Jessica Timmins 1759582
Rewriting Heritage: Challenging paradigms of
heritage, history and cultural memory in
contemporary art
University of Leiden Faculty of Humanities
MA Arts and Culture: Art in the Contemporary World and World Art Studies January 2018
Supervisor: Prof. dr. C.J.M. Zijlmans Second Reader: Prof.dr.ing R. Zwijnenberg
Declaration: I hereby certify that this work has been written by me, and that it is not the product of plagiarism or any other form of academic misconduct.
CONTENTS
Introduction p. 4
Chapter One — Jeremy Deller and Alternative Heritage Discourses p. 7
Chapter Two — To what extent can historic subaltern art practices be heritage? p. 26 Chapter Three — Digging for alternatives p. 46
Conclusion p. 57
Introduction
History and heritage shape contemporary culture. Present in architecture, city planning, visual media, tradition, cuisine, and song, heritage and history shape the ways in which the past is narrated, interpreted and passed on. Monuments and plaques are present in our everyday, and the names of cities, streets and houses refer to former imperial glories, past victories and notable events. But how much of this do we, the modern citizen, pay attention to? As Austrian author Robert Musil once famously wrote, “There is nothing in the world as invisible as monuments”, pointing out the monumental language of modern commemoration as something the eyes seem to slide over. The idea of the ‘invisible’ modernist paradigms of 1
commemoration, remembrance and history has fuelled my artistic practice. I have long been concerned with the way history is translated through ‘authorised’
mediums, and implanted throughout the modern western city, and understood (or not) by the modern citizen. Despite material prevalence, heritage and evidences of 2
history in contemporary culture sometimes fail to properly convey an understandable, imaginable past, or fail to engage a viewer emotionally.
My art practice deals with non-institutionalised and oral histories that are present in public spaces, and attempts to reveal them through small,
semi-permanent interventions and performative public interactions. My practice is built around individual memories that are attached to sites or objects — augmenting or mutating the authorised meaning of objects and the past through personal
experiences. I am currently working on a project in Liverpool which appropriates the ‘official’ English Heritage blue plaque aesthetic in order to tell institutionally
unrecognised stories. My serial work Alternative Blue Plaque Project (fig. 1) attempts to discuss the stories present in the minds of local people that are not memorialised in official ways. Alternative Blue Plaque Project #2 is temporarily installed on the front railing of a church in Liverpool. The church is commonly referred to as ‘The Bombed-Out Church’, as only the outer walls remain after it was struck during World
Quoted in Widrich 2014, p. 1.
1
In academic literature ‘West’ is capitalised. I feel that the specificity of ‘West’ (taken to mean western
2
Europe and North America) and non-specificity of ‘non-west’ (the rest) is not only misleading but continues to enforce a hierarchical world order, reminiscent of colonial pasts. Until I have found a better way to describe the differentiation between countries built on colonialism and those that weren’t, I choose not to capitalise the west, as I do not want to give added importance to post-imperialist countries and continue to fuel this hierarchy.
War II. The piece looks to draw attention to the visceral, aural experience of the bombing, and the way that local people have commemorated the event in its naming. Furthermore, I look to relocate a repressed meaning, which occurs when a term becomes normalised. I want to challenge the notion of an
authorised or hierarchical idea of heritage by remembering things that fall outside of ‘accepted’ heritage discourses.
In my thesis, I want to investigate these ideas in a more theoretical sense, with the aim to ground my artistic
practice in academic discourse. I want to explore if, and if so how,
historical or heritage experiences can be affected and opened up by contemporary art. To what extent can the voices of contemporary artists interact with authorised historical and heritage discourses, and what is produced at this intersection? How can contemporary art provide an alternative interaction with history, or an interaction with an alternative history? In attempting to answer these questions, I hope to shed new light on the structure of heritage, history and cultural remembering. My research questions the fields of history and heritage, and I discuss the potentiality that
contemporary art can have to critique these received paradigmatic fields of categorisation, further dissecting how the past and its interpretations have a continued effect in the contemporary world. In order to address this idea, I have divided my research into three areas and the structure of the thesis, in three
chapters, reflects this. In Chapter One I explore the links between heritage as an act and temporal, event-based artworks. In Chapter Two, I present the possibility of
fig. 1. Jessica Timmins, Alternative Blue Plaque Project
contemporary art to document a sub-national or subaltern history, and in a shorter Chapter Three, I discuss the way in which contemporary art can provide access to repressed or forgotten histories and heritages. In order to locate my discussion, I look at the work of relevant cultural theorists, art critics, heritage and memory academics, philosophers and artists — a broad range of research provides a better understanding of the ways in which heritage can be accessed and processed across the contemporary world. Bringing together relevant discussions from different fields, I hope to link ideas that would otherwise be part of disparate discourses.
The three chapters of the thesis are each structured around an example of an artistic practice that deals with history or heritage. The first chapter focusses on the public interventions of British artist Jeremy Deller (b.1966). Deller’s work deals with history, discussing the representation of history in contemporary understanding. Deller’s works use people as a medium, often re-enacting or performing historical moments. Despite recognition in the UK, there is little academic writing about Deller’s practice, and almost nothing about the two pieces I have chosen to write about — Sacrilege (2012) and We’re Here Because We’re Here (2016). I propose that Deller’s work can produce heritage experiences, and I frame this idea within the writing of heritage academic Laurajane Smith, who presents heritage as an
engagement in the present. This chapter functions as a basis from which traditional or received ideas of heritage can be deconstructed, and which then forms the foundation for the rest of the thesis.
Building on the arguments and ideas in Chapter One, in Chapter Two I explore non-authorised or subaltern histories that can be represented through contemporary art. To what extent can art practice tell a different or an ‘Other’ side of the story? In order to address this question, I juxtapose the work of Black Audio Film Collective (Black Audio) with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s subaltern theory. Black Audio were a group of young diasporic artists working in Britain in the 1980s, who made documentary films that explored the untold stories of individuals and
communities. The chapter is centred around Handsworth Songs (1986), made in response to the 1985 ‘race’ riot in Handsworth, Birmingham. From a contemporary perspective, can their works be seen to engage with a broadening of historical narratives? In what depth can the subaltern cultures of postcolonial Britain be allowed to ‘speak’ through contemporary art? Questions such as these attempt to
understand the lasting impact of artworks on contemporary perceptions of history. Can ‘Other’ voices work to change the historical record?
In Chapter Three, I discuss Palestinian American artist Emily Jacir. Jacir’s work recreates lost objects, relocating narratives destroyed by conflict in a way which draws attention to the continued Palestinian situation. Jacir’s practice, I propose, can help to deconstruct traditional archaeology as a foundation of heritage. Can the field of archaeology be re-conceptualised in contemporary art? In order to further
understand how this might be possible, I look to the idea of site-specificity as
proposed by Korean-American art theorist Miwon Kwon. Building on the arguments from the previous two chapters, Kwon’s writing on site-specificity is a way of
conceptualising the need for a movable, transnational heritage which reflects
contemporary society, and Jacir’s practice is an example of this idea. Chapter Three, somewhat shorter than the previous two chapters, is the application of my theory, which I hope can continue to be built upon.
