AMSTERDAM. Fino al 1° giugno il Foam ospiterà “The Enclave” di Richard Mosse una grande installazione multimediale che ha rappresentato l’Irlanda alla 55° Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte alla Biennale di Venezia.
The Enclave appartiene al filone della fotografia di guerra e Mosse ha realizzato un filmato con una pellicola militare scaduta che registra lo spettro di luce infrarossa invisibile agli occhi umani, virata dai cambiamenti chimici del materiale ormai obsoleto. Ne risultan un’istallazione composta da sei grandi schermi, in cui sono proiettate immagini dai colori psichedelici. Oltre all’installazione in mostra anche opere fotografiche.
Il lavoro è frutto di un viaggi di Richard Mosse e dei suoi collaboratori (Trevor Tweeten e Ben Frost) nell’est della Repubblica Democratica del Congo, che hanno filmato i gruppi ribelli armati in una zona di guerra. The Enclave, per Mosse, è stato il modo migliore per rappresentare una tragedia africana tralasciata dai media in cui, però, dal 1998 avrebbero perso la vita almeno 5,4 milioni di persone per cause connesse alla guerra.
English version. Foam presents The Enclave by Richard Mosse, a major multi-media installation which represented Ireland at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The installation, consisting of six large screens, represents the conflict situation in Congo and was shot with infrared film that was designed for camouflage detection resulting in vibrant, psychedelic magenta coloured sites of the jungle war zone. Besides the film installation, related photo works are shown.
Throughout 2012, Richard Mosse and his collaborators Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost travelled in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, infiltrating armed rebel groups in a war zone plagued by frequent ambushes, massacres and systematic sexual violence. The resulting installation, The Enclave, is the culmination of Mosse’s attempt to rethink war photography. It is a search for more adequate strategies to represent a forgotten African tragedy in which, according to the International Rescue Committee, at least 5.4 million people have died of war-related causes in eastern Congo since 1998.
A long-standing power vacuum in eastern Congo has resulted in a horrifying cycle of violence, a Hobbesian ‘state of war’, so brutal and complex that it resists communication, and goes unseen in the global consciousness. Mosse brings a discontinued military surveillance film to this situation, representing an intangible conflict with a medium that registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, and was originally designed for camouflage detection. The resulting imagery, shot on 16mm infrared film by cinematographer Trevor Tweeten, renders the jungle war zone in a disorienting psychedelic palette. Ben Frost’s ambient audio composition, comprised entirely of recordings gathered in the field in eastern DRC, hovers bleakly over the unfolding tragedy.
The Enclave immerses the viewer in a challenging and sinister world, exploring aesthetics in a situation of profound human suffering. At the heart of the project, as Mosse states, is an attempt to bring “two counter-worlds into collision: art’s potential to represent narratives so painful that they exist beyond language, and photography’s capacity to document specific tragedies and communicate them to the world.” The Enclave is made possible by the (financial) support of SNS REAAL Fonds, EIDOTECH and Stichting Democratie & Media.
