Gabriel Neil Gee | Franklin University Switzerland (original) (raw)

Books by Gabriel Neil Gee

Transcript, 2021

In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to th... more In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensification of global networks and logistics, and the resulting pressure on human societies and earthly environments have been characteristic of the rise of a »planetary age«. This volume engages with contemporary artistic practices and critical poetics that trace an alternate construction of the imaginaries and aspirations of our present societies at the crossroads of sea and land – taking into account complex pasts and interconnected histories, transnational flux, as well as material and immaterial borders.

Routledge, 2018

The turn of the 1960s-70s, characterized by the rapid acceleration of globalization, prompted a r... more The turn of the 1960s-70s, characterized by the rapid acceleration of globalization, prompted a radical transformation in the perception of urban and natural environments. The urban revolution and related prospect of the total urbanisation of the planet, in concert with rapid population growth and resource exploitation, instigated a surge in environmental awareness and activism. One implication of this moment is a growing recognition of the integration and interconnection of natural and urban entities. The present collection is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the changing modes of representation of nature in the city beginning from the turn of the 1960s/70s. Bringing together a number of different disciplinary approaches, including architectural studies and aesthetics, heritage studies and economics, environmental science and communication, the collection reflects upon the changing perception of socio-natures in the context of increasing urban expansion and global interconnectedness as they are/were manifest in specific representations. Using cases studies from around the globe, the collection offers a historical and theoretical understanding of a paradigmatic shift whose material and symbolic legacies are still accompanying us in the early 21st century.

Based on rare archival material and numerous interviews with practitioners, Art in the North of E... more Based on rare archival material and numerous interviews with practitioners, Art in the North of England 1979-2008 analyses the relation between political and economic changes stemming from the 1980s and artistic developments in the principal cities of the North of England in the late 20th century. Looking in particular at the art scenes of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle, Gabriel Gee unveils a set of powerful aesthetic reactions to industrial change and urban reconstruction during this period on the part of artists including John Davies, Pete Clarke, the Amber collective, Richard Wilson, Karen Watson, Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, John Kippin, and the contribution of organisations such as Projects UK/Locus +, East Street Arts, the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust and the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool. While the geographical focus of this study is highly specific, a key concern throughout is the relationship between regional, national and international artistic practices and identities. Of interest to all scholars and students concerned with the developments of British art in the second half of the 20th century, the study is also of direct pertinence to observers of global narratives, which are here described and analysed through the concept of trans-industriality.

Book chapters by Gabriel Neil Gee

Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s - 1970s and their legacies, 2019

In late July 2005, a Ghost ship designed by the American artist Chris Burden made its way from Fa... more In late July 2005, a Ghost ship designed by the American artist Chris Burden made its way from Fair Isle, Scotland, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North-East England, unmanned, self-navigating via GPS. In the mouth of the river Tyne, it sailed solitarily under the city’s Millenium bridge, in what was once the busiest harbour for coal distribution in England. Ghost ship brought to the fore the radical transformations of global maritime cultures and spaces that took place in the second half of the Twentieth century. With the introduction and subsequent adoption of the shipping container in the 1960s, the perception of maritime spaces evolved dramatically as container terminals replaced former docking areas, as automatization displaced harbour working communities, and merchant navigation disappeared into a network of invisible motorways of the sea. Additionally, the 1960s witnessed a seminal shift in passenger transportation, with air travel overtaking maritime routes. Jointly, these developments in the movement of goods and people induced a transformation of port cities’ imaginaries. This chapter looks at a series of artistic practices which have engaged with this profound metamorphosis taking place at the turn of the 1960s-1970s, in order to approach and unpack our changing perceptions of maritime spaces. The aesthetic representation of the relation between port cities and the sea has a long history. In the modern age and in the Western art historical tradition, the emergence of a new pictorial genre in the seventeenth century, the marine or seascape, embodied a novel perception and recognition of nature. The Marine also significantly developed alongside the rise of the Dutch Golden age and its global commercial empire; hence it also articulated a world view with far reaching political consequences. While maritime painting is no longer a potent artistic genre, new forms of the Marine have emerged in the late Twentieth century, which provide unique perspectives into the changing configurations of maritime socio-natures. To guide us into this reflection, I will revolve in particular around Allan Sekula and Noel Burch’s documentary film The forgotten space (2010), which explores the impact of the container on global maritime economic and cultural spaces.
Additionally, I refer to the mythological figure of Narcissus, to explore the evolution of port cities’ imaginaries. Narcissus, as the poet versed, fell in love with his own reflection mirrored in the liquid surface. Throughout history, Western port cities have emulated this mythological abandon in a reflective gaze. They and their adventurers were fascinated by the world beyond the seas; however, to what extent was their encounter with these worlds mediated by a projection of their own cultural expectations, fantasies, and internal political ambitions? And to what extent did the caesura between sea and port in the 1960s inverse invert this relation, as the sea was momentarily forgotten, while the world beyond channelled by emigration and cultural exchanges suddenly emerged at the heart of the port-city? Port-cities and coastal regions around the globe have been attracting increasing populations, and at a time of challenging global environmental issues, a multifaceted understanding of port cities’ cultural relations to the sea and the worlds beyond appears crucial to assert a critical renegotiation of their territorial inscription in their natural sites and cultural histories. I will evoke first the figure of Narcissus, and its metaphorical value for an understanding of maritime imaginaries; secondly, I will consider the sea as a ghostly presence in the age of the container, before exploring two possible articulations of a beyond Narcissus: on the one hand a Western path described as an ‘inverting’ of civilization, and on the other a Southern hemisphere alternative in the form of the Taiwanese Lily.
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Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s -1970s and their legacies, 2019

Several significant developments in material cultures and social imaginaries point to the turn of... more Several significant developments in material cultures and social imaginaries point to the turn of the 1960s-70s as nurturing a paradigmatic shift in the representation of urban and natural environments. The largest umbrella under which the present enquiry evolves is that of late 20th century globalization processes. The term ‘globalization’ points to the ‘compression’ of the world in planetary terms. It emphasizes the presence and agency of a ‘global scale’ of organization, which can be understood as ‘overriding’ micro (regional) and meso (national, international) scales. In effect however, the process of social, economic and cultural integration that globalization brings to the fore, imply an imbrication of different scales – characterized in particular by the term ‘glocalization’ – and actors – human and non-humans – spiraling more or less willingly towards an ever greater interconnected spatial as well as temporal earthly environment. As such, globalization is not a new phenomenon. Although one can reach back to earlier global interactions and conceptualizations, the ‘great opening up’ brought about by the ‘great discoveries’ and European long distance maritime travels of the 15th and 16th century colonial pursuits stands as a seminal historical moment in the formation of an integrated world. Suddenly the ocean void beyond the Pillars of Hercules materializes, and a radical transformation in the conception and organization of the earth occurs. On the planisphere designed by the Genovese cartographer Nicolaus de Caverio around 1506, the Portuguese mapping of the African coast extends to the Middle East, India and China, while to the West, the outline of the Eastern coast of the Americas appears: the sea could now be crossed over. These discoveries mark the beginning of a decisive shaping of a homogeneous ‘world space’ bound by water rather than land. Nineteenth century industrialization processes extended this global space through the development of maritime and terrestrial routes, crossed by coal-fed ships, trains and intercontinental telegraphic cables, that facilitated the circulation of people, ideas, goods and capital. The drastic acceleration of global fluxes initiated in the 1960s-1970s constituted both a continuation of earlier colonial and Enlightenment processes and imaginaries, and also a possible disruption of such processes and imaginaries.
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Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s-1970s and their legacies, 2019

Artist Conor McFeely was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he lives and works today. His wor... more Artist Conor McFeely was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he lives and works today. His work incorporates a wide range of forms and media, from the ready–made to sculpture and installation, as well as photography, video and audio. A chief characteristic of his work is the fracturing and manipulation of ‘material’ in the search for new relationships. Often read as multi-layered, many of his works have been driven by ruminations on the nature of free will, choice and autonomy. Contexts and source materials demonstrate his interests in the history of counter culture, literature and social contexts. McFeely’s work is historically mindful, with references ranging from 20th century global political history, Northern Ireland’s troubled legacies and landscapes in the second half of the 20th century, as well as scientific and epistemological histories, which are of particular relevance to this volume.
Our discussion begins with The Weathermen Project (2013-14), a series of works whose departure point are the counter-revolutionary US group the weathermen, who were active in the 1960s. McFeely’s works represent the collisions between local urban radical political action and macroscopic cosmological forces at the turn of the 1960s. The discussion turns then to the role of science and scientists in the shaping of human and earthly environments in the post-nuclear age. In The Case of the Midwife Toad (2007), McFeely revisited the theories, anathema and implications of Paul Kammerer’s experimentations and theories regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which opens a broader reflection on human agency in the face of natural determinism. We continue with a discussion about McFeely’s The Prisoner’s Cinema (2015), a series of works which experiment with the hallucinatory visions experienced by people kept in long-term darkness. The closing discussion further explores questions about the essence of human nature in the age of cinema, television, and portable digital devices.

Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s-1070s and their legacies, 2019

Tuula Närhinen is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland, whose artistic practice mirrors and... more Tuula Närhinen is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland, whose artistic practice mirrors and appropriates scientific experimentation methods and history to develop a poetic reflection on the present metamorphoses of natural entities and environments. A particular interest in nineteenth century scientific investigations on nature, in which the scientific goals were closely intertwined with aesthetic qualities informs her work. She has produced organic photographs (Solarium, 2004), evoking the early days of photography when Henry Fox Talbot could name his chemical achievements ‘the pencil of nature’ (1844-46), used chromatography to separate pigments in the colour of flowers (Chromatograms, 2002), and made photograms of wavescapes (Clapotis, 2009). The tracing of the wind on paper (Windtracers, 2000), of the movement of animals who share our environments (Tracing Animals, 2005), and of water currents through a bottle equipped with a light (Surf, 2001), are all means to represent the surrounding presence of nature. Närhinen in that respect echoes the work of the biologist Ernst Haeckel, who coined the term ‘ecology’, and resorted in his professional practice throughout his lifetime to accomplished drawing skills. Through her studio located on a small island out of Helsinki, her work has been particularly drawn to the sea. The series of sculptural work she has made out of plastic found on the seashore, furthers a research on the impact of human global industrial agency in the twentieth century, and the ambiguous beauty that can be found in the all-pervasive outreach of plastic waste on maritime environments. In the following discussion, Närhinen starts by evoking her sculptural series Baltic Sea Plastique (2013), which stems from her interest into plastic pollution. The conversation evokes evolutionary theories, together with the formation of hybrids that our society of consumption taking off in the post-war era has fomented. The dialogue moves into a reflection on the parallels between science and the arts, and the construction of reality that these two domains of human activity share in common, beyond the standard division between ‘facts’ and ‘fiction’. The notion of ‘artifice’ in artistic and scientific production is finally evoked, in considering both the production and modes of presentation of the work.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British economy launched a reconstruction effort su... more In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British economy launched a reconstruction effort sustained by a belief in the continuing excellence of its industries. However, decolonisation processes together with the time-space compression of the 1970s seemed to rapidly undermine the remnants of British imperial power. Having failed to modernise its traditional industrial sectors, gripped by acerbic strikes opposing the unions to succeeding governments, Great Britain was engulfed by the economic crisis of the 1970s. With the election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1979, a dual movement heralded the rise of a new economic and socio-political paradigmatic shift: the re-affirmation of the imperial values that the downfall of Victorian legacies had appeared to wear away, and the radical scrapping of those struggling primary industries that were to be replaced by a more dynamic financial and service economy.
It is within this context of political assertion and economic desindustrialisation that formerly pristine projections of the nation were significantly deconstructed by aesthetic imagination. In urban spaces, the iconic functionalities of the monument offered a privileged locus of transgression for alternative visions of the polis. This paper is concerned with a set of artistic strategies emerging at the turn of the 1980s-90s, that used the foundations of the monument rooted in the 19th century to better diffuse unitary claims and reveal the complex stage-set of the British nation. First, we consider with the project Trophies of Empire how the monument’s connotations could become undermined. The focus is on the skin of the monument. Second, we look at the sculptural commissions of the Henry Moore Studio at Dean Clough in Halifax. At a time when British economic structures were radically transformed, the former Yorkshire factory provided an exemplary reflection on the changing monumentalities of the late 20th Century. Finally, stemming from a discussion of Stuart Brisley and Maya Balcioglu Cenotaph Project (1987-90), we look at the extension of the monument’s function into discourses, ultimately addressing but also incarnating the nation’s body.

1 the undermined monument
2 changing landscapes, changing monumentalities
3 the mobile monument

CHAPTER ELEVEN MARKERS, BORDERS, CROSSINGS: ON THE REPRESENTATION OF A DIVIDED SPACE IN NORTHE... more CHAPTER ELEVEN

MARKERS, BORDERS, CROSSINGS: ON THE REPRESENTATION OF A DIVIDED SPACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The north-south partition of Ireland was implemented by the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. It constituted a crucial development in the history of the Irish Republican emancipation movement, leading to the creation of the Irish Free State and eventually to the Republic of Ireland . It also significantly established a parliament in Belfast in order to legislate in the province of Ulster . A geographical caesura split the island into two distinct territories. The six northern counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh, Down, Antrim and Derry were cut from the former spatial unity of the island and remained anchored to the British Isles. Within the northern territory, the tensions opposing Protestant and Catholic communities increased in the aftermath of the Second World War. Access to housing and accusations of gerrymandering featured amongst the most pressing issues that fostered political unrest . The international civil rights movement which gained prominence in the 1960s also fuelled civic protests in Northern Ireland , before armed conflict took over during the period known as the Troubles, which extended from the late 1960s to the Good Friday agreement of 1998 .
In Belfast, vertical extensions rose to physically separate the two communities, furthering an ancient history which can be traced back to the construction of the Derry walls in the early 17th century . Historical commemorations such as the parades of the Orange Order on the 13th of July have often kept hardy the antagonisms of old. The marches celebrate the victory of the armies of William III of Orange over those of the Jacobite party led by James II at the battle of the Boyne in 1690 . Every year, symbolic furrows in the urban texture that signal the passage from one realm to another were infringed in a variation of the Remus and Romulus mythical discord. In the northern city, the confrontation of groups between districts, the military control of passageways leading to different inhabited spaces, and the terrorist attacks conducted by both parties through punitive intrusions contributed to this spatial differentiation and fragmentation of communities.
This study is concerned with forms through which aesthetic practices in Northern Ireland have engaged with border history in the late 20th Century. It is concerned with aesthetic reflections on the modes through which this history has been internalised by two intermingling communities who ultimately shaped Northern Ireland as a distinct socio-political space. While murals have provided powerful visual indicators of political and social affiliations in Protestant and Catholic districts, artists have often been able to explore the duality of border zones. These are both dividing and circulating spaces, external and internal presences. The study focuses on three components through which aesthetic tools and means of visual representation and production have incorporated the conflicted sites of identities in contact with the physical fragmentation of the Northern Ireland territory. First, it considers a set of mobile-prown markers in rural and urban areas; second, it looks at a number of works which explore the dual nature of borders: dividing lines that invite forms of trespassing; and finally, it reflects on the notion of interstitial passages as conduits enabling an overtaking of ideological pressures and determinations.

Book Reviews by Gabriel Neil Gee

Cercles, 2019

Mapping the history of the London-based art agency Artangel immediately comes with a catch, as t... more Mapping the history of the London-based art agency Artangel immediately comes with a catch, as the organisation officially dates back its genesis to 1991, when curators Michael Morris and James Lingwood started on a journey to deliver 'extraordinary art in unexpected places'. However, they, at the time, had inherited an existing eponymous Trust, founded in 1985 by the art historian Roger Took and co-directed with curator John Carson till 1991. There are good reasons why the new directors might have wanted to dissociate themselves from the early years of Artangel, and it is also indubitable that Morris and Lingwood had a decisive impact on the orientation and subsequent successes of the agency's model and achievements. Nonetheless, the re- inscription of the 1980s as part of the organisation's history is crucial for two reasons: first, because there is a strategical continuity between the two historical phases of Artangel, despite their singularity, in the production of works that are 'issue-based' as well as designed for the public sphere;; and secondly, as this meticulous historical study particularly emphasises, in the structural model of a 'contemporary art production company', whose inception and subsequent development were intrinsically bound to the paradigmatic change in the political and cultural landscape that marked the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Hence the focus on the specific case-study of Artangel enables the author to approach metonymically the significant and cohesive transformations that have shaped the British art world in the past forty years. The attention to financial mechanisms reflects Gould's long-standing interests in the relation between art and patronage, as exemplified by previous and ongoing research on the young British artists and the British art market. In referring at the outset to Howard S. Becker, and an approach of artistic production where the artist and the artwork are to be understood as operating within chains of cooperation, the historical reflection stresses its goal to place Artangel's innovative artistic contributions firmly within the framework and determinations of a changing socio-political landscape. The 1980s in Britain were a 'radical' decade, characterised by the progressive implantation of 'Thatcherism', a cocktail of neoliberal policies advocating the rule of the market, and nationalist postures in the aftermath of imperial dissolution. These led to a rupture of the post-war order in cultural matters-which New Labour did not reverse after its election victory

Articles by Gabriel Neil Gee

Journal of Contemporary Painting , 2018

This article takes at its cue the 1969 decision of the John Moores Liverpool Painting Prize and e... more This article takes at its cue the 1969 decision of the John Moores Liverpool Painting Prize and exhibition to exclude works projecting more than six inches out of the wall. The refusal to include British contemporary pictorial explorations that expanded beyond the frame of the canvas at the time can be seen as a conservative stance. However, it also paved the way for the exhibition’s subsequent showcasing of the specific problems located within the internal space and constraints of the canvas, in an epoch that heralded the medium’s obsolescence. First, we look at the relation between painting and sculpture in the first years of the biannual prize, when an independent sculpture section attested to latent concerns about the international standing of British arts. We then focus on the 1969 John Moores’ exhibition that provides a unique perspective into the radical changes occurring in art practices in Britain at the time. Finally, we evoke a range of pictorial practices displayed at the John Moores in the 1970s, which are described as articulating a turn ‘within itself’, furthering an investigation into a range of specific aesthetic problems posed by the format of the canvas at the time.