My desire to challenge definitions of the past in the rhetorics of history, heritage and cultural remembering comes from a desire to understand the power or force of art in the contemporary world. In which ways can my field of interest — contemporary art — have a positive impact on real life situations? In individual fields, memory, heritage, subaltern studies and cultural destruction, have all been explored in great academic depth. However, it is my impression that the transposition of relationships to these fields through contemporary art has not yet been fully investigated. In what kind of depth can contemporary art critique these different fields? As well as Jeremy Deller, Black Audio Film Collective and Emily Jacir, there are many other artists that act as a mediator between the past and present;
challenging monuments, retelling national stories and creating dialogues around colonial ruling and its continued effects. In this thesis, therefore, I hope to bring 3
together just some strands of enquiry that can open up a discourse around accepted fields of heritage. To what extent can contemporary art challenge the ways in which history is written and understood in authorised heritage sites and historical
narratives?
See the works of Hans van Houwelingen, Olivia Plender and Ahmet Öğüt respectively. These artists
3
Chapter One
Jeremy Deller and Alternative Heritage Discourses
Introduction
It is my thesis that contemporary art can challenge and open up heritage, history and cultural remembering through novel ways of reproducing and interacting with the past. Contemporary art, particularly performance and event based artwork, speaks an experiential, temporal language which can work to unlock the static, authorised discourses surrounding heritage. Jeremy Deller’s art practice engages in
re-presenting heritage or historical moments through temporary interventions. In order to explore how Deller’s practice can engage with the fields of heritage, history and memory, I focus on two recent artworks, Sacrilege (2012) (fig. 2 and fig. 3) and We’re
Here Because We’re Here (2016) (fig. 4). Deller is concerned with history and ritual:
local or national, folkloric or institutional. His installations, interventions, coordinated performances and events are installed in public spaces, and are contingent on audience engagement. Deller’s work discusses a cultural relationship to history and politics, questioning present public comprehension and connection to events such as the 1980s miner’s strikes in Britain or the post 9/11 conflict in Iraq. In an exploration 4
of Deller’s works in juxtaposition with Smith’s extensive writing on heritage practices, I hope to reveal how the field of heritage may be further opened up. In order to do this, I will provide a brief explanation of the heritage practices and rituals that Deller’s works question, whilst looking in detail at the works themselves.
This chapter focusses on heritage as an act, as is described by heritage academic Laurajane Smith in Uses of Heritage (2006). For Smith, heritage is the activity which occurs around designated sites: the act of engagement which visitors or participants perform. I aim to explore if this approach can also locate potential heritage encounters in non-designated sites, through contemporary art as a
mediator. In what ways can an interaction with an historical subject be defined as a heritage experience? I discuss Deller’s artworks in terms of an engagement to
The Battle of Orgreave (2001) was a reenactment of a violent clash between striking workers and
4
the police during the miners’ strikes in Britain, 1984-1985. The artwork involved over 200 workers and police who had actually been present on the day, as well as some 800 reenactment actors and volunteers. A documentary by Mike Figgis, can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=3ncrWxnxLjg. (25.9.2017) I also refer to It Is What It Is (2009).
history, which can then instigate acts of heritage. Through Smith’s writing, I propose and explore the possibility of alternative sites of heritage and ‘unauthorised’ heritage experiences in contemporary art. Deller’s artworks also interrogate and develop the ways in which French historian Pierre Nora conducts discussions of history and memory. An analysis of both texts will frame the interpretation of Deller’s artworks. Underlying Smith’s theory is the critical conception that heritage practices are academically based, and rooted in the nineteenth-century western thought. For Smith, this has problematically led to a specific type of site being remembered, and at these sites, a specific academic rhetoric is presented, enforcing singular
connection to the past. To what extent is an alternative discourse presented in contemporary artworks that are historically engaged?
Deller’s practice in many ways runs in opposition to the heritage field, which bases its authority in historicity: a fundamentally problematic concept. History is an academic and therefore critical and analytical field and yet, as Nora notes, “none of the great historians… had the sense that he was representing only a particular memory.” A sense of historicity is arguably grounded in academia — the production 5
of academic work connotes a certain degree of invested research. Historical
accuracy and academic study are also the foundations of heritage experiences. Yet, how important is the idea of historical accuracy in a heritage experience? And to what extent does Deller’s engagement with the past differ or impact on an authorised heritage discourse? Later, I look at Deller’s artwork We’re Here Because We’re Here in reference to the ideas illuminated in Nora’s essay ‘Between Memory and
History’ (1989). In this essay, which I return to in detail, Nora laments the loss of
milieux de mémoire or environments of memory, in which “memory is life, being
borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting…” Instead of milieux de 6
mémoire, then, modernity has constructed lieux de mémoire, sites of memory which
are constructed specifically, and are removed from a daily amending and passing on, of gesture, habit and tradition. Nora opposes memory, which is in constant flux and continuous, with history, which is a representation of a time or event, and which differentiates between the present and the past. The opposition of memory and
Nora 1989, p. 9.
5
Ibidem, p. 8.
history, for Nora, is distinct. In what ways does Deller’s work question the
historicisation of memory, as Nora conceives? Deller’s work, outside the defined field of heritage, memory and history studies, in conjunction with Smith’s theory, can perhaps negotiate the distinction between these respective fields, and locate heritage as Smith writes, in the present.
Sacrilege
In 2012, as part of the Glasgow International Arts Festival and the Olympic Games Cultural Program, Deller created an inflatable replica of the neolithic site of
Stonehenge, which subsequently toured around the UK and Europe. In contrast to the original, Stonehenge was temporarily transformed into a place of play, interaction and invitation — people of all ages were invited to play on the giant inflatable — providing they didn’t wear shoes. The juxtaposition of a children’s party staple and 7
pre-historic British heritage icon created an alternative interaction with the
Stonehenge site. In the ironic and humorous title, Deller jokes about the exaltedness of the site, questioning the validity of a British icon. Experts suggest Stonehenge was erected around 5,000 years ago, whereas Sacrilege was inflated every morning, and deflated every night. An inferred awe and wonder was replaced with bouncing — a sensory, immediate and joyful experience. On the site of Stonehenge, visitors are not permitted to approach the Stones, apart from on the summer and winter solstices, which are religious festivals for Druid and Pagan faiths. Access to the circle, constructed from stones from a quarry over 200 miles away is limited, preventing potential damage from human interaction. However, the juncture between the sacred space and the visitor can provide a disappointing heritage experience. On a ‘normal’ 8
visit, the spiritual experience that Druids and Pagans claim is achingly absent. In his pertinent essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) writes “ [e]ven the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” In Stonehenge, as an ancient work 9
of art and Sacrilege its reproduction, it is arguable that Deller was looking to access
http://www.jeremydeller.org/Sacrilege/Sacrilege_Video.php Part 2, 1”53 (25.9.2017)
7
See Wallis 2013, p.321, and in my own experience.
