Co-Commission:
The Enclave


Biographies


ECAS Co-Commission

»The Enclave«
by Richard Mosse & Ben Frost
multi-media installation

Winner of the 2012 ECAS call for entries. The sound element of this installation was co-commissioned by ECAS.

Throughout 2012, Richard Mosse and his collaborators Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost travelled in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, infiltrating armed rebel groups in a war zone. The resulting installation, »THE ENCLAVE«, is the culmination of Mosse’s attempt to radically rethink war photography, searching for more adequate strategies to represent a forgotten war in which 5.4 million people have died.

Mosse has used a discontinued military surveillance film to document, a medium that registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, originally designed for camouflage detection. The resulting imagery, shot by Tweeten, renders the jungle war zone in disorientating psychedelic hues. Frost’s audio composition, comprised of organic Congolese field recordings, hovers bleakly over the unfolding tragedy.

Neither scripted nor directed, Congolese rebels return the camera’s predatory gaze in a distinctly confrontational and accusatory manner. The lens seems to mesmerise and provoke those it encounters in »THE ENCLAVE«, including rebels fighting under the command of those sought for trial by the International Criminal Court. This precarious face-off reveals inherent ambiguities of masculinity, defiance, vulnerability, and indictment.

»THE ENCLAVE« immerses the viewer in a challenging and sinister world, posing aesthetic questions 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.”



Stages:
Venice Biennale '1301.06. - 24.11.2013
Date 01.06. - 24.11.2013
Action installation as part of the Irish Pavillion
Participants Richard Mosse & Ben Frost
Sponsoring Partners Tone / DISK / ORF / musikprotokoll / Skaņu mežs
Print
Online References http://www.ctm-festival.de/news/ecas-co-commission-the-enclave-opens-at-venice-biennale/
 
Unsound '13 - Interference13.10. - 20.10.2013
Date 13.10. - 20.10.2013
Action installation
Participants Richard Mosse & Ben Frost
Sponsoring Partners Tone / DISK / ORF / musikprotokoll / Skaņu mežs
Print
Online References http://www.unsound.pl/interference/installations
Press Coverage http://www.electronicbeats.net/live-report-unsound-festival-2013/
 
Skaņu Mežs '1331.10. - 03.11.2013
Musikprotokoll '14 27.09. - 12.10.2014
Date 27.09. - 12.10.2014
Action installation, discussion
Location Kunsthaus Graz - Space04
Participants direction and production: Richard Mosse / film editing: Trevor Tweeten / sound design: Ben Frost
Sponsoring Partners ORF / musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, Kunsthaus Graz, Tone / Unsound, DISK / CTM-Festival, Skaņu mežs
Print musikprotokoll magazine 2014
Audio Discussion - Audiofile (in German language)
Online References http://musikprotokoll.orf.at/de/ecas#
The Enclave (german)
Description musikprotokoll showed the big, 6-screen-version. On 9th of October a panel discussion about the casus belli and the traumatas of the war in Kongo took place, moderated by Katrin Bucher Trantow and Kamdem Mou Poh a Hom (Chiala Graz). The participants were Rene Botsili Bosilo, Esperance-Francois Bulayumi and Daniel Diakiese. After the panel discussion there was a concert by Pascal Papy Lopongo.
 


BIOGRAPHIES

About Richard Mosse

Richard Mosse’s (b. Kilkenny, Ireland, 1980) practice resides at the intersection between documentary photography and contemporary art. Drawing from the Romantics, Surrealism, psychedelia, punk, and modern military reconnaissance technologies, he seeks to challenge and transgress traditional conventions of war photography through unmitigated aesthetic strategies in situations of tragedy and conflict. His work has been exhibited at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Barbican Art Gallery, London; Bass Museum, Miami; Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Kunsthaus Munich; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Open Eye Liverpool; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Mosse has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing and Visual Arts, and a Visual Arts Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. Mosse holds an MFA in photography from Yale University and a postgraduate diploma in fine art from Goldsmiths College, London. He also holds a first-class BA in English literature from King’s College London and an MA in cultural studies from the London Consortium (ICA, AA, Tate, Birkbeck). Aperture Foundation and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting co-published his first monograph, Infra, in 2012. Mosse is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

About Anna O’Sullivan (Curator/Commissioner of the Pavilion of Ireland)

Anna O’Sullivan (b. Dublin, Ireland, 1958) is the Director and Chief Curator of the Butler Gallery, in Kilkenny, Ireland where she also manages the Butler Gallery Permanent Collection. Prior to joining the Butler Gallery in 2005, O’Sullivan spent over twenty years in New York, first as Performance Curator at the avant-garde arts venue Franklin Furnace and then as Director of the Robert Miller Gallery and Danese Gallery. O’Sullivan has worked with many internationally-renowned artists and artists’ estates to realize projects and exhibitions including Alice Neel, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner and Patti Smith at the Robert Miller Gallery, and Hans Op de Beeck, Ian Burns, Louise Bourgeois, Werner Herzog, Tony O’Malley, Barry McGee, Jeanne Silverthorne and Eve Sussman at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. O’Sullivan has published several catalogues on Irish artists including Tony O’Malley, Barrie Cooke, Michael Beirne and Gypsy Ray. O’Sullivan graduated from the National College of Art & Design Dublin and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York.

About Ben Frost (Composer)

Ben Frost (b. Melbourne, Australia, 1980) lives in Reykjavik, Iceland. The music of Ben Frost is about contrast; influenced as much by Classical Minimalism as by Punk Rock and Metal, Frost's throbbing guitar-based textures emerge from nothing and slowly coalesce into huge, forbidding forms that often eschew conventional structures in favor of the inevitable unfoldings of vast mechanical systems.

“…The emotional power of Frost's music comes precisely from the stark contrast between extremely basic musical material and the deadly virtual instruments he invents to perform it… This is Arvo Pärt as arranged by Trent Reznor” – Wire Magazine, 2007 On albums like Steel Wound, released on the Room40 label in 2003 (Pitchfork: “An exemplary ambient experience”), Theory of Machines on Bedroom Community in 2007 (Boomkat: “The Future of electronic music…”) and 2009's BY THE THROAT (NME: “a hollow, unforgiving, brutal yet utterly beautiful record, full of deep intricacies that won’t let you go.”) Frost’s music is more than a cerebral exercise and has an undeniable visceral presence, felt as much as heard. His compositions are created with an acute awareness of the listener and their comfort thresholds, exploiting every extreme of pitch and volume. His notorious, building-shaking performances at international festivals including Montreal’s famed MUTEK combine amplified electronics with the furious thrashing of live guitars. Frost himself has been described as “one of the most interesting and groundbreaking producers in the world today.” (Boomkat). His music’s intense physicality has filled gallery spaces and driven contemporary dance productions by Chunky Move, the Icelandic Dance Company, and the acclaimed choreographers Erna Ómarsdottír and Wayne McGregor. His website is www.ethermachines.com.

About Trevor Tweeten (Cinematographer)

Trevor Tweeten (b. Wilmington, Delaware, 1983) is an American sculptor and cinematographer. After receiving his BA in Film and Video Art from Augsburg College in 2006, Tweeten moved to New York City to begin his artistic practice, working at the crossroads between video and sculpture. Exploring the physicality and potential of the two mediums, Tweeten’s work is based on a desire to create a personal mythology, sublimating experience into experiments in space, light and time. As a cinematographer he has worked on a number of feature films and video art projects ranging from narrative to documentary to experimental. His work in video and film is often noted for its strong imagery and lyrical visual style. Tweeten is currently based in New York City and Marseille, France.

Co-Commissions Overview