This Intervalla issue on Loss and survivals: on the transmission and reconstruction of artistic g... more This Intervalla issue on Loss and survivals: on the transmission and reconstruction of artistic gestures brings together articles that explore mimicry, transfer and resurgence of gestures in artistic practices. The project has its roots in a panel session organised by the TETI Group (Textures and Experiences of Trans-Industriality) at the 2014 conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies at the University of Canberra. The authors look at different types of artistic practices, from performance art to painting and architectural drawing, thereby offering an insight into modes through which gestures can be worked upon as revealing materials in artistic production. The volume combines studies stemming from art historical perspectives, as well as artistic research and aesthetic reflections by artists. In doing so, it aims to shed light onto some fruitful pathways through which gestures can be purposefully conveyed by contemporary artistic strategies to reveal hidden textures of our individual and collective beings.

Journal of art historiography, Dec 1, 2013

Visual Resources, Oct 2014

The urban condition, as we know it, might be becoming obsolete: the continuous growth of urban te... more The urban condition, as we know it, might be becoming obsolete: the continuous growth of urban textures points toward a total urbanization of the world. Together with the superimposition of electronic and virtual spaces in the city, this urban expansion furthers a radical alteration of our daily urban experiences, which in turn transforms the parameters of intervention for aesthetic production. This paper aims to outline three components of this aesthetic problem: 1) trans-industrial change, understood as the shift from industrial to postindustrial stages considered as in an ongoing process); 2) the specificities of aesthetic thought, understood as an independent mode of approaching the world differing from mathematical, political, or philosophical thought; and 3) realms of visibility, as informed by the digital and new media revolutions, which are reshaping our modes of communication. To discuss the parameters of this problem, I will draw from a number of examples originating in the United Kingdom, a territory whose cities were at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but which have witnessed a spectacular shift to a global service economy in the late twentieth century: as such, Great Britain offers a metonymical entry into the global context that constitute the framework for this reflection. Within this framework, crucially, the paper identifies the interstice, a crevice between two things, and interstitial space as a privileged locus of aesthetic intervention to be explored within the new terms of a total urbanization. It will evoke the interstice's capacity to divert the flattening impact of homogenizing tendencies and unveil new material and spiritual objects in the urban fabric. Finally, with the work of the Northern Ireland-based artist Conor McFeely, it will offer an artistic articulation addressing head on the problem of imagination in the context of the multilayered and digital/virtual urban becoming.

John Davies began making 'landscape photographs' of cities in the early 1980s. A period of prolon... more John Davies began making 'landscape photographs' of cities in the early 1980s. A period of prolonged visual and documentary research on Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, began at a time when these cities were experiencing a deep economic recession brought about by the progressive dismantling of their historic industrial activities. This economic decline was further aggravated by a hostile political, economic and social climate in the 1980s following the election of Margaret Thatcher. Signs of the post-industrial regeneration process multiplied as cities endeavoured to reconstruct their images and identities. This essay looks at how the photography of John Davies has engaged with changes in the northern post-industrial city in the past three decades. It considers the ways in which his pictures reveal the city as a palimpsest: a narrative constantly written over. It examines how the work performs as both a document and an aesthetic commentary on the changes in the urban fabric, functioning as a metonymic image of the socio-political and economic transformations witnessed in the wider north of England. It ultimately underlines the capacity of the work to articulate historical awareness. The attention to history is explored within specific pictures, underlining their capacity to depict urban landscapes as specific process-based outcomes. In considering the indexicality of images within the body of the work, the essay also outlines the historical discourse that arises from visual intersections.

La Orchard Gallery fut créée par la municipalité de Derry, ou Londonderry, en 1978. La ville ne p... more La Orchard Gallery fut créée par la municipalité de Derry, ou Londonderry, en 1978. La ville ne possédait auparavant aucune infrastructure ayant pour vocation l’exposition des arts
visuels, et sa création venait combler un manque flagrant dans une commune de près de 100 000 habitants. Dépourvue de collections, la galerie, financée par la municipalité avec le
soutien du conseil des arts de la région, se voulait dès ses débuts un espace de programmation d’expositions temporaires. Afin de construire et diriger ce nouvel espace artistique, la ville nomme à sa tête un jeune artiste, Declan McGonagle, originaire de la ville, et qui avait à l’époque entrepris d’enseigner les arts plastiques3. Celui-ci va largement définir à sa genèse la vocation de la galerie, qui perdurera sous les influences et les inflexions de ses successeurs durant les années 1990 et jusqu’à sa fermeture en 2003 : Noreen O’Hare, puis Liam Kelly et Brendan McMenamin. On trouve au coeur de cette vocation une volonté de placer les arts dans une relation étroite et presque indissociable avec le contexte local, le lieu spécifique de son
inscription, et les habitants de Derry. Prendre en compte dans la commission et la production des oeuvres la spécificité du contexte local au tournant des années 1970-80 impliquait un engagement profond avec les déchirures de l’histoire et de la géographie urbaine, régionale,humaine.

Transcript, 2021

Routledge, 2018

Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s - 1970s and their legacies, 2019

Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s -1970s and their legacies, 2019

Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s-1970s and their legacies, 2019

Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s-1070s and their legacies, 2019

1 the undermined monument
2 changing landscapes, changing monumentalities
3 the mobile monument

CHAPTER ELEVEN MARKERS, BORDERS, CROSSINGS: ON THE REPRESENTATION OF A DIVIDED SPACE IN NORTHE... more CHAPTER ELEVEN

MARKERS, BORDERS, CROSSINGS: ON THE REPRESENTATION OF A DIVIDED SPACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Cercles, 2019

Journal of Contemporary Painting , 2018

Journal of art historiography, Dec 1, 2013

Visual Resources, Oct 2014

Augustus W.N. Pugin published the first version of “Contrasts – Or, a parallel between the noble ... more Augustus W.N. Pugin published the first version of “Contrasts – Or, a parallel between the noble edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries and similar buildings of the present day shewing the present decay of taste accompanied by appropriate text” in 1836. As much a pictured as a written argument, “Contrasts” aimed to attack decadent architectural practices inherited from the reformation while simultaneously praising late medieval architectural achievements. Although preliminary sketches had taken into account examples of rural architecture, the plates of the final edition comprised essentially visions of urban architectures. As Rosemary Hill underlined, the critique thus focussed on the city of the 19th century. An imagined comparison between a “catholic town” depicted in the mid 15th century and what it had developed into five centuries later underlined the extent of industrial disfiguration. The elegant spires of pointed architecture have been cut short and replaced by the smoking chimneys of proliferating mills. The harmonious bird’s-eye view has been defaced by a wall of stern buildings. On the front-right-hand corner a charming chapel has been similarly vandalised by an annexe in the classical style. A jail in the shape of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon occupies the foreground of the drawing. Moral turpitude is further enhanced by the numerous divisive religious obediences listed in the caption: ‘Baptist, Unitarian, Quakers, Socialists.’ History has guided man and his environment to a fallacious destiny.
Yet at the end of the 20th century, an additional twist has informed this contrasted vision. The industrial architecture which Pugin condemned as barbarous has itself come to suffer the neglect of subsequent ages. The shift from Fordism to Post Fordism and the decline of the traditional industries in the West has led the mutilating architecture to uncertainty as the social and economic orders which sustained it disappeared. The enhanced importance of a service-based economy has conveyed new meanings to urban architectural projections. As Steven Miles and Malcolm Miles noted in their analysis of the “symbolic economies of cities”, growing cultural economies have led to attach an increased importance on urban images. In that context, this paper aims to look through specific examples at how medieval architecture and its 19th century Gothic revival heirs often appear to find themselves within the same displaced functional framework as industrial, neoclassical and historically minded Victorian architecture.