8
Benjamin 1968, p. 3.
precisely the removal from uniqueness that Benjamin describes. The ancientness, the uniqueness of Stonehenge in fact prevents interaction with the site. Instead of attempting to replicate the implied mythical wonder of Stonehenge, Deller
appropriates the celebrated image and makes it an accessible active site in which to work and rework an iconic symbol of ‘Englishness’.
In the UK and especially England, Stonehenge is an instantly identifiable object, a celebrated national symbol. The site is managed by English Heritage, an organisation which maintains and protects “the story of England at royal castles, historic gardens, forts and defences and world-famous prehistoric sites.” Indeed, 10
since the inception of a national character, visual arts, crafts, architectural sites and literature have been appropriated in order to illustrate an abstract notion of
nationalism and national identity. Despite its creation long before the introduction of the nation-state ideal, Stonehenge is often appropriated as a nationalising icon. Art historian Linda Marie Zimmerman writes, “Stonehenge imagery participated in a nationalizing discourse throughout its history… each period share[s] an impulse to appropriate Stonehenge in the service of established institutional authorities, be they religious or political.” Further, because of the unknown circumstances in which 11
Stonehenge was constructed, “every age has endeavoured to explain who built the monument and why, and in doing so, has projected its ideals onto the past and has constructed a vision of British prehistory to suit present-day concerns.” As the titles 12
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/ (25.9.2017) 10 Zimmerman 1997, p. 5. 11 Ibidem, p. iv. 12
suggests, Sacrilege continues this trend, fundamentally questioning the notion of a collective British or English national identity, and the received historical rhetorics from a contemporary perspective.
One way in which national identity can be understood is through objects and artefacts in national collections which work to visualise an “imagined political
community”, as political historian and anthropologist Benedict Anderson describes. 13
In his book Imagined Communities (1991), Anderson outlines the irrationality of a ‘national character’. He describes the nation as imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion.” 14
Anderson also describes the nation and nationalism as “cultural artefacts of a particular kind.” Deller appropriates Stonehenge, a cultural artefact, drawing 15
attention to the ever-changing, yet binding nature of the ‘imagined community’. In
Sacrilege, Deller creates a new heritage experience, and a new perspective on
nationality — both self-critical and humorous. As Deller states, “Britishness is about a sense of humour, about being able to not take yourself too seriously.” The insertion 16
of a sense of humour into Stonehenge, is a considered continuation of the tradition outlined by Zimmerman — appropriating the ancient construction in the service of illustrating a reworked national character. Sacrilege, however, does not attempt to enforce this idea. There was no text accompanying the project — the emphasis was on experience. At the original site of Stonehenge, there is a visitors’ centre which displays archaeological objects from the area, and a replica village as is thought to have been inhabited around the time the Stones were erected. These provide a directed understanding of the site. As Smith would argue, visiting Stonehenge is not about engaging with the sacred space, or participating in the space in order to understand its purposes, but instead, it is a museum experience in which the visitor is the passive recipient of an authorised heritage discourse.
Anderson 1991, p.6. Anderson’s much quoted text details the ways in which the nation is asserted
13
into an imagined political community through objects — as though to make concrete an abstract idea. For writing on the way the nation performs the nationality it is prescribed through textual resource, see Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration (1990)
Ibidem, p. 6. 14 Ibidem, p. 4. 15 http://www.jeremydeller.org/Sacrilege/Sacrilege_Video.php Part 2, 00”34 (25.9.2017) 16
Authorised Heritage Discourse
Authorised heritage discourse, a concept developed and critiqued by Smith, is the discourse encountered at heritage sites which instructs the visitor to engage with the site in a specific way. Authorised heritage discourse emphasises the dichotomy between the expert voice and the visitor, establishing and sanctioning “a top-down relationship between expert, heritage site and visitor, in which the expert
‘translates’… the site and its meaning to the visitor. The very use of the term ‘visitor’ also facilitates passivity and disconnection.” This didactic superiority negates any 17
potential emotional engagement to the site, and directs visitor experiences towards a ‘correct’ and prescribed understanding. This approach prolongs the founding
principles of heritage, which Smith recognises as pervasive in heritage today. She writes,
“the discourse of monumentality and heritage as developed from the nineteenth century is not only driven by certain narratives about nationalism and Romantic ideals, but also a specific theme about the legitimacy and dominant place in national cultures of the European social and political elite.”18
The practice of heritage is reliant on an educated team of heritage experts, often archaeologists with scientific backgrounds, who are trained to study and preserve artefacts.
Barbara Bender, emeritus professor of heritage anthropology at University College London, develops this idea, stating “[g]enerally speaking, those involved in the conservation, reservation and mummification of the landscape attempt to ‘freeze’ the past…They create origin myths rather than a sense of ongoing historical
process.” Archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf further states, “there is no single past 19
waiting to be revealed by the practices of scientific archaeology and history — the material remains of the past do not mean anything themselves… meaning is a result of the framing of archaeology, which is in turn a construction of modernity.” Like 20
Smith 2006, p. 34. 17 Ibidem, p. 22. 18 Bender 1992, p. 735-736. 19 Holtorf 2012, 4”21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKAa8hTd5H0 (25.9.2017) 20
Smith, both Bender and Holtorf question a specific framing of a singular history being purported in history and heritage practices. Freezing of the past through scientific processes excludes an active, spontaneous engagement with the site itself. Smith further problematises this traditional approach, as it removes the way in which people instinctually interact with or use a site, space, or object. Authorised heritage discourse, and more broadly, the fields of history and heritage are academically founded, and rely “on the power/knowledge aims of technical and aesthetic experts and institutionalised in state cultural agencies.” In sites like Stonehenge, authorised 21
heritage discourse approaches incur a numbed emotional response to heritage, as the ‘visitors’ are refused the chance to engage with the very artefact which makes the site special. Only during summer and winter solstices are Druids and Pagans allowed access, to re-enact the ancient celebrations that Stonehenge is thought to have been constructed for. The circular formation of Stonehenge is punctuated by an entrance to the west side, and when standing in the entrance, the setting winter solstice sunrise and summer solstice sunset is framed, giving the Stones potential meaning as a calendar. These biannual festivities, which are now defined by UNESCO as ‘intangible heritage’, function outside of the authorised heritage discourse, and engage with the site itself rather than an expert construction.
In 2003, UNESCO officially established a mode of protection for intangible heritage. The introduction of an intangible heritage list worked to give value to practices which yield non-physical results. UNESCO defines intangible heritage as “oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of intangible cultural heritage; performing arts; social practices, rituals and festive events; knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; traditional craftsmanship.” This 22
definition allows a reading of heritage in continuous negotiation — a part of the present and of the past. The introduction of intangible heritage is a disruption in the general structure of UNESCO safeguarding principles. Founded after World War II, UNESCO attempts to control and protect environments of valuable culture. Until 2003, UNESCO focussed on an object-based, physical heritage — artefacts which could be owned, transferred, displayed and sold. Now, UNESCO’s understanding are continuing to change to include practices that negotiate this division, allowing
Smith 2006, p. 11.
