PRESENCE AS INVASION
Four practitioners discuss the challenges of portraying invasive presence as an unnerving spectacle and the ways technology participates in representing invasive presence.
3D scan by Ksenia Kopalova
Discussion participants:
Amrita Kaur Slatch, PhD scholar | RWTH Aachen University
Emma-Kate Matthews, Architect, Artist, Composer, Musician, Researcher | UCL
Gabrielle Cariolle, illustration educator, animation filmmaker | AUB
Rachel Bacon, visual artist | KABK
Moderator: Ksenia Kopalova
Amrita Kaur Slatch, PhD scholar | RWTH Aachen University
Emma-Kate Matthews, Architect, Artist, Composer, Musician, Researcher | UCL
Gabrielle Cariolle, illustration educator, animation filmmaker | AUB
Rachel Bacon, visual artist | KABK
Moderator: Ksenia Kopalova
Photo: Amrita Kaur Slatch
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
I would like to start with discussing the images that we shared with each other. Maybe there were some intersections between them that were particularly interesting for you?
RACHEL BACON:
I was looking at Amrita’s images - also because I know a bit about her background and why she’s looking at them. I think she’s studying post-industrial situation, when she explores what happens after the mines has been exploited. I’m also focussing on mining, excavation, and landscape. In her first image it is really visible how an ideology has been projected onto the landscape, and how there’s no reason, no function for such a landscape to exist - it’s very artificial. You can clearly see what the interactions between the thought projections to a site, which has nothing to say about it, it has no way to react, respond, and know what’s happening. I don’t want to anthropomorphise it, with how the site might respond, or what the needs of the site might be, but we can see how incredibly artificial this mesa is.
I would like to start with discussing the images that we shared with each other. Maybe there were some intersections between them that were particularly interesting for you?
RACHEL BACON:
I was looking at Amrita’s images - also because I know a bit about her background and why she’s looking at them. I think she’s studying post-industrial situation, when she explores what happens after the mines has been exploited. I’m also focussing on mining, excavation, and landscape. In her first image it is really visible how an ideology has been projected onto the landscape, and how there’s no reason, no function for such a landscape to exist - it’s very artificial. You can clearly see what the interactions between the thought projections to a site, which has nothing to say about it, it has no way to react, respond, and know what’s happening. I don’t want to anthropomorphise it, with how the site might respond, or what the needs of the site might be, but we can see how incredibly artificial this mesa is.
Image: Murray, R.W. 1873. Colesberg Mine.
Original held and digitised by the British Library.
Original held and digitised by the British Library.
I was really intrigued by that projection of thought onto an unsuspecting body, which i thought was very visible. It reminded me of an image from my own research - an image of one of the very first diamond mines in South Africa, where they made a grid to sell claims to the site and divided it with a grid, so that everyone was digging down from the top from their own section, but they dag down at different rates. Here, again, it’s an interaction between a natural phenomena and a purely abstract thought process.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
It reminded me of an early 70’s project by Gordon Matta-Clark ‘Fake Estates’ where an abstract geometry, driven by logics relating to divvying up land for building plots, gets projected onto a landscape which is much more complex in reality than the 'grid' is able to acknowledge. The artist bought up plots of land that were either too small or inaccessible, that nobody else wanted to buy.
RACHEL BACON:
Yes, these are all results of industrial processes, but he was thinking about it in terms of conceptual art and make us aware of this absurdity of zoning - projecting abstract lines into the world that have real-life consequences. It was a really nice project, because you could visit the little lots he bought. I actually don’t know what happened to them; I wonder if it’s still a part of a foundation.
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
The absurdity of these projections is also manifested in how the images capturing it uses scale and conceptualises distance. Some of the ways the intrusions into space are optical, such as in satellite shots - and these images also project a certain vision of landscape. But also these images provide an unnerving sense of scale, because here we can compare the sizes of objects.
It reminded me of an early 70’s project by Gordon Matta-Clark ‘Fake Estates’ where an abstract geometry, driven by logics relating to divvying up land for building plots, gets projected onto a landscape which is much more complex in reality than the 'grid' is able to acknowledge. The artist bought up plots of land that were either too small or inaccessible, that nobody else wanted to buy.