Après la fin de la Seconde guerre mondiale, les grandes conurbations du Nord de l’Angleterre ont ... more Après la fin de la Seconde guerre mondiale, les grandes conurbations du Nord de l’Angleterre ont progressivement été confrontées au déclin de leurs industries traditionnelles, minières, manufacturières, métallurgiques, portuaires. À la fin du 20e siècle, la revitalisation des économies locales fut pensée dans le cadre d’un changement radical imposé par le gouvernement conservateur de Margaret Thatcher, mettant
en avant les valeurs d’entreprenariat, de value for money [rentabilité], d’efficacité managériale, et l’adhésion aux lois du marché comme remède aux maux socio-économiques du pays. Contraintes de se redéfinir en terme d’activité économique, de reconstruire une image et une identité positive, les conurbations du Nord furent entraînées dans les voies de la régénération culturelle, en suivant les principes gouvernementaux visant à établir des partenariats public-privé comme méthode systématique pour les développements économiques, sociaux, culturels, susceptibles de recevoir une aide de l’État. Les pratiques artistiques contemporaines de ces régions ont été confrontées à ce processus à la fois de désindustrialisation et de redynamisation, ainsi qu’à la proposition controversée d’un nouvel avenir et des moyens associés à sa réalisation. De part et d’autre de cet élan politique, on peut discerner d’une part une créativité artistique qui vient s’opposer à la direction et aux valeurs promues par le gouvernement puis par les municipalités, et de l’autre, une production et un appareil de diffusion qui viennent s’inscrire dans les objectifs fixés par le nouveau paradigme établi au cours des années 1980.
Il s’agira ici, en prenant pour point de départ l’arrivée des politiques conservatrices « néolibérales » au Royaume-Uni au début des années 1980, de relever l’émergence de valeurs instrumentales et résistantes dans la production et la diffusion des arts dans le territoire du Nord de l’Angleterre. On s’efforcera de définir ces valeurs, de décrire leurs qualités, et la variété de l’éventail qui peut se dessiner le long du spectre instrumentalisation-résistance, mais aussi de questionner
l’articulation de ces valeurs avec leur contexte spécifique d’apparition historique, et l’évolution de leur déploiement jusqu’à l’époque la plus actuelle.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Arts Council of Great Britain launched the project “Arts 2000”... more At the beginning of the 1990s, the Arts Council of Great Britain launched the project “Arts 2000”. Every year remaining before the end of the century, a town or a region in the United Kingdom had the chance to organise celebrations around a particular form of art, such as music, dance, theatre, literature… The project was intended to be “a celebration of the artistic achievements of the country”, and to take the first step towards establishing “the foundations for cultural life in the new millennium”. Arts 2000 was a competition in which councils as well as regional organisations could participate. As such, the project was also presented as “a unique opportunity to draw public attention to the artistic strengths” of the candidate, “and help the arts promote growth and local pride”. A minimum financial funding of ₤250,000 was guaranteed to the laureates, explicitly on condition of significant local investment.
The year 1996, dedicated to the visual arts (VAUK 96) was coveted, won and organised by the regional art association “Northern Arts” which, at the time, brought together the counties of Cleveland, Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland and Tyne & Wear. From March to December the region prided itself on listing more than 3000 exhibitions, events, commissions and residencies, on a direct and indirect structural investment estimated to approach ₤60 million, and on an unprecedented popular participation enabling it to have achieved an “extraordinary success”.
This paper will look at the process that led to the organisation of the event, examining the relation between the aims of the organisers, in particular, of Northern Arts who developed the project, and both its clients and the providers of public funding: the state through the Arts Council. We will consider how VAUK can be seen as a generic example of the paradigmatic change in the organisation of cultural and artistic events in Britain at the end of the twentieth century, in relation to political and economic shifts. We will also seek to understand the intermingling of local initiatives with national criteria and overarching economic as well as cultural trends, whereby poles of decisions or influences become embedded, the one into the other in the course of modelling reality. Eventually, the paper will consider the impact of this combination of intents and actions on the local production and diffusion of art in the North of England.

Observations of global fluxes and networks as well as their impact on contemporary societies have... more Observations of global fluxes and networks as well as their impact on contemporary societies have been furthered in the past ten years or so by an attention to the derivative phenomenon of glocalisation. What is the process of ‘glocalisation’ and what might be its relevance to the artistic field? Barbara Czarniawska in her study on the glocalisation of city management entitled A tale of three cities proceeded to recall the emergence of the concept:

“[The] combination of homogenising and heterogenising forces attracted the attention of Japanese marketers as early as the 1980s, when, according to [Roland] Robertson, they coined the expression dochakuka. The word, in Robertson’s translation, means ‘global localization’, or telescoping global and local to make a blend”.1

From this basis, the term encompasses a range of different meanings. On the one hand, it has a practical application in terms of marketing strategy: that of tailoring commodities to local markets. This is exemplified by the strategies of large corporate businesses which adapt a core generic product to new and culturally diverse local markets of consumption.2 A related strategy consists in fetishising a specific place and its characteristics with the aim of branding a product.3

Both these marketing strategies can provide useful and problematic insights into the artistic production and diffusion within the art world at the end of the 20th century. However, at the other end of the spectrum, the term may be used to describe the capacity of a specific entity (a place, a person, an actor) to adjust the influence of globalisation and the process by which everything becomes more and more alike, to its specific conditions and requirements.

“A picture emerges in which globalisation and localisation happen simultaneously and entertwine, becoming the cause and the result of one another. In such a picture, globalisation might mean the movement of a form, or a practice from one locality to another, [or a translation of an embodied practice into a set of abstract concepts]; and localization might mean a ‘construction of a distinct identity’ according to a global prescription, or an opposition to the forces of globalisation via a defense of a local tradition.”4

Consequently, one of the issues that lies at the heart of the glocalisation process consists in assessing in which direction the trend is going: towards homogenisation, or towards heterogenisation?5 This interrogation could be considered within the broad history of the globalisation process, for it is rightly considered to be an ancient process. The self-christened ‘universal museums’,6 or even the 16th and 17th century ‘cabinet d’amateurs’ can be considered as early and exemplary receptacles of global artefacts.7 However, this paper will focus solely on some aspects of artistic strategies within more recent global history. In David Harvey’s analysis of time-space compression, it is the acceleration of the process and in particular of financial and information flux at the end of the 20th century that has brought considerable changes in what Eric Swyngedouw calls ‘scalar configurations’.8 In Swyngedouw’s analysis scalar configurations are understood to be ‘the outcome of socio-spatial processes that regulate and organise social relations’. In this perspective, the analysis of “the continuous reshuffling and reorganisation of spatial scales [which] are integral to social strategies and serve as the arena where struggles for control and empowerment are fought”, revolves around the attention to regulatory orders (institutions, governmental, or regional state bodies…), and economic networks, as well as the tensions that arise between economic and political life.9 In these approaches, cultural practices are subjugated to the determination of the economic and the political. Without neglecting the considerable importance of those fields, this paper shifts attention towards the artistic field as a participant in the glocalisation process, an actor thereby both determined and determining. The notion of scale as a constantly evolving process of interaction will be retained. On this basis, we will propose a preliminary approach to some of the scalar configurations in the recent history of art practices and art fields in the United Kingdom at the end of the 20th century. This will bring us to consider the embeddedness of artistic scales, the way by which different scalar levels (the local, the regional, the national, the international, the global), superpose the one on the other, and some of the dynamics, strategies, and opportunities that have been at play in the recent history of contemporary British visual arts within this entertwined and mobile system.

TETI Group, 2019

A review of the 11th Taipei Biennial, 'Post-Nature: Museum as an ecosystem', Museum of Fine Arts ... more A review of the 11th Taipei Biennial, 'Post-Nature: Museum as an ecosystem', Museum of Fine Arts Taipei, 17.11.2018 – 10.03.2019

An essay that is part of the Port - River - City publication and project.

In conversation with Marie Reinert (07.03.2016). In the following discussion, the artist Marie Re... more In conversation with Marie Reinert (07.03.2016). In the following discussion, the artist Marie Reinert (Fr. l.Berlin) discusses with Gabriel Gee a series of works in which she explored maritimes spaces, in particular in Marseille and Amsterdam. The film Roll On Roll Off (2011) was made in the belly of a ship carrying vehicles between Marseille and Alger; Quai (2012-14) looked at the no-man's land that is the modern oil and gas harbor near Marseille, while in the performative piece and film Bull & Bear (2014), Reinert navigated through the offices of a Dutch National Bank in Amsterdam, equipped with a compas attuned to the variations of the euro-dollar rate. An attention to and engagement with performative gestures is a recurrent concern in Reinert's works, also discussed here in relation to her piece Faire (2007-08), which investigated micro-gestures of labor in collaboration with the workers of a departmental archive in Rennes, France.