21
https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention (25.9.2017)
heritage to be active in the contemporary world. Guidelines remain in place in order to ‘protect’, which is often understood to mean ‘to freeze’, to maintain in a static form. Influential scholar of Jewish and performance studies and museums academic
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett echoes Bender’s ideas. She discusses the difficulty of categorising the nature of heritage, writing, “[c]hange is intrinsic to culture, and measures intended to preserve, conserve, safeguard, and sustain particular cultural practices are caught between freezing the practice and addressing the inherently processual nature of culture.” As academics and practitioners continue to challenge 23
and discuss UNESCO’s approaches to cultural heritage, the division between heritage as frozen in time and in continuous flux is worked through. UNESCO policies are beginning to bridge the former distinction between the past and the present. Smith’s notion of intangible heritage, however, pushes one step further, and her use of the term comes to represent more than the UNESCO terms allow. Smith uses ‘intangible heritage’ as a way of contesting authorised heritage discourses, as she suggests that all heritage is intangible:
“… ‘heritage is not a ‘thing’, it is not a ‘site’, building or other material object. While these things are often important, they are not in themselves heritage. Rather, heritage is what goes on at these sites… the physical place or ‘site’ is not the full story of what heritage may be… Heritage, I want to suggest, is a cultural process that engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present and the sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for, this process.”24
In opposition to an authorised heritage discourse, Smith defines the act of
engagement as heritage itself. Heritage is the experiences that certified sites can create in the present, or the way in which the viewer is affected. Unlike authorised heritage discourse, derived from an educated western elite which illustrates a break between heritage or history and the present day, Smith’s ideas work to position heritage practice in the contemporary: a cultural artefact in constant negotiation. Heritage is in flux — subject to many and varied interpretations that may occur around the site or object. Heritage as an act offers a chance to renegotiate the
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004, p. 58-59.
23
Smith 2006, p. 44.
meaning of the past, and position it with respect to the present. Smith’s practice, I feel, tears down the opposition between the historical and the contemporary, and administers a new importance to heritage. Heritage, in Smith’s terms, is practiced in the present.
Smith does not explicitly tackle the idea that UNESCO heritage criteria has been flawed in the past, but it is implied. Through a detailed critique of the authorised heritage discourse, Uses of Heritage problematises the way in which heritage status is awarded, practiced and remains prescient in sites, even after a re-working of approaches has been undertaken. The inevitable management of a heritage place determines the presence of authorised heritage discourses, even if this has been consciously negotiated or disregarded, an underlying link pertains. In this sense, the status of current monuments and sites should themselves be questioned, and I propose that the authorised heritage discourse can be contested through practices outside of heritage itself. Heritage experiences and the act of heritage can perhaps be understood and challenged through a formal heritage interaction in a non-designated site. Can contemporary art provide heritage experiences that critique the authorised heritage discourse? Or indeed, can contemporary art itself be heritage?
Collective remembering and the agency of heritage
If the notion of heritage has traditionally been understood as “an irreplaceable and finite resource”, the position of heritage production is intrinsically in the past. 25
However, if we interpret Smith’s approach of viewing heritage as an act, response or practice in the present, heritage becomes a cultural resource that is constantly being worked and reworked. In this context, and in parallel to the highlighted problems of authorised heritage discourse, perhaps other forms of cultural production can themselves produce heritage acts. As has been discussed, a visit to Stonehenge provides an engagement with a learning experience which dually reinforces the expert/visitor dichotomy and promotes an authorised heritage discourse. For the viewer of the ancient site, the visit is not about the Stones and their presence in the
http://globalheritagefund.org/images/uploads/docs/
25
contemporary world, but rather a furthering of “the ideological and political underpinnings of the discourse.” 26
The viewer of Jeremy Deller’s Sacrilege, instead is presented with a physical, participatory experience, which simultaneously raises questions of the construction of national identity, the fixity of heritage, and the way in which the public is permitted to interact with history. Instead of performing an authorised heritage ritual around a specified site, the participant enters into an open dialogue with a representation of history. Sacrilege does not enforce a rhetoric in an attempt to imitate an historical way of looking, it does not function within an authorised discourse. Instead, Deller states, “I’m not a trained historian. I improvise.” Deller refutes any associations to 27
an authorised heritage discourse, and undermines any association of the artist as continuing a connection to the institution. Sacrilege is a distinct departure from the academic fields of history and heritage, and refuses to provide an instructive historical or educational experience — an interpretation which is further underlined by the lack of textual documentation available at the artwork. No specific dialogue is presented. Deller’s presentation of a non-authentic heritage object, a reproduction, encourages an engagement outside of an expert/non-expert dichotomy. The
installation of a replica in a public space simultaneously deconstructs the sacredness of the original site, and the expert/non-expert dichotomy. It promotes an equal social interaction for all ages in a public place. Sacrilege performs the monumentality of Stonehenge, but interaction is not directed, or hierarchical.
In this sense, Sacrilege could embody anthropologist Alfred Gell’s
(1945-1997) theory of art as agency, which was then further elaborated by others as a living presence response. In this theory, Gell discusses how art objects can be 28
understood as an agent — “one who has the capacity to initiate causal effects within a vicinity.” Art, in Gell’s terms, is an active agent, in an exchange which renders the 29
viewer as a recipient. Sacrilege is indeed active in terms of its own performance of Stonehenge, and further, it creates a causal effect, through encouragement of viewers to behave in a certain way in and around the appropriated monument.
Smith 2006, p. 299.
26
Ibidem, p. 299; de Groot 2012, p. 1.
27
See van Eck 2015.
28
Gell 1998, p. 19.
Through bouncing, the viewers are both performing and participating in the artwork, and I claim, engaging in the act of heritage. In Gell’s theory, however, the human agency of the viewer is overlooked, and it is in this sense that its relationship to Deller’s artwork is problematic. Deller’s artworks (and indeed Smith’s intangible acts of heritage) are contingent on the agency and participation of the viewer in dialogue with the artwork, negating the notion of the artwork as a sole actor. Reducing the active agency of the art object only to itself fails to take into account how questions and interpretations are formed around the artwork or site, and fails to describe the artwork in a network of actors, in this instance, which negotiate the meanings of history, heritage, the past and its transposition in the contemporary world. The performative participation of the audience and the artwork in exchange is part of a cultural process that can allow viewers to reconsider history and heritage. Critical, participatory acts of remembering and reconsidering the monument of Stonehenge as a British cultural icon are encouraged — renegotiating the transposition of the past through changing presents. The act of engagement that occurs is manifold — the monument, the participant, and the artist with the original and reproduced time and place.