RACHEL BACON:
Yes, these are all results of industrial processes, but he was thinking about it in terms of conceptual art and make us aware of this absurdity of zoning - projecting abstract lines into the world that have real-life consequences. It was a really nice project, because you could visit the little lots he bought. I actually don’t know what happened to them; I wonder if it’s still a part of a foundation.
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
The absurdity of these projections is also manifested in how the images capturing it uses scale and conceptualises distance. Some of the ways the intrusions into space are optical, such as in satellite shots - and these images also project a certain vision of landscape. But also these images provide an unnerving sense of scale, because here we can compare the sizes of objects.
Something that I find quite disturbing about these images is that they are quite beautiful in some ways, intriguing to look at. For me, on the contrary, they give no sense of scale at all. It’s really hard to tell how big this is, and it’s actually huge - a kilometre across. Edward Burtynski, for instance, takes photos of landscapes with drones: they are really, really beautiful, and I find them extremely problematic. Some of his images could be a pattern of something really small. You get no sense of the scale of the real damage.
AMRITA KAUR SLATCH:
Along similar lines, I am aware of another German photographer - Bernhard Lang, who has been trying to capture images only from the “aerial view” perspective. In that endeavor he has captured many images of mining landscapes here in Germany. His photos from the aerial view appear more artistic than a space in time, therefore taking away from its flaws and imperfections.
AMRITA KAUR SLATCH:
Along similar lines, I am aware of another German photographer - Bernhard Lang, who has been trying to capture images only from the “aerial view” perspective. In that endeavor he has captured many images of mining landscapes here in Germany. His photos from the aerial view appear more artistic than a space in time, therefore taking away from its flaws and imperfections.
RACHEL BACON:
Images: Mirny mine in the Republic of Sakha, taken with ASTER radiometer; and the same mine on Google maps
Photo: Luis Bartolomé Marcos (2014) River stone in the Tinto River bank. Berrocal, Huelva, Andalusia, Spain. Image source
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
Do you think that image makers and art practitioners can do something to address this problematic aestheticization of the scale of a disaster?
RACHEL BACON:
In this respect it was interesting to listen to Emma-Kate’s work and hear the sounds, because I think the sound is a very effective way of communicating embodiments. It’s also really abstract. As for myself, I’m still trying to find my way around this, because when you’re creating something embodied, it becomes very limited in how many people can experience it. It’s also an ethical question: who are we speaking for? If we are talking about a place that we have no access to, where we can’t go - how do we do that? That’s another problem that I have with Burtynsky’s work - he shows all of these different places here and there, but what’s the connection? In my own work, I still believe in the personal one on one experience with the work to move you, or set up a connection between your own body and another body.
I really like the sound pieces, because sound does travel across distances and still can affect you bodily.
Do you think that image makers and art practitioners can do something to address this problematic aestheticization of the scale of a disaster?
RACHEL BACON:
In this respect it was interesting to listen to Emma-Kate’s work and hear the sounds, because I think the sound is a very effective way of communicating embodiments. It’s also really abstract. As for myself, I’m still trying to find my way around this, because when you’re creating something embodied, it becomes very limited in how many people can experience it. It’s also an ethical question: who are we speaking for? If we are talking about a place that we have no access to, where we can’t go - how do we do that? That’s another problem that I have with Burtynsky’s work - he shows all of these different places here and there, but what’s the connection? In my own work, I still believe in the personal one on one experience with the work to move you, or set up a connection between your own body and another body.
I really like the sound pieces, because sound does travel across distances and still can affect you bodily.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
I think there’s a similar problem when capturing sounds as when capturing images - someone always has to physically go somewhere to capture a sound, and this might especially be difficult with remote sites, or uninhabited places that are not used to human activity. And the question is how to approach these sites: how to balance the urge to work with something novel and ‘strange’ or unfamiliar with the necessity for being responsible and respectful. Even on a local scale, when working with field recordings, there’s a responsibility to respect the area that you’re trying to capture. Also in terms of the quality of the recordings, I always try to remove myself or at least any evidence of myself as much as possible: particularly things like my footsteps, breathing, coughing. With images the equivalent might be shadows. The opposite idea would be to make a point of your presence and position in time and space. Perhaps an example of this can be seen in anamorphic painting, where the position of the viewer matters in order to make sense of the work. It implicates the viewer in the scene.