Issue n.2 trauma and abstraction, Dec 2015

In the following conversation, the artist Conor McFeely and art historian Gabriel Gee reflect on ... more In the following conversation, the artist Conor McFeely and art historian Gabriel Gee reflect on the multiple properties and veiled meanings of five objects used by McFeely in some of his recent artworks. Conor McFeely was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he lives and works today. His work incorporates a wide range of processes, from the ready–made to sculpture and installation, as well as photography, video and audio. A fracturing and manipulation of ”material” in the service of finding new relationships is a chief characteristic of his practice. Often conceived as multi-layered in terms of their reading, many works have been driven by ruminations on the nature of individual freewill, choice and autonomy. Contexts and source material reflect interests in a history of counter culture, literature and social contexts. Historical mindedness informs McFeely’s work, with references ranging from 20th century global political history, Northern Ireland’s troubled legacies and landscapes in the second half of the 20th century, and scientific and epistemological histories. McFeely has exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Gabriel Gee is an Art Historian who lives and works in Switzerland. His research interests include British painting in the 20th Century, forms and discourses in the visual arts in Northern Ireland in the late 20th century, and the interaction between aesthetics and industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent publications include “The metamorphosis of Cain: aesthetics in the transindustrial city at the turn of the century” (Visual Resources, 2014), “The catalogue of the Orchard Gallery: a contribution to critical and historical discourse in Northern Ireland 1978- 2003” (Journal of historiography, 2013). His monograph on Art in the North of England is to be published by Ashgate in Spring 2016. He is a co-founder of the research group on Textures and experiences of trans-industriality (www.tetigroup.org)
The discussion starts by evoking apparent layers of signification, before considering the additional inclusion of hidden meanings, and the extent to which these might function as the existential roots of the pieces. In that respect, the notion of symptom is implied, and in particular how aesthetic elements might point to denials of past, potentially traumatic experience. It is more specifically the manipulation by the artist of such possibilities, which is considered. The notion of abstraction is equally useful, in that it points to a pool of meanings, which are present, but somehow not immediately accessible and visible. The reference to ‘partial objects’ suggests a range of interpretative potentials. Partial is of course that which exists only in part, which is incomplete; therefore it demands an interrogation of the lacking component. Partial objects are also a staple in psychological theory, alluding to the fixation on a part mistaken for the whole, and to an ever-unattainable object of desire. Interestingly, partial objects are also used in programming, where they refer to objects that have become disconnected from significant amount of their supposedly corresponding data. The relation to the whole in this case cannot be reset, and functions as an irremediable loss. Fragments, remnants and resurgence are thus explored in five recurrent objects of Conor McFeely’s practice. The selected objects were part and informed the Weathermen project initiated in 2012 and shown at Franklin University in 2013.1

A text to accompany "Spooky Action at a Distance (Artes Mechanicae and Witch's Cradle)", an exhib... more A text to accompany "Spooky Action at a Distance (Artes Mechanicae and Witch's Cradle)", an exhibition of works by Conor McFeely, Amélie Brisson Darveau, Mareike Spalteholz and Andreas Marti, held at Corner College, Zurich, May 2015, curated by Gabriel Gee (TETI group) & Dimitrina Sevova (Corner College)

An interview with Declan McGonagle, director of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. D... more An interview with Declan McGonagle, director of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Declan discusses the history of art education in Ireland, the current state of art education provision in the country, its relation to the United Kingdom and globalisation, and alternative aesthetic strategies to further the role of art practitioners within society.

An interview with Ross Sinclair, artist and teacher at Glasgow School of Art. Ross discusses issu... more An interview with Ross Sinclair, artist and teacher at Glasgow School of Art. Ross discusses issues of art education in Scotland and the United Kingdom, the specificity and history of Glasgow School of Art, changing patterns in contemporary art within the Glasgow art scene, and issues stemming from the intermingling of art and theory in art education in the UK.

An interview with Alistair Wilson, artist and reader at the school of art and design, University ... more An interview with Alistair Wilson, artist and reader at the school of art and design, University of Ulster, Belfast. Alistair discusses the history and ethos of the Master of Fine Art in Belfast, and its position within past and present geographies of art education in the United-Kingdom and Ireland.

A critical insight into a work devised by Vincent Fradet for a location in Rueil-Malmaison France... more A critical insight into a work devised by Vincent Fradet for a location in Rueil-Malmaison France for TETI VISIONS

The exhibition Democratic Promenade was held at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool from the 30th o... more The exhibition Democratic Promenade was held at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool from the 30th of September to the 27th of November 2011. Gabriel Gee talks to the Bluecoat artistic director and curator of the exhibition, Bryan Biggs. The exhibition is paralleled by the publication of "Liverpool: City of Radicals", edited by B. Biggs and J. Belchem (distribution: Liverpool University Press).

Gregory McCartney has curated the exhibition Park Ave + Resident by duo Ackroyd and Harvey which ... more Gregory McCartney has curated the exhibition Park Ave + Resident by duo Ackroyd and Harvey which is shown at Void in Derry Northern Ireland from the 31s of May to the 15th of July 2011. The work is displayed in Void’s two main galleries. It consists of a triptych displaying three fronts of houses and a panel presenting the face of a young man. The images are made of grass and displayed in a dark tonal hue. Gregory McCartney talks to Gabriel Gee about Ackroyd and Harvey’s artistic process and the specific work they have made for Derry.

From Tate Liverpool to the Baltic Centre in Gateshead: culture seems to be thriving in North Engl... more From Tate Liverpool to the Baltic Centre in Gateshead: culture seems to be thriving in North England. A range of phenomena have contributed to an opening up of the artistic scenes in northern England: the blossoming of artist-led initiatives, governmental and municipal strategies aiming to revitalize the urban fabric through investments in the cultural field, new information technologies facilitating the access to the international art world. All these elements have contributed to the dynamism of the contemporary arts in cities immersed in a transition to a post-industrial economy. But what is the relation between these new high profile museums, the municipal strategies of economic development, a system in which cultural investment is subject to principles of competition, and the initiatives of the practitioners living and animating the northern regional art scenes? What repercussions have the (over-) investments in the cultural policies characteristic of a period of urban renaissance on the production and the diffusion of the contemporary arts?

Pied-à-terre

“Boy the times they are changing”, although as common sense has it, who thought it would be any ... more “Boy the times they are changing”, although as common sense has it, who thought it would be any other way? The Association of Art Historian shakes its head in disbelief and warns with its customary courtesy of “the clouds gathering on the horizon”.[1] The world of fine art education recoils in horror from the government’s exit-crisis strategy, which appears to be modelled on an ancient maritime treaty whereby all unnecessary loads can go overboard if it might prevent the ship from sinking (this would probably sound acceptable if it did not include an exclusion clause pertaining to the captain’s and the first officers’ belongings that are to remain on board at all cost). And this is not just a UK thing, it is the whole world that’s going for a life dedicated to maintaining access to priority elemental survival components: food, clothes and mobile phones. In times of crisis, you have to stick to the bread and butter, and it is not good old Myerscough and his “Economic importance of the arts”[2] that’s going to prevent us from diving into another dark age: a sad landscape made of isolated residential towers complete with authoritarian landlords and vegetable patches. The fine arts will return to craft status once again, and, actually, there are some nice examples of technical mastery in this year’s degree shows.

Paul Usherwood looks at the Northumbria fine art show, and indeed beneath the playful surfaces finds lurking anxieties. In London, Gabriel Gee and Innes Meek ponder the merits of the increasingly global orientated Chelsea BA and MA shows. Also in London, Anne-Laure Franchette disregards the body pains induced by life in the capital to cover exhibits at Camberwell and the Slade, both respectable members of the London Art Schools’ merger that Toby Juliff blasts in his thought-provoking introduction to this year Pied-à-terre’s degree show issue entitled: ‘The art school is dead, long live the UK art university’. Finally, Pete Clarke insightfully responds to a series of question regarding the modus operandi and goals of the Master in Fine Art at the University of central Lancashire, while Karen Watson takes us through the rope of East Street Arts’ successful relation with Leeds upcoming fine art graduates, which revealingly and imaginatively involves the organisation’s recognition of the importance of the practical aspects that any aesthetic practice has to contend with. We are particularly grateful to London based artist Miguel Pacheco for providing a visual for the front cover from his series Concerning the UFO Sighting (2010). The monadic eyes of the UFOs screening a green and pleasant land stand as a powerful incarnation of the Degree Show’s visitor and his pleasure in enjoying or loathing the wide range of talented displays every year seems to bring to the fore.

Gabriel Gee& Sophie Orlando

A series of short presentations and a round table discussion will focus on selected exhibitions t... more A series of short presentations and a round table discussion will focus on selected exhibitions that reflect specific curatorial characteristics of Bluecoat's programme. These include its ongoing engagement with art that addresses issues around diversity, race and difference. The way the gallery spaces have changed over time will be explored, as their configuration – and documentation-has reflected developments in artistic practice, from painting to installation and moving image, and the different display requirements these have demanded. This longitudinal perspective will come right up to the present by considering the current Public View exhibition, with its breadth of media and selection of artists-local, UK and international. The speakers will also consider the extent to which Bluecoat is a recognisably Northern gallery and whether this 'peripheral' positioning largely outside of the mainstream has contributed to the directions and distinctiveness of its exhibition programming. The evening will conclude with an opportunity for the audience to contribute to the debate in a question and answer session.

