A discussion-based collaborative session aiming to explore and inspire a commitment, through knowledge, to providing skilled and high level documentation to benefit art commissions and residencies, and to enrich the experience of viewing the archive. The key points of the session include:

• Showcase the benefits of developing ways of involving the documentation process of commissions and residencies from the initial idea onwards.

• Explore different methods of documentations based on the nature of the art practise, e.g. still photography, video, time-lapse, text and audience participation.

• Examine new output platforms available of the documents, e.g. online, social media and mobile Apps versus traditional forms, such as print and DVDs.

• Highlight the issues of ownership and sharing copyright between artists and image-makers.

Today’s exile may be yesterday’s tourist.
Victor Burgin

In his 1984 essay “Reflections on Exile,” Edward Said questions if nationalism and exile share intrinsic attributes and asks if they are “two conflicting varieties of paranoia?” Victor Burgin elaborates in his essay “Paranoiac Space” on this comparison between what he refers to as “anecdotal expression of ‘personal feelings’ and the abstraction of political discourse”. He compares the term “paranoia” in psychoanalysis with its everyday use but draws attention to its psychoanalytic setting and explains, “there is no ‘past reality’ in the psychic reality… The past event, whether actual or fictional, produces real effects in the present.” This mirrors what Said concludes in his essay by saying that for an exile, “both the new and old environments are vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally.”

Even when an immigrant is eventually accepted, by the state, as a citizen, not only he/she possesses a new nationality, but also, through bureaucracy, acquires a new persona. This new persona projects itself through external recognition, mainly by the state, and eventually manifests itself as an internal image in the new citizen.

During the process of becoming a citizen, commonly referred to as “naturalisation,” there is a form of identification with an Other, similar to that of the infant in Lacan’s Mirror Stage, which he describes as “the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image”. Lionel Bailly elaborates on Lacan’s point and states that infant’s discovery of self “involves the translation of an image into an idea – the idea of ‘me’ or ‘self.’” In the case of the immigrant/ exile, this “idea” is the belonging to a homeland, people and heritage. “While identifying itself in the mirror,” Bailly explains, “the child also identifies with something from which it is separated. […] The founding act of identity is therefore not just emotional and intellectual, it is also schismatic, separating the Subject from itself into an object.” The separated “Subject” and “object” in the infant are what Said and Burgin identify as the “past” and “present” and “old” and “new” in the immigrant/ exile. This separation is not only a result of the internal recognition, but also an external acceptance.

While acquiring a new citizenship status might dissolve the external geographical borders for the immigrant, it simultaneously accentuates the internal geopolitical ones. Gerald Raunig in his essay “After 9/11: Postscript on an immeasurable Border Space” emphasises that the state border does not disappear but rather “becomes diffused in space, multiplies, and sometimes it emerges again in an old grab”. He uses the example of activists registered in the EU internal affairs databases who are not allowed to leave a country that no longer has a border with the country of their destination according to the Schengen Agreement. Similarly, an immigrant realises at an early stage that these borders that have allegedly “disappeared,” pop up again when he/she wishes to travel. This is where an immigrant realises that democracy has its own borders too.

Said, an exile himself, describes exiles as “eccentrics who feel their difference (even as they frequently exploit it) as a kind of orphanhood” and that the exile “insists on his or her right to refuse to belong.” According to him, exiles share “willfulness, exaggeration, overstatement” as characteristic styles and sees these styles as methods for compelling the world to accept their vision. These characteristic styles are products of the Lacanian Subject which is “the active mind that produces the concept of itself as the other in the mirror” while the ego is “the product of the Subject’s imaginary game,” which “helps protect the individual against the threat of incoherence and impotence and provides a fictitious coherence.” Therefore, it is necessary for immigrants/ exiles to maintain this otherness in order to identify with themselves, “that’s me, over there.” Just as the child in the Mirror Stage becomes itself when it is separated from the image of its mother.

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Once I have read the title of the photograph, it is hard to see the photograph in objectively or without applying stereotypes or pre-known contexts. The elements of the photograph title include: Muslim, Family, celebration, Christmas, home, Baghdad, Iraq and 2005-2007.

What if we remove one or more of these elements from the tile and (re-) read the image? Let’s say “Family celebrating Christmas at their home in Baghdad, 2005-2009”. I can naturally assume they are one of the few Christian minorities in Baghdad. I might still wonder where did they buy the red Christmas hats, tree and Santa figure on the wall from. They might have got them from a relative or friend who lives abroad. I will still imagine the horror of the family to celebrate a Christian festival in a Western way amidst the height of the sectarian violence in Baghdad. The Christmas tree lights seems switched off, possibly so that not to draw attention to their celebration for passers by in the streets, but also possibly because of a power cut. The curtains are drawn which makes me think it was the former assumption rather than the latter.

Now let’s return to the title and juggle with it again so now it reads “A Muslim family celebrating Christmas at their home, Baghdad, Iraq”. Without the date, and with a moderate knowledge of the recent history of Iraq, I can guess that this could either be taken in the 1990s (interior decoration hasn’t changed much since then, mainly because most Iraqi families cannot afford to modernise their furniture). I can also be a little more controversial and suggest that the photograph might have been taken soon after the 2003 invasion. The latter will sound a little more plausible especially since the clothes people wearing suggest more recent fashion than that of the 90s. Also, this might explain the hats, tree and Santa figure as presents from the US Army who might have brought them with them for Iraqi families along with liberty and freedom.