In many of his works, Deller uses shared cultural and historical moments as a starting point, appropriating the collective recognition of historical images and
events, reworking or re-presenting them. In academia, a division between memory and history has long been discussed, and these two fields are generally understood to be contrary. History, as discussed by memory studies academic James V. 30
Wertsch, is “‘objective’, distanced from any particular perspective, reflects no
particular social framework, critical, reflective stance, recognises ambiguity, focuses on historicity, differentiates the past from the present…” If history is represented 31
through an authorised heritage discourse, Wertsch’s definition is in opposition to the work of Smith, Holtorf and Nora, whose work I will soon discuss in detail. The
objectivity of history is highly problematic in the sense that history, like archaeology and heritage, is a construction of modernity. History is a field of study created in order to structure the past, and is responsible to various procedures and tenets, reflecting a social framework and a singular voice. Or, as Nora writes, “History… is
See Nora (1989), Wertsch (2009).
30
Wertsch 2009, p. 127.
the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer.” This 32
statement both refutes the objectivity of the field of history, and underlines the differentiation of the past and the present in historical narratives. Instead of promoting one particular, hegemonic historical narrative, Sacrilege encourages a collective activity in relation to history, or ‘collective remembering’.
In his analysis of collective memory, Wertsch discusses the collective action which is undertaken in order to remember. He focusses on remembering as an action, and proposes a redefinition of terms, using instead the active ‘collective remembering’. Collective memory, in its linguistic use of ‘memory’ as a noun, indeed implies a group in collective possession of an artefact or object. Wertsch however, details a group who share the “same narrative resources” being put into action, defining an active engagement with a stimulus, which evokes a collective idea. 33
Wertsch's focus on the act of remembering collectively, mirrors Smith’s focus on the act of heritage — collective remembering then is the working and reworking of
meanings related to a shared narrative resource. In his appropriation of Stonehenge, Deller provides a historical stimulus with which a group of people are encouraged to participate, and a collective action is undertaken. Within this action, ideas of the national community are evoked, in a way which forms new memories, instead of attempting to reenact or engage with a re-presentation of the old. Instead of
performing history, the participants at Sacrilege perform heritage and remembering.
‘Between Memory and History’ - an opposition?
In his seminal essay ‘Between Memory and History’ (1989), French historian Pierre Nora outlines the oppositional nature of the two concepts. Due to a “rapid slippage of time”, or the effects of modernity, Nora laments the loss of all spontaneous,
involuntary or natural memory. Whereas ‘true’ memory was embodied “in gestures 34
and habits, skills passed down through unspoken traditions, in the body’s inherent self-knowledge, in unstudied reflexes and ingrained memories”, modernity’s desire for progress has annihilated the environments in which this form of memory was
Nora 1989, p. 8. 32 Wertsch 2009, p. 120. 33 Nora 1989, p. 7. 34
located. Environments, or milieux de mémoire, have been replaced by sites, or 35 lieux de mémoire — places that have been deliberately constructed or preserved in
the modern organisation of memory. As Nora writes, “[i]f we were able to live within memory, we would not have needed to consecrate lieux de mémoire in its name… With the appearance of the trace, of mediation, of distance, we are not in the realm of true memory but of history.” History, in Nora’s terms is the deliberate 36
“reconstruction of what is no longer”, and in this sense, it can never be ‘real’ — it is only representational. Memory has therefore become historicised. Lieux de 37 mémoire are constructs, created by a play of memory and history, whose
fundamental purpose is “to stop time, to block the work of forgetting…” They are 38
safe-houses of memory within a rapidly changing landscape, or specific sites in which memory can be appreciated and interacted with. Instead of being a part of life — lived and active, exalted lieux de mémoire, originate from “the sense that there is no spontaneous memory, that we must deliberately create archives, maintain
Nora 1989, p. 13. 35 Ibidem, p. 8. 36 Ibidem, p. 8. 37 Ibidem, p. 19. 38
anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies, and notarize bills because such activities no longer occur naturally.” Fundamentally, Nora relegates the living 39
traces of memory to the past. In making memory historical, and maintaining an impenetrable distinction between history and the everyday, Nora renders memory outside designated sites inaccessible.
In his definitions of memory, Nora emphasises a collectivity. Inherently,
milieux, or environments, connote a communal context. His focus on ingrained
gestures and inherited skills plays further into this reading. Nora’s study of memory also implies a slippage from the collective or communal into a singular or individual, an idea furthered by the examples he uses to define lieux de mémoire. Nora uses examples such as the French Revolutionary Calendar, and in doing so, appropriates the ‘country’ as the communal, and patriotic associations are underlined by nostalgia. Nora’s lamentation of the loss of tradition, learned skill and inherited habits is
reaction to modernity, and a requiem for a mythologised, sanitised, national past. Nora takes into account a desire for progress, but it is expressed in fundamental negativity. The violent colonial endeavours of the French Republic are conveniently forgotten in lieux de mémoire. Memory instead is “affective and magical… it
nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic…” Memory, in Nora’s terms, is idealised and unobtainable, 40
selective and distanced from the present, removed from realms of living and monumentalised in the public sphere.
We’re Here Because We’re Here as a monument and a lieux de mémoire
Lieux de mémoire are sites, embedded with memory, that the public can visit in order
to access the past. They may be museums, texts or visual media, which work to further the presence of exalted tradition in contemporary society. Monuments, specifically erected structures which physically pay tribute to past people or events, are public lieux de mémoire. Despite being written over a hundred years ago, art historian Alois Riegl's (1858-1905) definition of a monument remains pertinent. The
Nora, p. 12. It is worth noting here that ‘notarizing bills’ etc. never ‘occurred naturally’. Nora uses
39
examples which connote state-like or hierarchical ceremonies, occasions constructed by modernity — it is therefore modernity that brought about the demise of naturally occurring memory. Why then are Nora’s examples of collectivity the nation-state, the concept itself a paradigm of the modern era?
Ibidem, p. 8.
language of public commemoration has not changed since Riegl’s definition. He wrote, that the purpose of making a site “of deliberate commemorative value is to keep a moment from becoming history, to keep it perpetually alive and present in the consciousness of future generations.” Emerging contemporaneously with nation-41
state ideals, Riegl’s definition is bound to the nationalising rhetorics of the nineteenth century. Moreover, Riegl’s definition is perpetuated in Nora’s writing. For both Riegl and Nora, monuments are related to the creation and maintenance of the nation-state. The examples Nora uses to define his lieux de mémoire are bound in French national patriotism, and Riegl’s definition refers to national narratives that demand to be remembered. Jeremy Deller, in his work We’re Here… (fig. 4), created a
temporary lieu de mémoire, an ephemeral, non-patriotic monument which seems to defy both Riegl’s and Nora’s explanation of terms, whilst memorialising the history of the nation. Riegl’s definition of monument requires a site to be imbued with a sense of the past that infinitely traverses time and space. Instead of a permanent structure, imbued with meaning to commemorate the dead, We’re Here is immediate and alive, as I will explore in a moment. Nora underlines his writing with nostalgic references to the nation-state, yet Deller’s work refuses to commemorate dead soldiers in the same terms as state rituals. How then, can his work be described as both a monument and a lieu de mémoire?
