Nick Jordan
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Northern Soul I can’t stop thinking about Larksong. A few weeks ago, on a clear and mild autumn night, I travelled to Goodshaw Chapel, a nonconformist Baptist church established by textile workers and farm labourers in 1760, to see a new film installation incorporating music and poetry. Except ‘see’ isn’t the right word for what I experienced that evening. ‘Travelled’ isn’t right either given I could spot my house from the front step. As a woman whose days of Saturday night clubbing, necking shots and stumbling home without a coat are long behind her, I love a local gig. It doesn’t get much more local than this, and probably not much prettier. Perched on the folds of the Rossendale moors, Goodshaw Chapel is owned by English Heritage. I’ve been itching to see inside for ages but viewings involve a chat with the enigmatically named ‘key keeper’ (um, Ghostbusters’ ‘keymaster’ anyone?), so this event, part of the British Textile Biennial 2023, was a golden opportunity. At first, Larksong seemed like an odd juxtaposition of mediums. According to the blurb, artists Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright had used the chapel as ‘a central leitmotif’ (that’s a recurrent theme to you and me), and made a film which ‘captures the surrounding landscape of cloughs, rivers and moorlands, laced with the remnants and imprints of the textile workers and industries that shaped the environment’. There was a new poem by Emily Oldfield, written from the perspective of a chapel pew, and a musical score by David Chatton Barker, Mary Stark, Sam McLoughlin and Bridget Hayden. Added into the mix was a slew of traditional instruments, including a harmonium and recorder, but many of the sounds were derived from spinning wheels, hand looms and spindles. But it worked, boy did it work. As the light faded and the box-pews, galleries and pulpit were cast into shadow, the silhouettes came into their own. A heady combination of foraged plants, carded cotton, raw wool and seed heads wove their own magic on the walls of the chapel, a mesmerising display accompanied by a spinner’s wheel plucking sounds seemingly at random yet, somehow, beautifully and hauntingly predetermined. During an evening of quiet and subtle wonders, it’s hard to pick out the moment which shone most brightly. Perhaps the 19th century punch cards were the most moving – predecessors to modern computing, capable of producing complex textile patterns and, as I found to my surprise, tears of joy. The sheer simplicity of their outlines as they crawled across the ceiling, married with the echoing hush of the music, are imprinted on my brain. Whenever I think of them, I smile. As a (fairly) new local resident, Larksong imbued me with a profound sense of place, not only of the landscape I see every day but with the reverberations of feet pounding the paths and roads centuries ago. Maybe this was intentional given the songs were inspired by manuscripts from the Larks of Dean choir, a group of 18th and 19th century musicians who carried their instruments over rough moorland terrain every Sunday to perform in Goodshaw Chapel. It was only later, at home in my own converted chapel, that I read a tiny pamphlet handed to the (sold-out) audience. Inscriptions from gravestones found in the chapel’s burial grounds had been incorporated into the poetry and lyrics of Larksong, among them this, dedicated to Alice Maden of Nutshaw, who died 27.2.1836, aged 25 years: ‘Behold young man as you pass by, As you are now so once was I, As I am now, so you must be, Therefore prepare to follow me.’ And so the tears came again.
Corridor 8 ...Themes of displacement, reform and upheaval are examined in Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright’s beautiful and elegiac film installation, ‘Larksong’ (2023), which you’ll find in the astonishing setting of Goodshaw Chapel, a tiny non-Conformist church tucked among the secluded hills of Rossendale. Working with English Heritage alongside local musicians and poets, their approach had less to do with faithfully reconstructing the past than collaging it: using salvaged artefacts and anecdotes to better imagine the people who lived and worked here. Apparently, this magpie approach goes back a long way – it’s said the first parishioners (many of them textile workers) built this chapel themselves in 1760, carrying materials and pews they’d sourced from other churches. Emily Oldfield’s accompanying narrative poem is voiced from the perspective of one such pew. Her words soundtrack the film’s rich symbolic detail, as the camera’s gaze comes to rest on raw wool tufts, cobwebs, cherry blossoms against cold grey skies. A musical score brings melodies from eighteenth century choir books together with audio samples of spindles and hand looms, recreating the kind of sonic environment these workers might once have known. Shuffling through box pews where the community once gathered is a moving experience, driving home how close-knit parishioners must have been in this tiny space. At the pulpit the artists have arranged mossy engravings imprinted from headstones, the people they commemorate now long forgotten. Upstairs is a series of botanical illustrations printed onto calico with woad, the same rich shade of indigo used to clothe enslaved people on plantations – a subtle reminder of the ways in which local practices become entangled with global systems. The chapel is rife with contradictions. It’s testament to local populations taking steps to assert themselves and seek renewal, cultivating the landscape to better serve their community. But as populations scattered across the region, following paid work, they were still subject to the shifting fortunes of the landscape, which would ultimately dictate their survival....