One last version of the title to ponder is “A Muslim family celebrating Christmas at their home, 2005 – 2007”. This will only leave us running with our stereotype imagination guessing where these faces might be from; Mediterranean, south of Spain? A North African family in Europe? A Middle Eastern family in the UK or even, God forbid, it could be in the land of freedom itself, the United States of America!

Beyond the what-ifs, the title is there, and it has already perpetrated my reading of the image. I cannot assume anymore that I don’t know where this photograph was taken, or when, or of what religion these people are.

There are solid facts to be seen in the image, “information” to be read from the title and assumptions to be made from our pre-existing knowledge. The facts are that it is a Christmas celebration: red and white hats with red stars, a Christmas tree and a Santa figure on the wall (although one can argue that these are assumptions based on our pre-existing knowledge of Christmas symbols, but I will ignore this and take these symbols as 21st century facts.) The photograph is taken inside a house, someone’s home. The photographed people are of three generations; grandmother, children and a grandchild.

The “information” given to us is that they are a family, they are in their home celebrating Christmas in Baghdad circa. 2005 – 2007 and that they are Muslims.

The facts and the given information do not constitute a reading of the image, they are the alphabet of the photograph. The reading starts when I start constructing my assumptions in the build up to the before, the then-now, and the after of the photograph. It is these assumptions that makes one might want to read a thousand words in addition to looking at one picture.

The words Muslim and Christmas are the two dominant words in the title, least because they are capitalised but also because they are contradictory. A cynic might suggest that the hats, Christmas tree and Santa figure on the wall might have been photoshoped into the image, but cynicism aside, I will accept this photograph as genuine with its pixelated resolution and amateur snappy quality.

Everyone posing for the camera is wearing a Christmas hat except for the woman whose hair is covered by an Islamic veil. A hat on top of her veil would’ve dominated the photograph and became the centre of focus, but this lack of a red and white hat on top of her veil gives the image a balance and allows everyone else in the photograph to have an equal weight.

Everyone is looking straight into the lens – no blinking, no distraction, no looking away nor anyone of the family is in the middle of a sentence (as it is the case with family photographs). All hands are in place too; no hand is in mid-action. Everyone is smiling, some more than others, but a genuine overwhelming happiness dominates the photograph. It could either be the spirit of Christmas, the sense of a family gathered together, or just an act put in front of the camera for the mere 1/250th second of the exposure. I will take the liberty to overrule the latter option only because I do believe that their smiles seems non-faked and because of the occasional naïve optimisms that I feel over Christmas, which is the time I am writing this with a bright lit Christmas tree right by my side.

Although their Christmas tree is at the far back of the photograph and partially obscured by the woman on my left (the only one showing teeth in her smile), but unlike the figure on my right with his/her back to the camera, the tree makes a dominant appearance in the photograph, maybe because of the silver star and red tinsels or because of its symbolic presence, or possibly because the Santa figure on the wall is pointing at it with his cane. Either way, the tree cannot be ignored and has become another figure to examine when scanning the faces of the people posing for the lens.

I see a family, and I can only wish them a long and happy life together. They might have lost relatives and loved ones to death or immigration, but those remaining, posing smilingly to the lens, may possibly grow older together. A mother is leaning with her elbow on her son’s shoulder. The same shoulder which might have carried his father, her husband, in a coffin to the grave (the black dress of the woman most likely indicate recent death of a loved one). The two sisters on my right have their arms entangled together, the way how an older sister would guide her younger sister through life, generously sharing with her experiences and mistakes so that not to repeat them. A woman in the centre, in front of her mother and with her daughter on her lap. A thread of DNA resemblance is running through their eyes, mouths and noses connects them, genetically, emotionally and fatefully together. The woman is sandwiched between what she might become (her mother) and what she might have been (her daughter). Then there is another young man – one of only two out of nine people in the photograph. He is the only one of the family who seems partially in-motion, or unsettled. It might be that he was the one who set up the self-timer on the camera and pressed the shutter and hurried back to sit with the rest of his family. He is also the only one with his white fluffy ball in front of the hat.

The lack of gestures or mouth movements by any of the family members makes my assumption leans towards it being a self-timed photograph. Everyone’s gaze is directed at the exact same point and no one is looking slightly above or below the camera (being a digital image, the camera’s position does not necessary have to be at eye-level with the photographer’s).

Most people often like to look back at older family photographs and see smiling faces. It is often comforting to recall that once upon a time, we were happy, that we were together and that some of us, who are no longer with us, have, once upon a time, been with us. This is a family portrait, and like most family portraits, the purpose of the photograph is to entertain and remind the people in the photograph of a happy past, rather than for an audience of strangers. It makes me feel pervasive looking at the photograph despite their welcoming smiles and embracing silence. But like most Iraqi homes, strangers are often welcome, whether there is room for them or not, and if there isn’t enough food to feed everyone, then it is often the host who sacrifices his/her share of the food to make sure that the guests don’t leave the house hungry.

A group of pre-selected members of the public was invited to reconsider the experience we have in a gallery through a series of vocal and physical responses to artworks on display. By interacting with Tate’s collection and each other, the players experiment with moving beyond a solo and contemplative relationship to art to explore the energetic relations between people, practice and space.

∆E=W aims to collapse the distinction between art object and ephemeral act by considering all matter, on the sub-atomic level, as energy. Moving beyond a scientific conception of energy, the project investigates the potential of art as a mechanism for channeling or converting energy as we physically experience it. Exploring energy in relation to the body, collective action, practice and work, the game proposes a new language for interpretation and interaction within the gallery.
The game was played in the Energy and Process galleries on level 5 of Tate Modern, in room 3.

∆E=W has been developed with the support of Artsadmin, London.

Timelapse

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Performance

The Rehearsals