On 1 July 2016, Deller, in collaboration with the National Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Theatre and 26 local organisations, staged a UK-wide human memorial to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. The artwork, which included some 1400 volunteers, began in busy train stations and dispersed around the country, reaching hundreds of locations in a single day. The volunteers were dressed in accurate World War I uniforms, complete with mess tins of sandwiches, rolled cigarettes, and glass flasks of water. The men were an active, living memorial to the war dead, and each carried cards which detailed the dates of birth and death of local soldiers that had died on the first day of the Somme. These living tableaux did not speak, handing out the cards when engaged by a member of the public. The active scenes held a sense of expectancy, of something unfinished, and an ominousness. At specific times of the day the men roused into song, a repetitive relic from the trenches which went — “We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here
Riegl 1982, p. 77. Original 1903.
because we’re here”, also giving the piece its title. The song mimics the tune of Auld Lang Syne, a traditional British folk song. The interrupted cadence of the melody and the repetitive, disparaging voices in unison created dissonance — a further feeling of something unresolved, suspended. Deller discovered the song in oral history
interviews with World War I soldiers conducted in the 1970s, and describes it as “defeatist, resigned, cynical, sarcastic: the men don’t know why they’re there but they are.” The inclusion of the song echoes the impetus for the project, which again 42
emerged from non-authorised oral histories, as Deller describes:
“When I was researching the project I read about phenomena in Britain during the war of women mainly, seeing their dead loved ones in the street, just catching a glimpse of
someone on a bus or through a shop window, and thinking its their husband or their brother or their son. It became quite a big thing all these sightings, all these apparitions of the dead. So it was as if the project had already happened during the war, people had already seen the dead in the streets.”43
We’re Here attempted to re-stage these visions, creating an unnerving and
inescapable memorial, embedded temporarily in everyday life. The kinetic nature of the piece mimicked the fleeting glimpses of husbands, brothers and sons. The ghostly presence of the men was not of a character, but rather, a representation of a feeling. Their presence inspired a re-take, a double-take — a kind of visual
disturbance in the contemporary urban landscape. The soldiers appeared in
unexpected places, shopping centres, Burger Kings, on the tube — creating visually jarring situations. Their spontaneous appearances forced the public to interact with the artwork, and gave a normally static act of commemoration undertaken in
specifically designated locations, an immediacy.
Dispersal and Reversal
Prior to 1st July, the participants in the project worked in strict secrecy, as the impact of surprise was integral to the success of the piece. As Deller explains, “…because if you come across something and you’re not prepared for it, then it might be more of a
Deller 2016, 22”40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnr3w74TJs (25.9.2017)
42
Ibidem, 3”40.
shock… the effect would be much more profound.” Throughout the day, the project 44
was documented by private social media accounts of viewers. In this way, Deller made the public active participants, taking ownership through documentation and dispersal of the work. The same night, a documentary was broadcast on BBC 1, and made available on youtube directly afterwards. Viewer experiences that were
translated through personal Instagram and Twitter accounts forced comment and commemoration. Instant responses to the work were published from onlookers and passers-by such as; @LeneAuested “Incredibly moving scenes at Waterloo station,” and @kirarocksu: “[he] reached into his pocket and gave me a card stating who he was and when he died, and I almost burst into tears in front of him…” The 45
devastating and emotional moment in British history was made present, and more similarly emotional responses to We’re Here can be found on social media. Deller created a moment in which the emotional experience of war was felt and interacted with in public, and echoed throughout the transmission and dispersal of information on the internet.
We’re Here questions the ritual and routine surrounding commemoration of
the dead. State commemorations are usually structured around a symbolic monument, punctuated by a solo brass instrument playing a sober melody. Centralised monuments in towns and cities attract members of the public to pay respects, and engage with a constructed remembrance practice, or an authorised remembrance discourse. Bound in conceptions of national identity and patriotism, these occasions echo the type of monument that Riegl defines. In refusing to repeat this format, Deller questions if these received rituals in fact work to actively
remember the event, or the people affected. In questioning the abstract nature of commemorative ceremonies, We’re Here makes the loss of human life tangible through the use of real bodies, and separate from the abstract nationalising rhetorics of the war memorial. We’re Here challenges a sense of patriotism that war evokes, and forces viewers to reassess their relationship to past conflicts and received
historical rhetorics. Where, in the contemporary world, can a patriotism for thousands of unnecessarily dead men comfortably sit? Presenting the work at inescapably public locations, Deller removes the choice of engagement with brutal facts of the
Deller 2016, 5”10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnr3w74TJs (25.9.2017)
44
These examples are two of many detailed in Sinclair, 2016.
nation’s history, forcibly opening the eyes of many to an institutionally enforced, patriotic blindness.
We’re Here is a necessary reassessment of the Battle of the Somme from a
contemporary perspective. It is staged after postcolonialism, after Iraq, when contemporary perceptions and understandings of war and nationalism have
changed. In 2003, the biggest anti-war demonstration recorded was held globally, in response to the US and UK invasions of Iraq. Since 2011, brutal images of the Syrian civil war have been published daily in the global media. Education and
information has led to a greater understanding of the realities of war, and while Deller engages with a historical conflict, his focus on the loss of life is a contemporary reflection. The temporary lieu de mémoire, therefore, is not a physical site but an emotional reaction in which viewers can engage with a complex feeling of ghostly presences and absences of historical people and events. In this sense, We’re Here 46
both complies with and refutes the notion of lieux de mémoire — creating a space for accessing memory which is staunchly non-patriotic. As attitudes to the nation-state and histories of imperial world powers are changing, Deller proposes a lieu de
mémoire which questions past patriotisms and works across temporal fixations of a
divided past and present.
Conclusion
Deller’s practice both activates and blurs history and memory and creates temporal spaces to access the past and its representations in the contemporary world. In opposition to Nora’s historicisation of memory, or his definition of unifying moments in national ideologies, Deller appeals to emotion: to the joy of bouncing on an
enormous bouncy castle, or the confrontation of a young, dead life, re-staged in real time. Deller questions the formal, authorised, institutionalised representations of history and heritage, through his contemporary understanding of how history and memory could be accessed. We’re Here accounts for contemporary ways in which conversation happens — an internet multilogue disseminates the work, transposed through personal, individual reactions. The form of national war memorial as a lieu
This notion is punctuated by Derridean thought. Derrida’s notion of presence/absence, in which the
46
absent body leaves traces in the present can also be discussed in reference to ‘Specters of Marx’ — an essay which considers the presence of the past in the everyday world. Two enormous and interlinking subjects are unfortunately beyond the scope of this thesis. See Derrida 1994, p. xvi-17.
de mémoire is questioned, as are authorised heritage discourses of Stonehenge.
Deller’s artworks remove the authorised heritage discourse, allowing the audience to think about and engage with the history in the present, in an act of heritage.