GABRIELLE CARIOLLE:
Going back to the topic of aestheticization of disastrous presence and that image of the Rio Tinto river above - I think there’s a lot to take into consideration here, because as visual makers, we are in many ways forced to draw the audience in by making something palatable. I think it comes down to our own ambitions and agenda when we make work about difficult topics like this - to what extent do we transform what we see in this process of communication?
I think there’s a similar problem when capturing sounds as when capturing images - someone always has to physically go somewhere to capture a sound, and this might especially be difficult with remote sites, or uninhabited places that are not used to human activity. And the question is how to approach these sites: how to balance the urge to work with something novel and ‘strange’ or unfamiliar with the necessity for being responsible and respectful. Even on a local scale, when working with field recordings, there’s a responsibility to respect the area that you’re trying to capture. Also in terms of the quality of the recordings, I always try to remove myself or at least any evidence of myself as much as possible: particularly things like my footsteps, breathing, coughing. With images the equivalent might be shadows. The opposite idea would be to make a point of your presence and position in time and space. Perhaps an example of this can be seen in anamorphic painting, where the position of the viewer matters in order to make sense of the work. It implicates the viewer in the scene.
GABRIELLE CARIOLLE:
Going back to the topic of aestheticization of disastrous presence and that image of the Rio Tinto river above - I think there’s a lot to take into consideration here, because as visual makers, we are in many ways forced to draw the audience in by making something palatable. I think it comes down to our own ambitions and agenda when we make work about difficult topics like this - to what extent do we transform what we see in this process of communication?
Image: Rachel Bacon
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
I think Rachel’s work is very interesting in this respect because there’s so much more to it apart from the beauty. Rachel, could you share a bit of your process?
RACHEL BACON:
The image above is a detail of a larger piece. I thought I would share because it’s a link to an essay I just published in the TRACEY journal. This is something I’m thinking about a lot: is aesthetics a way to connect, pull someone in, in a way - seduce them? Maybe this is a funny analogy, but i’m thinking about the way stand-up comedians work: you’re laughing and laughing and laughing, and then - BAM! - they hit you in the gut with a punch. That’s how a lot of really strong comedy works, and that’s also traditionally been a way to tell truth to those in power: like a court jester, who would be the only one allowed to tell the king something true without being scared of getting their head chopped off. I think there’s a little bit of desperation in that, but I think of aesthetics as a tool to seduce.
My work is very hard to photograph, because when it’s flattened down to a photo, it always looks clean, whereas it’s not like that at all: in real life, the paper is distorted, torn, crumpled - so it has a completely different feeling. I always want to get away from the aestheticization of things in my work, but it keeps returning.
I had a really funny experience with an exhibition I had: I was talking about visiting the damaged landscapes, and how this experience has become a starting point for these drawings, and that I was concerned about a larger question of climate and depletion of resources. And somebody in the crowd started screaming at me: ‘I don’t want to hear about it, your work is not about climate, your work is beautiful, and I want to look at it because it’s beautiful, it’s about layers and being beautiful, and that’s it!’ I was so shocked, and at the same time, it was so interesting, because I thought - maybe she’s right? Maybe there’s something I’m missing? Maybe in that sense aesthetics was standing in the way. I was very interested in the fact that there was such a resistance, not wanting to connect with a difficult topic.
I think Rachel’s work is very interesting in this respect because there’s so much more to it apart from the beauty. Rachel, could you share a bit of your process?
