
(RIR / No Bush) The destruction of the public (as self- Belfast. Gilligan / BPD also own important sites across
articulating agent) then forms the background the city including the Crumlin Road Courthouse, which
When the Royal Irish Regiment paraded to today’s visual culture (itself dominated by was sold by the Northern Ireland Courts Service for £1,
through the streets of Belfast on 2nd November and has now been destroyed by fire.
an aesthetically hollow consumerist bulk) as
2008, the notion of the police as arbiters of the
different ways are increasingly sought to overcome
‘distribution of the sensible’ (le partage du sensible)
the historic failures of emancipatory politics.
in Rancière’s schema18 becomes apparent. For in
Where these are to be found can be seen in the
calling the demonstration, the British Ministry of
fragments of resistance that litter our streets, in
Defence clearly saw such a parade as apolitical
the oppositional and the still-existent communities
and so suitable for the public realm. The intrusion
that mobilise against the privatisations of space
of the political (in the sense of an aggrieved and
which remain central to dominant narratives of
historically located subject) into the public sphere
‘development.’ It remains to be seen however what
was thus prohibited and confined to the limits
role the disused and abandoned building sites will
of the city centre through the rulings of state
play in this coming dispensation; and whether
agencies enforced by the PSNI.
developer-in-chief Barry Gilligan21 will find any
This process of the expulsion and persistent
contradiction between this role, and his position of
intrusion of the political is mirrored in Belfast
chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.
artist Christoff Gillen’s recent work on the Black
Mountain, at the northwestern fringe of the city.
Rather than being forced out of the consumer-
driven public sphere, Gillen’s work enunciates into
the public sphere from afar, thus replicating and
subverting the forcible removal of the political
from the public. The re-located (and so re-created)
public becomes the people of Belfast willing to
engage with a visualised text that articulates
the absent public without becoming lost of the