Heritage, in Smith’s terms, is an engagement with the past constantly being produced at sites and in response to objects and events. In this sense, Deller’s artworks provide space for heritage to happen. Yet, in which heritage does Deller engage? The multicultural historical and contemporary culture of Great Britain is not represented in either work discussed. Instead, in questioning the grand narratives, Deller also underlines them — in their selectivity, in their ‘whiteness’.
Chapter Two
To what extent can historic subaltern art practices be heritage?
Introduction
In the previous chapter, I looked closely at two artefacts of British cultural heritage, whose meanings have been challenged in contemporary art. Deller’s reworked ‘national’ monuments inspire engagements with heritage, outside an authorised heritage discourse. I presented Deller’s work as an example of how heritage can be part of the present, in relation to or with the past, in terms of Smith’s concept of the ‘act’ of heritage. Smith defines heritage as continually produced, through an
engagement with physical and intangible artefacts. Deller’s work focusses on British history and heritage, and the two works discussed are centred on grand narratives: historical narratives which do not question the omission of non-dominant stories within history itself. But to what extent do historical narratives and contemporary heritage experiences take into account the diversity of modernity? Or, as Stuart Hall has asked, exactly whose heritage is being represented? Hall, a founding member of the field of cultural studies asks, “Who is the Heritage for? In the British case the answer is clear. It is intended for those who ‘belong’ — a society which is imagined as, in broad terms, culturally homogenous and unified.” Implying a deliberate 47
ignorance, Hall points out that institutionalised cultural heritage in Britain is centred around the white community. Some museums try to represent colonial histories, yet the histories of non-white British citizens remain largely untold. Black History Month 48
is an exemplary attempt at recognition, which looks to include black histories in the national story. Unfortunately, as an elective on schools’ curricula, it remains
overlooked, and unintegrated. 49
As I demonstrated in Chapter One, the events of history that heritage describes can be made more tangible through contemporary art practices. In this chapter, I propose an artistic practice as heritage itself, in the work of Black Audio
Hall 1999, p. 6. Emphases in original.
47
For example at the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, and permanent exhibitions in Museum
48
of London.
Black History Month was introduced in the U.K. in 1986 in order to redress the imbalance of white
49
history being taught in schools. It has come under criticism for maintaining a separation between white and black histories, and within that dichotomy, all other histories are forgotten.
Film Collective (1982-1998), and specifically its film Handsworth Songs (1986) (see fig. 5). Made in reaction to riots that took place in Birmingham in 1985, Handsworth
Songs documents and contextualises one of many instances of civil disorder in
1980s Britain. This work explores untold stories of the riot, giving a voice to the local people who were involved. Through a detailed exploration of the film itself, I ask: can subaltern artistic discourses effectively present institutionally forgotten moments of national history? To fully understand the complexity of the work, it is necessary to sketch the historical context of Britain at the time. Contextual information will help to understand the agency of the work at its moment of conception, and also the chapter of modern history that the works aims to represent.
I will discuss the visual rhetoric of the film in relation to the postcolonial theory of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the theories of cultural studies and literary scholar Paul Gilroy, in order to dissect nuances of meaning within the film. My discussion is structured around the formal elements of the film: the use of the narrator’s voice, montage and archival footage. Looking at the work from a contemporary perspective, I explore to what extent politically and socially engaged art practice can help
contemporary culture to understand the past. In discussing the work as heritage, I hope to open up or dematerialise the paradigm of heritage, and work towards an understanding of heritage that breaks out of nineteenth-century ideals, and into a twenty-first century understanding of non-linear temporalities and a continued
progression towards equal representation. In order to do so, I frame my argument in discussion with the heritage definitions of academic Rodney Harrison. Harrison’s materialistic approach to heritage is in contrast to Smith’s ideas. Within Harrison’s framework, I address the question: how does the recognition of subaltern art practice as heritage complicate the notion of heritage itself?
Heritage Protection and Material Approaches
In response to the inordinate material losses of World War II, UNESCO was formed to establish a protective regulatory system for cultural artefacts. Continuing
preservation and conservation ideas of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention was established in 1972. Since then, the convention has been worked and re-worked many times. UNESCO defines world heritage somewhat broadly as, “our legacy from the past, what we live with today,
and what we pass on to future generations.” Established by emerging world powers 50
of the mid-twentieth century, the UNESCO World Heritage list still reflects a western approach to conservation and preservation, with an imbalance for heritage sites located in the contemporary west. Objects and practices of ‘universal’ value are 51
protected, but an imagined universality often reinforces western-centric ideas of artistic value and beauty. As discussed in Chapter One, UNESCO is continually 52
developing legislation in order to protect and preserve more diverse examples of heritage, especially since the emergence of alternative heritage views, such as that of Smith.
Despite amendments, a canonical perception of heritage persists. The opening-up of heritage ideas that Smith theorises can be seen as an attempt to recognise the diverse spectrum of makers, craftspeople and practitioners. Smith’s ideas of the act of heritage in the present works to disrupt a hierarchical structure of heritage, and loosens ties to western experts as authorised heritage practitioners. This is fundamentally based on the intangible act of heritage being undertaken by diverse individuals in the present. Smith, despite recognising material as a part of heritage, claims that “sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for, this process.” In contrast, heritage academic and 53
archaeologist Rodney Harrison’s book Heritage: Critical Approaches (2014) deals with heritage as material. Harrison focusses on the material traces left in the world, and problematises the abundance of material that has been, and continues to be produced. Harrison takes on Smith’s underlying principle of heritage as a process, “the creation of a past in the present.” However, he claims “to speak of intangible 54
heritage as somehow separate from the ‘material’ world is inaccurate.” Further, 55
Harrison discusses the widening of accepted heritage practices as “a series of crises” that have emerged to complicate heritage definitions and add to the
http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/ (31.10.2017)
50
See Steiner and Frey 2011.
51
See Smith 2006, Clifford 1988.
52
Smith 2006, p. 44.
53
Harrison 2014, p. 37. Emphasis in original.
54
Ibidem, p.14.
abundance of non-functional material in the world. In later work, as part of the 56
‘Heritage Futures’ project, Harrison moves to compare heritage and waste (sic): the museum and the rubbish tip are comparable sites in which redundant material is stockpiled. Generally, Harrison problematises the developments in heritage — the 57
broadening definition of heritage has, in his opinion, created more superfluous
objects, “no longer useful for the purposes for which they were originally produced.” 58
Harrison does not refute the importance of heritage in the contemporary world, and instead proposes tools with which to understand and critique contemporary heritage practices.