RACHEL BACON:
The image above is a detail of a larger piece. I thought I would share because it’s a link to an essay I just published in the TRACEY journal. This is something I’m thinking about a lot: is aesthetics a way to connect, pull someone in, in a way - seduce them? Maybe this is a funny analogy, but i’m thinking about the way stand-up comedians work: you’re laughing and laughing and laughing, and then - BAM! - they hit you in the gut with a punch. That’s how a lot of really strong comedy works, and that’s also traditionally been a way to tell truth to those in power: like a court jester, who would be the only one allowed to tell the king something true without being scared of getting their head chopped off. I think there’s a little bit of desperation in that, but I think of aesthetics as a tool to seduce.
My work is very hard to photograph, because when it’s flattened down to a photo, it always looks clean, whereas it’s not like that at all: in real life, the paper is distorted, torn, crumpled - so it has a completely different feeling. I always want to get away from the aestheticization of things in my work, but it keeps returning.
I had a really funny experience with an exhibition I had: I was talking about visiting the damaged landscapes, and how this experience has become a starting point for these drawings, and that I was concerned about a larger question of climate and depletion of resources. And somebody in the crowd started screaming at me: ‘I don’t want to hear about it, your work is not about climate, your work is beautiful, and I want to look at it because it’s beautiful, it’s about layers and being beautiful, and that’s it!’ I was so shocked, and at the same time, it was so interesting, because I thought - maybe she’s right? Maybe there’s something I’m missing? Maybe in that sense aesthetics was standing in the way. I was very interested in the fact that there was such a resistance, not wanting to connect with a difficult topic.
My audiovisual composition ‘Drift’ has both abstract and figurative elements: on the screen, you can see a figurative landscape as if you’re moving through it. But there are also several notational elements, turning the landscape into a score that triggers sonic events as we ‘walk’ through the drawing. To explain the context of the project, this was a piece that I played in 2022 for the Brighton festival, in a place a little way down the coast called Shoreham by Sea - it’s an estuary of the Adur river. It's very tidal and the landscape changes a lot throughout the day.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
I think what you mention as this potentially subversive power of beauty is at the core of many image-making practices. In illustration, for instance, this subversive potential comes from the common attitudes towards illustration as something that has a secondary role in relation to text that it ‘accompanies’, and the history of derogatory attitudes towards illustration as a discipline. And I think there’s a lot of power in image-making practices that come from a place of awareness of this potential and this somewhat double-sided nature of images. Emma-Kate, would you say you are using images in your work with that in mind as well? What is your process behind the usage of 3D models?
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
Emma-Kate Matthews (2023) 'Drift'
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
It reminded me of an early 70’s project by Gordon Matta-Clark My original idea for this piece was to have loudspeakers or musicians in boats drifting apart from each other, so there was always a desire to spatialise sound in that location. But it became difficult to do it for all sorts of reasons: health and safety, not wanting to bother the locals with too much noise, etc. That’s one reason that I started talking to people from the area: there’s a big houseboat community. This conversation where there was an initial curiosity around what I originally wanted to do, helped it develop into a much more interesting project. It ended up being much more about the particularities of the site beyond its physical characteristics. The people who were living nearby started to inform how the piece would eventually be.
One of things that I did to trace the changes of the site was to just take a walk along the riverside, towards the sea, which only took about 40-45 minutes in total. I took a video of that route. I then turned that video into a 3D model using a process called photogrammetry - the video was split into a set of frames and these get stitched together in 3D and turned into a point cloud, which became my ‘site model’ of Shoreham. The final drawing is then populated with notation that triggers the sound that is played back through loudspeakers into the site. Unfortunately, these speakers never made it into boats as originally planned, but the sound was still able to drift from one point in the space of the performance to the other, like the tide was alsodrifting in (and out) during each performance.
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
It’s interesting how in this process of turning a landscape into a visual score there’s a notable degree of fictionalisation of this landscape, and I wonder if this fictionalisation is followed by the transformations of bodily experiences as I walk through the landscape, - or as I follow the walk virtually, as if I had a ‘digital body’ that goes through this space.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
Yes, and some of these digital tools allow you to place sounds into spaces that don’t exist, or you can position yourself as a listener in places that you physically would not be able to reach. This creates an interesting potential for uncanniness and finding relationships with places in a digital simulation that you wouldn’t be able to realise for practical or ethical reasons in a physical equivalent.