The genre of maritime painting developed exponentially from the 17th century onwards. Focussing o... more The genre of maritime painting developed exponentially from the 17th century onwards. Focussing on the representation of the sea, ships, coastal and harbour scenes, the genre accompanied the rise of the Dutch maritime power, and rapidly that of the parallel expansion of the British Empire. Although not limited to British and Dutch artists, a certain correlation links the growth of the marine and the implementation of a new vision of the world, where distant spaces became connected as mere anchorages through communication channels within ‘deterritorialised’ empires, announcing the expansion of global commercial networks (Vegetti 2014). In the second half of the 20th century, industrial and technological transformations further modified the morphology of maritime transportation and communication. In particular, port-cities witnessed a separation of their core inner-habitation area from the ports’ commercial infrastructures (Hoyle 1988, Kokot, 2008). The perception and imagination of maritime landscapes, ships, and identities of port cities significantly shifted with the advent of transatlantic flights, disconnected port terminals, as well as the modern cruise and tourism industries (Stopford, 2009, Dickinson & Vladimir, 2008).
This paper aims to reflect on the novel forms of marine art emerging in the late 20th century. Maritime paintings contributed to articulate a nascent world vision at the turn of the 17th-18th century. Similarly, artists engaging with seascapes and port cities in the second half of the century have drawn from a series of transindustrial shifts, which have superposed past physical and mental textures inherited from the industrial revolution with new post-Fordist flexible mode of economic and cultural organisation, in an increasingly interconnected and urbanised world (Lefebvre, 1970, di Felice, 2010, Perulli, 2014). How can we define the characteristics of a late 20th century marine, and how does this marine articulate and construct the changing imaginaries of port cities and maritime landscapes? With Keith Piper, we can interrogate the colonial ties and legacies, explored in the multimedia exhibition Trophies of Empire (Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, 1992-93). The artist Stefan Gec in works such as Trace elements (1990) and Buoy (1996) uses the metal of former soviet submarines to cast bells then suspended in the water at high tide, and eventually a buoy sent to travel across northern Europe before going back to its port of origin: Murmansk. This interest in metamorphosis is also at the heart of the work of the photographer Allan Sekula, who explores with Noël Burch in the documentary The forgotten space (2010) the global disincarnated commercial routes stretching from Rotterdam to Hong Kong, from America to China, aiming to unveil the hidden mechanisms and invisible lives sustaining the container economy. Through a consideration of the different aesthetic vessels used by artists engaging with seascapes in a wide range of location across the globe, this paper will aim to sketch a tentative portrait of the late 20th century marine and its capacity to unveil and articulate the changing imaginaries of port cities and maritime landscapes during that period.

As part of her 2015 temporary public artwork entitled Dublin ships, Cliona Harmey installed two ... more As part of her 2015 temporary public artwork entitled Dublin ships, Cliona Harmey installed two large LED screens above the Scherzer bridges in Dublin, on which the names of ships coming in and out of Dublin harbor appeared in real time through a connection to live electronic information technology. Dublin ships brought the now remote physicality of disconnected harbors to the heart of the port city. It made apparent the contemporary distant forms of maritime navigation. The origin of this remoteness is linked to the adoption of standardized containers in the 1960s, and in parallel, to the rapid surge in aerial transportation of passengers at that time. In the course of the 20th century, paradoxically in that respect, the ends of navigation in the maritime and aerial worlds have followed quite similar symbolic routes. On the one hand, disaster could strike; the sinking of the titanic and its multiple representational avatars still cristallize the piloting error that can bring an end to seemingly untouchable modern vessels. Crashes, of course, are the pendant horror that can befall aerial navigation, a narrative explored by Adrian Bosc in his 2014 novel Constellation, which reconstructs the path of the eponym plane which crashed in the Azores in 1949. On the other hand, with the sheer multiplication of the volume of maritime and aerial transportation, navigation has also increasingly found its ends in the no man’s land of the breaking yards, photographed for instance by Claudio Cambon in his project Shipbreak (2015), or the American desert, where a graveyard of planes can feature prominently in Don De Lillo Underworld (1997). This paper will explore the end of navigation in maritime and aerial technology through a range of visual and literary representations, focusing on three components: forgotten spaces, disaster and desert.

The marine, as a pictorial genre, significantly developed in parallel to the expansion of Dutch a... more The marine, as a pictorial genre, significantly developed in parallel to the expansion of Dutch and British maritime powers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Ships, towns, topographical renditions all contributed to affirm and conceptualise a new global network and a vision of wide ranging imperial and merchant connections. In the 20th century, port cities witnessed radical changes to their morphologies and identities, as containers and port terminals introduced a caesura between port and (port-) cities. The marine as a genre inherited from the pictorial tradition more or less disappeared as a relevant aesthetic mode of representation. Aesthetic reflection, absorption and refraction of these maritime urban shifts did not, however, disappear. Novel artistic forms emerged through which to articulate and question the changing identities of port cities and their cultural legacies. With Keith Piper, we can interrogate the colonial ties and legacies, as explored in the multimedia exhibition Trophies of Empire (Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, 1992-93). The artist Stefan Gec in works such as Trace elements (1990) and Buoy (1996) uses the metal of former soviet submarines to cast bells then suspended in the water at high tide, and eventually a buoy sent to travel across northern Europe before going back to its port of origin: Murmansk. This interest in metamorphosis is also at the heart of the work of the photographer Allan Sekula, who explores with Noël Burch in the documentary The forgotten space (2010) the global disincarnated commercial routes stretching from Rotterdam to Hong Kong, from America to China, aiming to unveil the hidden mechanisms and invisible lives sustaining the container economy. Through a consideration of the different aesthetic vessels used by artists engaging with seascapes in Europe, this paper will aim to sketch a tentative portrait of the late 20th century marine and its capacity to unveil and articulate the changing imaginaries of European port cities and maritime landscapes during that period.

This paper is concerned with the changing representation and imagination of port cities in Europe... more This paper is concerned with the changing representation and imagination of port cities in Europe and beyond in the second half of the 20th century. The dissolution of European economic and political supremacy in the aftermath of the Second World War was paralleled by radical changes in the maritime economy, which prompted a paradigmatic shift not so dissimilar to the one witnessed at the heart of the industrial revolution. To the progressive introduction of the steam powered vessels in the mid 19th century, echoed the rapid adoption of Malcolm McLean’s container in the 1950s/1960s and the global standardisation of good transportation. In the sequence of port cities’ transformation identified by Bird, harbours at the turn of the 1970s largely witnessed the separation of port facilities from the city port, before entering what Hoyle identified as a phase of reorganisation and redevelopment of waterfront zones along new economic activities related to the service industries. These political and economic evolutions induced a metamorphosis of the urban texture as much as the human experience within it. The narcissist projection onto the sea of European harbour cities’ internal desires was superseded by what this paper explores as a process of ‘inverse civilisation’, through the emergence of contested and alternative voices inherited from historical trading routes within the narrative of the économie-monde. Discussing a number of artworks, including paintings by Joseph Vernet, Salomon Van Ruysdael and William Turner, examples of British contemporary artworks such the Trophies of Empire project held in Liverpool, Bristol and Liverpool in 1992, together with Eastern perspectives drawing from photographic and cinematographic representation of cities such as Hong Kong and Istanbul, this paper discusses patterns of civilisation centred on port-cities and the sea, perceived as a catalyst of societal symbolical investment.

At the turn of the 1980s, British industry had been increasingly struggling to face global compet... more At the turn of the 1980s, British industry had been increasingly struggling to face global competition and to modernise sectors such as shipbuilding, coal mining and manufacture. The election of Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979 rapidly provoked the fragmentation of whole segments of traditional industries, as neoliberal and monetarist aspirations took over a moribund economy. While Francis Klingender could observe the visual and poetic responses to the growing industrial revolution (1947), an attention to their counterparts of the 1980s would necessarily draw from a shrinking world. However, the beginning and the tail of this industrial cycle that took its momentum in Britain in the 18th Century might also suggest some striking resemblances. Photographer Ian MacDonald thus took airy photographs of the distant glow and smoke of factories to be seen from Paddy’s hole in the Tees valley, and his Steelwork at dust (1981) evokes the contemporary industrial sublime: the terrifying impressions of Edmund Burke and Emmanuel Kant’s awe before the vastness of nature has been transferred to the mysterious presence of giant cranes in a misty horizon. Indeed the Tees pictures of MacDonald can be read in parallel to the evocation of this historical and romantic sublime analysed by Klingender. The ‘haunting loneliness’ that characterises many coal-mines views and the dramatic and ‘emotional atmosphere’ of Philip James de Loutherbourg’s industrial landscapes would aptly transcribe the photographic impressions at Paddy’s hole. The description of the Madeley Iron Works resonates in MacDonald photographs:
“The chimneys from the blast furnaces, pouring out an evil reddish smoke into the falling light, are silhouetted against the red-yellow glare of the molten metal beyond, reflected in the still waters of the furnace pool.”
Even the influence of Loutherbourg on subsequent generations of painters in his method of constructing his perspectives around groups of figures could be applied to Within sight and sounds of the largest blast furnace in Europe, where a scenic perspective is emphasised by the presence on the banks of river of a group of locals, who have brought tables and chairs to enjoy an open air meal on a sunny day in a picturesque setting. We, like them, can observe the spectacular silhouette of industries flanking the rural river bed.
This paper aims to reflect on the trans-industrial dialogue that emerges from two distinct moments in the history of the steel and iron industrial revolution: from its conception and the awed responses to its rising powers, to its demise and the not so dissimilar reflections that accompanied its turning into ruins and foams in the context of the service industry. We will consider a number of artists including Philip James de Loutherbourg, William Gilpin, Julius Ibbetson, Ian Mac Donald, John Davies, the Amber Collective, Pete Clarke, Crowe and Rawlinson as well as a range of works commissioned by Locus +.

