After reflecting on my public talk about Unfrastructure at the Media Centre last Tuesday, I have concluded a few note worthy points.By asking questions to the audience such as which images stood out or if any of the images convey a certain feel or meaning we came back to the t-shaped disability ramp on Hove seafront and the "brick".
The disability ramp sparked debate about the suitability for users as well as the consultation process with users. I had shown the pro and con arguments as discussed by users on the "getinvolvedinthecity" website. That is the reason why the image appears twice: once in colour and once in b/w.
Photography © Julia Horbaschk
The "brick" was discussed in terms of the many bodge jobs around the city and the viability of time, replacing just one brick. There seems to be a lack of looking at infrastructural planning from a wider perspective. The constant need to patch up affected surfaces results in inconsistencies visible on the streets. This seemed to shift peoples thoughts onto the negative impact caused by outsourcing public building works to a spread of private companies.
We also discussed the title: Unfrastructure. This term is of course made up and I derived at it when playing with the word infrastructure for a while. "infra" comes from Latin and stands for "below" referring to what's underneath structures. I have also noticed that the word infrastructure is no longer purely confined to the built environment. When researching infrastructure you will come across "social infrastructure" or "information infrastructure". I have also observed a trend in the making of new terms i.e. in regards to nature and sustainability I came across "Infranature".
The support of "large infrastructure projects" seems to be one of the goals of the new UK government and I wonder of course where this will take us. A lot of what I have seen around me is neglected infrastructure and the remains of UN-done projects that once set out as Capital Projects e.g. schools and leisure redevelopments. Hence I have come up with the term UNfrastructure.
After my talk I felt reassured that it is not just me who feels strongly about the neglected infrastructure, and I have started to make contact with other artist who are commenting on similar issues. I have also instated a Flickr group and noticed that beyond the photographer's love to depict derelict sites the meaning of their images sometimes lies deeper then expected.
Danny Wilson once expressed this as ”Traversing the contemporary landscape searching for clues to inner states”. Danny also noted something else about his work that I relate to: “I have begun to be interested how human society co-exists with the natural world, how it asserts its own order onto the surrounding environment, and investigating how in some cases the natural world has become a constructed reality.“ This is visible in my images of tree stems.
The aesthetics of documentary photography in contemporary practice has become of interest to me in 2007 during my MA when I started writing about the overlap of photo journalism and contemporary photographic art.My own practice has recently changed with a higher emphasis on the conceptual approach. Yet I still feel that the work is deeply rooted in documentary practice as the images stem from observations and walks across the city.
However, many of the images have a deeper meaning to me then being purely observational.
All images in my Unfrastructure project are unaltered except for level adjustments and one image being changed into black and white.
All Photography © Julia Horbaschk
References:
www.re-title.com/artists/Danny-Wilson.asp
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue6/aestheticsofdocumentary.htm
http://www.bpb.org.uk/exhibitions/9148/bpb-curated-strange-familiar-three-views-of-brighton/