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
This reminds me of a project by Andrew Pekler called ‘Phantom Islands’, where the real and the fictional merge in soundscapes attributed to the so-called ‘phantom islands’: places that exist, as Pekler describes it, ‘between cartographical fact and maritime fiction’.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
Yes, I’m thinking here about the question of the author's position in a spatial recording, and the effect of binaural or ambisonic recordings. With some of the recording methods you can always figure out what the listener’s relationship with the sound source is. It’s a bit like art that requires the spectator to view it from a certain angle, - and only from that angle does it start to make sense. Conceptually there is a similar effect in the audio, but it’s less explicit in a way that it’s experienced. I think this ties into our conversation about how you are capturing something, where you position yourself as the listener or viewer: and how important is that loyalty to the original positioning in re-presentations or re-performances of the work elsewhere, or in other spaces? Is it less legible with sonic works than it is with visuals? It’s something I’m interested in exploring further with future work.
It reminded me of an early 70’s project by Gordon Matta-Clark My original idea for this piece was to have loudspeakers or musicians in boats drifting apart from each other, so there was always a desire to spatialise sound in that location. But it became difficult to do it for all sorts of reasons: health and safety, not wanting to bother the locals with too much noise, etc. That’s one reason that I started talking to people from the area: there’s a big houseboat community. This conversation where there was an initial curiosity around what I originally wanted to do, helped it develop into a much more interesting project. It ended up being much more about the particularities of the site beyond its physical characteristics. The people who were living nearby started to inform how the piece would eventually be.
One of things that I did to trace the changes of the site was to just take a walk along the riverside, towards the sea, which only took about 40-45 minutes in total. I took a video of that route. I then turned that video into a 3D model using a process called photogrammetry - the video was split into a set of frames and these get stitched together in 3D and turned into a point cloud, which became my ‘site model’ of Shoreham. The final drawing is then populated with notation that triggers the sound that is played back through loudspeakers into the site. Unfortunately, these speakers never made it into boats as originally planned, but the sound was still able to drift from one point in the space of the performance to the other, like the tide was alsodrifting in (and out) during each performance.
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
It’s interesting how in this process of turning a landscape into a visual score there’s a notable degree of fictionalisation of this landscape, and I wonder if this fictionalisation is followed by the transformations of bodily experiences as I walk through the landscape, - or as I follow the walk virtually, as if I had a ‘digital body’ that goes through this space.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
Yes, and some of these digital tools allow you to place sounds into spaces that don’t exist, or you can position yourself as a listener in places that you physically would not be able to reach. This creates an interesting potential for uncanniness and finding relationships with places in a digital simulation that you wouldn’t be able to realise for practical or ethical reasons in a physical equivalent.
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
This reminds me of a project by Andrew Pekler called ‘Phantom Islands’, where the real and the fictional merge in soundscapes attributed to the so-called ‘phantom islands’: places that exist, as Pekler describes it, ‘between cartographical fact and maritime fiction’.
EMMA-KATE MATTHEWS:
Yes, I’m thinking here about the question of the author's position in a spatial recording, and the effect of binaural or ambisonic recordings. With some of the recording methods you can always figure out what the listener’s relationship with the sound source is. It’s a bit like art that requires the spectator to view it from a certain angle, - and only from that angle does it start to make sense. Conceptually there is a similar effect in the audio, but it’s less explicit in a way that it’s experienced. I think this ties into our conversation about how you are capturing something, where you position yourself as the listener or viewer: and how important is that loyalty to the original positioning in re-presentations or re-performances of the work elsewhere, or in other spaces? Is it less legible with sonic works than it is with visuals? It’s something I’m interested in exploring further with future work.
3D scan of a Buddleia in a parking lot, by Ksenia Kopalova
KSENIA KOPALOVA:
Yes, I am trying to resist an inclination to see certain media as more or less prone to these ethical concerns, but at the same time can’t help thinking about occasionally problematic histories associated with them. In this respect I was wondering if this question acquires a different tint when seen from a point of view of co-presence in a certain space: like in Koichi Watanabe’s work about the Japanese knotweed.