En 1978, un centre d’art contemporain fut créé par la municipalité de Londonderry, afin de palier... more En 1978, un centre d’art contemporain fut créé par la municipalité de Londonderry, afin de palier l’absence notable de musée et d’espaces d’exposition dans la seconde ville d’Irlande du Nord. La Orchard Gallery vit le jour au cœur des Troubles, période marquée par des violences sectaires opposant depuis la fin des années soixante communautés catholiques et protestantes. Au cours des années 1980, Declan McGonagle, le premier directeur artistique de la galerie, établit un programme ambitieux mêlant artistes d’Irlande du Nord et artistes du monde de l’art international venus se confronter au contexte spécifique et problématique de Derry. Parallèlement, plutôt que de chercher à monter une collection d’objets d’art, la Orchard Gallery investit une partie de ses fonds dans la publication de catalogues. Ces catalogues lui permirent de faire connaître son action au delà des frontières nord irlandaises et de gagner une réputation d’excellence internationale, symbolisée par la nomination de Declan McGonagle au Turner Prize de 1987 (remporté cette année là par le sculpteur Richard Deacon). Aujourd’hui, on peut étudier l’histoire de la galerie et l’apport des interventions artistiques à travers ces catalogues, dans le cadre plus large d’une réflexion sur la production artistique nord-irlandaise. Cependant, ceux-ci ne documentent pas l’ensemble des activités initiées par la galerie. Un des impératifs majeurs poursuivis par Declan McGonagle était de placer les œuvres en étroite relation avec les habitants de Derry. De nombreuses interventions artistiques eurent lieu dans les rues de la ville pensée comme une galerie. Des performances, mais aussi diverses installations éphémères, prenaient une part importante du programme. Or les catalogues documentent pour l’essentiel les expositions entre les murs de la galerie. Comment dès lors reconstruire l’histoire de ces interventions éphémères ? Il convient sans doute de consulter les archives de la galerie, qui certainement a conservé des traces, images, correspondances, des articles de presse de ces événements. Malheureusement la Orchard Gallery a fermé ses portes en 2003, pour des raisons passablement obscures. Les archives de la galerie ont été transférées à la municipalité, qui les a placées dans un entrepôt, qui lui même aurait pris feu ! Il n’est pas impossible qu’elles soient toujours en état d’être consultées, mais l’accès semble en être compromis jusqu’à ce qu’un possible intermédiaire puisse les loger convenablement. Entre temps, on peut se pencher sur des prospectus, des articles de presse, s’entretenir avec des acteurs de la scène artistique nord-irlandaise, et tenter de compléter au cas par cas le paysage historique des arts à Derry à la fin du 20e siècle.

The acceleration of time-space compression in the late 20th century has furthered an increasing t... more The acceleration of time-space compression in the late 20th century has furthered an increasing tension in the contemporary urban fabric caused by an opposition between transnational global fluxes and the defence of site-specific identities. To counter homogenisation trends, two very different stances have articulated a resistance intent on promoting an ongoing heterogeneisation of the world. First, cultural heritage has been heralded as an economic incentive to be protected and even constructed. Second, local urban identities and textures could be explored as disruptive models of socio-cultural development. This paper is concerned with the role played by artistic practices in the alternative construction and imagination of the city at the dawn of the 21st Century. Crucially, it identifies interstitial space as a privileged locus of aesthetic intervention. It will discuss its capacity to divert the flattening impact of homogenising tendencies and unveil new material and spiritual objects in the urban fabric.

Constructing Interstitial Heritage: Architecture, Visions and experiences Inaugural conference of... more Constructing Interstitial Heritage: Architecture, Visions and experiences
Inaugural conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, June 5-8 2012

This session aims to explore the past and present modes through which alternate cultural heritage can be preserved and encouraged. In particular, it focuses on the realm of the interstice: a “space, opening, crevice etc, between things near together or between the component parts of a body”. Interstitial heritage can be located between entities as well as within them. By nature, it creates an aperture that forms an alternate field and conduit to existent structures. It needs not to negate necessarily a prevailing socio-political and economic frame (though it may well do so), but it ultimately provides individuals and groups with a ground on which to construct their environment and express themselves within it rather than be subservient to it. In the city, for example, spontaneous occupations of grounds and temporary archisculptures have offered models of interstitial production. In the ever increasing flow of images during the 20th century, visual strategies aiming to build alternate banks of visual data have grown inside and outside of the constraints of the society of spectacle. In the every day life of an increasingly global world, numerous attempts have been made to propose behaviours and experiences that challenge the predicates of top-down social fabrics. This session is concerned with the history and the present of interstitial architectures, visions and experiences. And crucially, it is concerned with the issue of their safeguarding. Given the alternate nature of interstitial production and living, their sustainability is central to the articulation of empowered individual and communal consciousness. The panel invites proposals that explore historical and contemporary forms of interstitial heritage, such as spontaneous architectures and three dimensional constructions, visual archives and alternate visual production systems, as well as the transmission of a varied and fertile bodily creativity.

Gabriel Gee and Michelle Stefano for TETI, Textures and experiences of transindustriality, www.tetigroup.org

Gabriel Gee, (Assistant Professor of Art History, Franklin College, Switzerland)

Michelle L. Stefano, PhD, (Program Coordinator, Maryland Traditions; Folklorist-in-Residence, University of Maryland Baltimore County)

Program, Wednesday 6th of June 2012

Session 1: 1.30 3-30 pm, room S005

Introduction: Gabriel Gee and Michelle Stefano: a bird eye’s view on constructing interstitial heritage (5mn)
Maria João de Matos (CIAUD, Faculdade de Arquitectura – Universidade Técnica de Lisboa): Spontaneous housing as element of cultural landscape – two capitals at the edges of Europe (20mn)
Worrasit Tantinipankul (School of architecture and design, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok): Thailand’s neglected urban heritage: challenges for preserving the cultural landscape of provincial towns of Thailand. (20mn)
Discussion 15mn
Jennifer Preston & Dr Naomi Stead (University of Queensland): The stairs within an urban slot: the interstitial architecture of Moore stairs (20mn)
Discussion 10mn
Brack Hale & Alison Vogelaar (Franklin College, Switzerland): “The Space Between”: The Problem of Natural Spaces and Invasive Species in a Global Era (20mn)
Discussion (10mn)

Session 2 4-6 pm

Marita Gilbert (Michigan State University): Celebrating the Saints: Black women in the interstices of 'home' in the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans (20mn)
Alison Vogelaar: Making Space for a Revolution: The Rhetorical and Pragmatic Functions of the “Encampment” in the Operation Occupy Movement (20mn)
Julia Székely (Budapest, Central European University), Hacking the history in Budapest (20mn)
Discussion 10mn
Andre Cicalo, A voice for the past, discussing (missing) representations of the African slave trade in the urban space of Rio de Janeiro
Toby Juliff (Leeds College of Art), A spectre is haunting (Europe) the UK - the spectre of (communism) architecture (20mn)
Discussion 10mn

Session: Constructing interstitial heritage: architectures, visions & experiences This session a... more Session: Constructing interstitial heritage: architectures, visions & experiences

Convenors: Gabriel Gee, Franklin College, Switzerland (TETI)
Michelle L. Stefano, Maryland State Arts Council and the University of Maryland Baltimore
County (UMBC) (TETI)

250 words proposals should be sent along with a short cv to Gabriel Gee ggee@fc.edu and Michelle Stefano mstefano@msac.org by February 1st 2012

Registration fees 315USD/220euros

Publication of papers will be considered by the International Journal of Heritage Studies (IJHS) and TETI

www.tetigroup.org

La partition en 1920 entre Irlande du sud et Irlande du Nord constitue un moment important pour l... more La partition en 1920 entre Irlande du sud et Irlande du Nord constitue un moment important pour le mouvement d’émancipation républicain irlandais. Elle marque également une césure géographique dans l’île, les six comtés du Nord se trouvant à la fois détachés de l’unité spatiale de l’île, et rattachés à l’ensemble plus large des îles britanniques. L’opposition entre les communautés protestantes et catholiques en Irlande du Nord s’accentue dans l’après-seconde guerre mondiale. Les sources les plus directes de l’agitation politique des communautés catholiques reposent notamment sur les difficultés d’accès au logement et une représentation électorale inégale. Dans le contexte international des mouvements de citoyens durant les années 1960, les revendications sociales et politiques s’accentuent, avant que le conflit armé ne prennent l’ascendant durant la période des ‘Troubles’ (fin des années 1960-1998).
A Belfast, entre les deux communautés, les murs à extensions verticales viennent physiquement renforcer la séparation de l’autre que l’ancienne histoire conflictuelle avait conservée vivace dans les esprits, depuis la construction des murs de Derry au début du 17e siècle. Les parades orangistes, qui célèbrent chaque 12 juillet la victoire des armées de William III d’Orange sur James II lors de la bataille de la Boyne, ravivent chaque année les tensions communautaires, par le tracé des marches qui franchissent les sillons symboliques signalant l’entrée dans l’espace de l’autre, dont est simultanément réaffirmée l’appartenance au tout du territoire britannique. Dans l’espace urbain, les affrontements de groupe par quartiers, le contrôle militaire du passage d’un espace de résidence à un autre, les attaques terroristes des deux camps menées par intrusion punitive, articulent l’identité d’une communauté en opposition à son homologue.
Durant cette période, il est possible de relever dans la production des arts plastiques contemporains, une attention et une incorporation de l’histoire frontalière telle qu’internalisée par les deux communautés limitrophes et au final constitutives de l’Irlande du Nord. En écho aux muraux qui marquent dans les quartiers tant protestants que catholiques l’adhésion à la cause politique et au groupe social, les artistes ont pu représenter et travailler les zones frontières, qui sont des espaces de séparation mais aussi de passage. En cela elles combinent et concentrent la complexité de la situation humaine et politique de la région dans la seconde moitié du 20e siècle, et on s’efforcera d’en analyser les différents modes d’apparence plastique, à travers notamment les œuvres photographiques de Willie Doherty et Victor Sloan, les sculptures de Stuart Brisley, Nigel Rolfe, John Newling, les peintures de Kerry Trengrove, ou encore les promenades de Philip Roycroft.