Harrison defines heritage in two categories: ‘official’ heritage, which is backed by legislation, and ‘unofficial’ heritage which refers to practices, sites or objects, understood in a contextual sense, by local people as heritage, but which has not been recognised by an authorised heritage organisation. The heritage of minorities, 59
working classes and other, unrecognised sections of society falls into the latter category. Furthermore, Harrison outlines an idea of heritage as assemblages, or part of assembled social practice. Borrowing concepts from anthropological and
sociological theorists, including Bruno Latour, Harrison uses actor network theory to describe contemporary relationships to heritage material. Actor network theory 60
(ANT), in this context, refers to heritage as an arrangement of materials to which connections are formed, and which are connected to other materials. The idea of interconnectivity shifts meaning from symbolic to active, and heritage can be understood to have a connective agency between objects and people. ANT allows connections to be made between the implied ancientness of official heritage and potential action in the present, replacing a linear construction of time with a multi-perspectival network of possible actions and interpretations. Harrison uses ANT to describe specific material arrangements, such as “the ‘historic’ fabric of heritage site
Harrison 2014, p. 13.
56
Harrison 2017, 35”00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvKMmRs_VO4
57
More on ‘Heritage Futures’ can be found at https://heritage-futures.org/ (31.10.2017) Ibidem, 35”42.
58
Harrison 2014, p. 14.
59
For an in-depth account of actor network theory (ANT), see Latour 1990. Latour uses ANT,
60
strikingly, to connect the global and the local as well as materials and people, something that Harrison struggles to fully co-opt for heritage.
itself, along with the assortment of artefacts and ‘scars’ which represent its patina of age, [and] also the various technologies of tourism and display by which it is
exhibited and made visitable”. Harrison’s consideration is technical and 61
pragmatic. The notion of networks, in which objects, ideas and people have 62
agency, works to flatten a hierarchical structure of objects valued for their
ancientness or material worth. Then, if all social objects and beings have agency and function in relation to one another in a non-hierarchical structure, Harrison’s
classification of ‘official’ and ‘non-official’ heritage is made complex. His conception of the ‘crisis’ of broadening heritages, complicates and to an extent negates the idea of a network of actors. Harrison’s problem with the expanding notion of heritage as a justification for which more material can be legitimately stockpiled, affords an existing heritage a greater power within the network. Yet, existing heritage, as Hall has
pointed out, refers to a ‘white’ community. I therefore find Harrison’s ‘crisis’ in heritage problematic, as it reasserts the notion of hierarchical, authorised heritage discourses within a western constructed field.
I propose that in order to address the imbalance of representation, the field of heritage needs to be opened up to outside the ‘official’. This opening up Harrison would protest, in fear of creating a further surplus of heritage that the broad definitions already incur. Harrison recognises, “that it is the very way in which
modernity contrasts itself in relation to its past that makes heritage such an important factor in determining how modern societies conceptualise themselves.” Harrison 63
protests a linear concept of time, and recognises the importance of the past in the formation of the modern world. However, contemporary societies, as Hall has
already pointed out, are much more varied than formal heritage allows. If the field of heritage rests within the relationship of modernity to its past, then the singular experience of a homogenised community continues to be inferred. Modernity, as modern society or industrialised civilisation, embodies within it a history of
colonialism, domination, exploitation and repression. As though aware of this
criticism, Harrison further claims that “universality [has] allowed the possibility for the
Harrison 2014, p. 35.
61
In my opinion, Harrison’s application of ANT fails to reflect the complexity of the theory.
62
Harrison 2014, p. 25.
Indigenous, minority, postcolonial and non-Western critique.” Is non-western 64
critique enough to transform heritage into an inclusive field? In this chapter, I aim to demonstrate how opening up the field of heritage to include works of art can
challenge this complex argument. Can a specific suppressed, subaltern history of a minority community help to redress the ‘white’, western emphasis of heritage? If heritage is indeed “the material embodiment of the spirit of the nation,” as Hall states, then rewriting heritage to include non-dominant histories is a way of recognising diversity in both the past and the present. In order to understand the challenges that Black Audio’s social, political, and now historical, artistic engagement can pose to heritage, I first concentrate on some contextual information.
The Social and Political Context of Post-War Britain
Britain in the 1980s became a hotbed of political and artistic action, within which Black Audio Film Collective took shape. Lived realities of migration resonates in their work, addressing an historical experience in Britain that remains underreported. After World War II, Britain invited former colonial subjects to help rebuild the economy and damaged infrastructure. Migrants, mainly from colonies in the West-Indies and South Asia began to arrive in 1948, with the HMS Windrush carrying the first 492 ready and able workers from the Caribbean. As former police inspector James Whitfield 65
describes, people travelling from former colonies “arrived with a positive perception of the ‘mother’ country, and were ill-prepared to deal with resentment from the host community.” Police were not trained to work in a multicultural society, and migrants 66
of colour soon came to feel unrepresented and unwelcome. However, the non-67
white British community was expanding, and had grown to 1.4 million by 1970. 68
Racial and civil tensions were exacerbated with the election of Margaret Thatcher, in power from 1979-1990.
Harrison 2014, p. 116.
64
Migrants who arrived in the post-war period were thereafter referred to as the ‘windrush generation’.
65 Whitfield 2006, p. 1. 66 See Whitfield 2006. 67 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/short_history_of_immigration.stm 68 (31.10.2017)
Thatcher’s eleven years as Prime Minister was one of the most controversial periods of modern British history, continuously polarised in literature, academic study and within her own political party. Thatcher’s government cut public spending and community services, seeking “to turn welfare systems into markets wherever
possible”. In her first term (1979-1983) unemployment rose from 1.3 million to over 69
3 million. Political theorist Andrew Gamble summarises “the twofold need for a free 70
economy and a strong state, plus a rejection of collectivism and social democracy sums up Thatcherism.” The government closed coal mines, steel works and ship 71
yards, forcing hundreds of low-paid skilled and unskilled workers into unemployment. However, the banking industry boomed and after an initial recession, individual wealth grew. Within this political landscape, class divisions widened, and riots occurred up and down the country. Thatcher’s Britain is characterised by civil
unrests: there were labour protests in Yorkshire and London which turned into violent clashes with police. Peace camps at Greenham Common and Falsane, Scotland protested U.K. foreign and nuclear policies. Protests, which became riots, against new taxation laws occurred up and down the country. And in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol, in 1981 and 1985, police relations with migrant communities were tested and ‘race’ riots broke out.
The black art movement, of which Black Audio were a part, was a
“convergence of artistic and political allegiances that paved the way for a generation of ‘raised in Britain’ practitioners and analysts to meet”. Black Audio was made up 72
of first and second generation migrants from the former British Empire, raised for most or all of their lives in Britain. As cultural studies academic Rumy Hasan has written about their generation, “unlike many of their parents, they were no longer prepared to tolerate quietly systematic discrimination and poor socio-economic conditions… all buttressed by endemic racism.” Instead, Black Audio and other 73
artists of colour engaged with the systematically racist structures as a point of departure for their practices. Handsworth Songs records the story of a riot in
O’Brien Castro 2014, p. 610.
69
Jackson and Saunders 2012, p. 5-6
70
Gamble, cited in O’Brien Castro 2014, p. 610.
71
Bailey et al 2005, p. xiii.
72
Hasan 2000, p.173.