GABRIELLE CARIOLLE:
In Watanabe's project I enjoy the story that goes with it: the photographer travels the world, following the steps of this invasive plant, Japanese knotweed, and just documents that invasion, or spread. I like the non-judgmental approach of the photograph. A lot of people who deal with this plant admire it as a formidable adversary, there’s not much that can be done about it, it’s too strong, so there’s a sense of radical acceptance of facing something that is just stronger.
Currently I am interested in exploring the narratives of places where there’s lots of interaction between different things - interfaces between a wide range of individuals and objects. Take an allotment, or an office: these are the spaces where people and things get into all sorts of relations, invading each other’s spaces, or collaborating.
What I also liked about this image is how it presents traces of the past - with this house being completely submerged into the leaves. I think the images that we collected together trace change and transformations, in all of them there are these traces of emergence and disappearance.
Yes, I am trying to resist an inclination to see certain media as more or less prone to these ethical concerns, but at the same time can’t help thinking about occasionally problematic histories associated with them. In this respect I was wondering if this question acquires a different tint when seen from a point of view of co-presence in a certain space: like in Koichi Watanabe’s work about the Japanese knotweed.
GABRIELLE CARIOLLE:
In Watanabe's project I enjoy the story that goes with it: the photographer travels the world, following the steps of this invasive plant, Japanese knotweed, and just documents that invasion, or spread. I like the non-judgmental approach of the photograph. A lot of people who deal with this plant admire it as a formidable adversary, there’s not much that can be done about it, it’s too strong, so there’s a sense of radical acceptance of facing something that is just stronger.
Currently I am interested in exploring the narratives of places where there’s lots of interaction between different things - interfaces between a wide range of individuals and objects. Take an allotment, or an office: these are the spaces where people and things get into all sorts of relations, invading each other’s spaces, or collaborating.
What I also liked about this image is how it presents traces of the past - with this house being completely submerged into the leaves. I think the images that we collected together trace change and transformations, in all of them there are these traces of emergence and disappearance.
As for my presence, I am not sure that even if I wanted to disappear, I could, since in illustration there’s a lot of evidence of the hand of the artist. But at the same time, I would not want the artist to be too big of a part of how you read the image and imagine the person behind it. I don’t think I have much of a choice here, but I would prefer it to be slightly less prominent.
I come from a small rural community to the east of Paris, a place where in 1986 they started building Disneyland, and, subsequently, a TGV train station. The entire region got transformed to comply with the Disneyland style. Within a few years you would find white, fake wells with plaster doves in gardens that used to provide food for a farming community. It was a transformation of the land, and of the minds. In my younger artist days I started making a documentary about it, and it was very ‘frontal’ in approach: I was taking drawings of the changing site - but it was too hard, I couldn’t do it, it was too painful. That’s why I prefer a sidestepping approach, usually fictional. You just talk about the small things to hint at the bigger, real stories, and you aim to resonate with the ones experienced by the audience. We bring those resonances, give hints, and hope for the best.
A lot of what has been spoken is on the idea of aestheticization for any artist. To make things look beautiful to any viewer’s eye. So who the viewer is, becomes very important. I am connecting this with a thought - In ecological sciences, the idea of wilderness is beautiful because it’s rich and complex, but a landscape designer who has been trained to think that beauty may lie in well-mowed lawns is concerned more with aesthetics. Sometimes I feel as designers we try to simplify a lot of nature’s complex design. I don't know if it’s right or wrong, but whatever is that the artist creates will always be superficial. And I say this as a Landscape Architect. I have had to unlearn a lot of notions of my idea of aesthetics over the years and have recently interacted with some indigenous populations in India, I have realised their perspective on design which is inherent to them and a part of their identity, therefore, taking away from the superficiality of it. And the most beautiful thing about wilderness or anything that is unkept is that it's easy going to the eyes, it’s not demanding any attention. The viewer is free to focus on whatever captures their interest.
AMRITA KAUR SLATCH:
Photo: Amrita Kaur Slatch, Village of Bhelwara in Jharkhand with Sohrai painting on mud walls.