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2013

"A special issue on the construction of interstitial heritage with articles by: Worrasit Tantin... more "A special issue on the construction of interstitial heritage with articles by:
Worrasit Tantinipankul on "Thailand's neglected urban heritage: challenges for preserving the cultural landscape of provincial towns of Thailand"
Alison E. Vogelaar & Brack W. Hale on "Constituting Swiss heritage: discourse and the management of 'invasive species"
Sumiko Sarashima on "Social milieu of 'tradition' as interstitial heritage: an example of Japanese intangible cultural heritage"
André Cicalo on "A voice for the past: making 'public' slavery heritage in Rio De Janeiro"
Júlia Székely, on "Hacking the history in Budapest: public monuments as forms of an alternative messaging system"
Toby Juliff on "Livingstone-heritage and the interstitial spectres of Trafalgar Square"

par Kyle Proehl et d’une série d’illustrations et références arrangées par Gabriel Gee. Baad est ... more par Kyle Proehl et d’une série d’illustrations et références arrangées par Gabriel Gee. Baad est une invitation à arpenter les sentiers du noir, au plus près du cuir, les murmures aux oreilles pressées, entendre le grondement de l’asphalte, le grondement du peuple, voir le liquide doré, les yeux de l’enfant et la danse endiablée, l’uniforme, pensée de la loi, le poing serré contenu au creux de la gorge, écouter l’enquêteur et le docteur sirupeux, les secrets de légendes fanées qu’on échange depuis des fauteuils fumés, l’or noir, la Californie.

Dans Pat Congrexus et le Cocher n’était pas loin, Vincent Fradet et Gabriel Gee vous proposent de... more Dans Pat Congrexus et le Cocher n’était pas loin, Vincent Fradet et Gabriel Gee vous proposent de suivre deux fragments de vies épiques, remplies d’inquiétantes énigmes et de rebondissements saisissants. Pat Congrexus, texte théâtral, suit les aventures de son éponyme héros à la recherche de ses moutons disparus. Qui a volé les moutons de Pat ? Qui a subtilisé la statue sacrée de Genebougepas ? Autant de réponses à découvrir en suivant l’équipée du berger spolié et de ses amis. Dans le Cocher n’était pas loin, une sombre silhouette rôde auprès d’un monde aristocratique vaguement britannique et frivole, plein de tromperies et de branches familiales insoupçonnées. Saurez-vous voir venir le final de cette dangereuse cavalcade ?

Les Presses éditables, 2014

« Le jeu occupe une place importante dans la vie de l’homme. Dès sa plus tendre enfance, celui-ci... more « Le jeu occupe une place importante dans la vie de l’homme. Dès sa plus tendre enfance, celui-ci s’adonne avec bonheur à la pratique de toutes sortes d’activités ludiques. Seul ou avec ses semblables, avec ou sans règle, il joue. Arrivé à l’âge adulte, derrière un visage plus austère et des préoccupations plus sérieuses, il poursuit la pratique du jeu, toujours pour s’amuser, mais en y découvrant bien souvent un pan dramatique et parfois féroce.
De tous les jeux humains, le jeu de rang est sans doute le plus essentiel. Car toujours dans ses occupations, pratiquées en groupe ou en solitaire, l’Homme s’efforce de se mesurer à l’autre, se positionne et s’évalue, repère ses pions, déplace ses tours. Il faut parfois établir des alliances, et il partage son rang avec des pareils, barons, ducs, ouvriers spécialisés ou non, cadres dynamiques et léthargiques, soldats, guerilleros, penseurs indépendants, philosophes à la solde du tyran à réformer. Mais les rangs sont à la fois mobiles et soudés, poreux et incrustés. C’est cela qui permet le jeu, parfois égayant, toujours distrayant, souvent cruel. »

Association of art historian's conference Newcastle, 2020

Call for papers, Association of art historian conference, Newcastle April 2020 The marine emerge... more Call for papers, Association of art historian conference, Newcastle April 2020

The marine emerged as a pictorial genre in Europe in the early modern age. Painters turned their eyes to the sea, to ships, coasts and harbour scenes, while European maritime commercial networks extended their reach across the oceans. In the 20th century, the standardisation of containers in maritime transportation induced a separation of port-cities and their inhabitants from port infrastructures. The perception of the maritime realm and the identities of port cities significantly changed, as aerial channels took over passenger transportation, while former inner-city harbours were converted into leisure areas away from the seas’ silent economic machinery.

EAUH Antwerp, 2020

Call for paper, EAUH session in Antwerp September 2020 As gateways to their hinterlands, handlin... more Call for paper, EAUH session in Antwerp September 2020

As gateways to their hinterlands, handling the departing and incoming ships sailing on routes to worlds beyond, port cities were key players in the regulation of flows in and out of continental territories. In the European context, the channelling of goods, the expansion of trade and the economic growth that accompanied the opening of long distance sea routes in the 15th and 16th centuries, was paralleled by the development of new modes of representation, landscape and seascapes, the celebration of new narratives in history painting, the building of monuments and architectural structures. Also, the colonial outposts established in the early modern and modern age brought a range of extraneous objects, people, and stories, to the docks of European shores. Presently, representations regarding the shifting identities of European port cities illuminate manifold issues, such as migratory fluxes and crisis.

From loss to survivals: on the reconstruction and transmissions of artistic gestures In 2009, th... more From loss to survivals: on the reconstruction and transmissions of artistic gestures

In 2009, the exhibition An image may hide another image at the Grand Palais in Paris, looked at the ‘double-image’ in the realm of the fine arts. A basket of fruits might reveal a woman’s face, a group of naked bodies might reveal a skull, landscapes might unveil anthropomorphic features. The display reflected on hidden images and the superposition of visions. In a reflection on the Greek tragedy published in 2012, William Marx pondered on the remoteness of the dramatic genre, known to us through highly fragmentary sources. To try and gain some access to the forgotten world of Greek tragedy, William Marx pointed to the Noh theatre in the Japanese tradition. Through a displacement of the focal lenses from the integrity of the text to a comparative reflection on the performative act, the author could unearth crucial indications enabling a possible reconstruction of the genre’s poetical specificity. Albeit distant in space and time, the actors of the Noh theatre could provide unique clues as to the nature of the Greek experience.

For the fifth Volume of Intervalla, Franklin’s University Switzerland interdisciplinary journal, we welcome papers that combine these two explorations in order to reflect on the reconstruction and transmission of gestures in artistic practices. We are particularly interested in purposeful reconstructions and reinventions of the artistic gesture, where it has been partly or completely lost, as well as in surreptitious modes of gestural transmissions, where a superposition of past over present practices takes place. Studies can choose to focus on gestures as representational forms, in say the movements of the performer, the dancer, the painter, the musician; or on on gestures as craft, textures of knowledge underlying the process of creation. All artistic fields may be considered, such as the performative arts, music, dance, theatre, but also painting and sculpture, architectural practices, drawing… Through this exploration, we aim to contribute to a reflection on the underlayers of artistic heritage, where the practices and bodies of the past survive and merge into those of the present.

The editors of this Intervalla issue welcome proposals of 300 words, to be sent by the 15th of March 2017 to Gabriel Gee (Franklin University, CH, ggee@fus.edu). Notice of acceptance will be sent by the beginning of April 2017. Articles ranging between 5000 and 6000 words will have to be submitted by the end of July 2017.

Call for Proposals: Natural Disaster and the Bay of Naples: Artistic Encounters and Transformatio... more Call for Proposals:
Natural Disaster and the Bay of Naples: Artistic Encounters and Transformations
A research seminar co-organized by the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities and Franklin University Switzerland

DIGITAL SEMINAR The Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” and... more DIGITAL SEMINAR The Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” and Franklin University Switzerland organized a research seminar titled "Natural Disaster and the Bay of Naples: Artistic Encounters and Transformations". Centering on artistic and cultural representations of volcanic eruption, earthquake, tidal wave, and disease in Naples and the Bay from antiquity to the present, we asked how art creates knowledge and meaning from natural disaster.