Corridor 8 Walking into Natural Interaction, Nick Jordan’s largest solo show to date, I immediately feel entangled in the web of films, prints, photographs, paintings and sculptural works that shape this multidisciplinary exhibition. The greenhouse installation ‘Earth House Hold’ (2023) demands attention through its dominating visual presence, but in the open-plan layout, sounds from the film projections seep into neighbouring works and the dim lighting throughout helps to integrate the pieces as a constellation. For their Spring series of art exhibitions, HOME have partitioned their main gallery space to present three new solo shows by artists at critical stages of their careers. The initial sense of entanglement experienced in Jordan’s Natural Interaction is aided by the fact that, to see this show, you must have already travelled through Parham Ghalamdar’s immersive exhibition of expanded painting, Painting, An Unending. This network of solo shows becomes a curatorial interaction in its own right. One thing seems to feed another, and symbiotic relationships begin to unfold. ‘The Entangled Forest’ (2023) is a seventeen-minute film which interweaves ground-breaking ecological research with footage of the mystical edge-land textures of Greater Manchester’s woodlands, and the mythical drone of the musical score. Featuring the voice of ecologist Dr Suzanne Simard, the film’s narrative explores the observable interdependencies in the relationships between fungal and tree systems, and the cooperation between diverse species. The visual element of the piece documents the textures and atmospheres seen through these woodlands, showing signs of both human activity and the resilience of plant growth. The audio, made by Otis Jordan and Lord Mongo, makes use of traditional folk instruments and analogue synths to provide an accompanying piece that sounds mysterious and transportive. We are left with a piece of work which is as poetic and magical as it is scientific and educational. The audio from the film’s score and narrative permeates the surrounding works, connecting them. Dr Suzanne Simard’s observations of mutual aid between tree and fungi networks from ‘The Entangled Forest’ casts a light onto the neighbouring work, ‘Kin Recognition’ (2023). Here, themes of genetics are explored within fungal and plant life, through Jordan’s framed prints made from the spores of mushrooms that were foraged during the making of ‘The Entangled Forest’. The framed prints have been arranged on the wall in the framework of a family tree, referencing the developing research of an organism’s ability to recognise and cooperate with genetically close relatives. Continuing the theme of genetics, the film ‘Rare Frequencies’ (2021) includes audio clips from conversations with people impacted by rare health conditions. Those in discussion state the vital importance of things like togetherness, community, interdependence, and symbiosis for the general wellbeing of our social structures. Combining these discussions with footage filmed at local nature reserves, where habitats of moss and peatbogs are once again being enabled to thrive, the work uncovers shared similarities between human conditions and conditions of the land, where both rely on a sense of community for survival and nourishment. Playful elements weave through the film, such as rhythmically edited sequences that show visual similarities between shapes and objects. In one, vertical lines in the filmed landscape become dug out troughs, which become sticks on the ground, achieved through editing separate shots together that all follow the same line, drawing up the centre of the screen. This is quietly reminiscent of Richard Long’s ‘Line Made By Walking’ (1967), a visual echo that recurs in the framed photograph just to the left, ‘Index of Species’ (2023), where the visual path of the artist’s pointing finger from the bottom of the photograph joins seamlessly with the base of a tree trunk, continuing the vertical line into the sky. By showing visuals of human forms in the landscape, and exploring parallels between human conditions and the conditions of the land, these works remind us that similarities and coincidences within the natural world are as much part of us as they are part of nature. They remind us that we as humans are part of the natural world, rather than simply the users or extractors of it. ‘Genetic Sequences’ (2022) continues the themes of genetics and human medical conditions. This film is shot in the urban environment of Vienna, with an element of people watching – the film makes use of wide shots and slowness to see the change of pace between people navigating their environment. Whilst watching both ‘Rare Frequencies’ and ‘Genetic Sequences’ it is difficult to ignore the haunting tones of ‘Mushroom Hunting in the Woods’ (2022), a short black and white film displayed on a small monitor in the corner of the room. With a touch of humour and sequences visually reminiscent of early cinema through its use of cross-cut editing, ‘Mushroom Hunting in the Woods’ depicts the artist spotting fungi through binoculars from a hunting tower in a French woodland, with close-ups of the fungi as if seen by the hunter. The assimilation of audio from one work to the next encourages a feeling of connection and cross-pollination, blurring the boundaries between works so we begin to think of people watching in the street and mushroom hunting in the woods as one and the same. The idea that mushrooms share more DNA with us than they do with plants is recognised with poignancy here. Jordan’s works throughout this exhibition, which have all been made in the past two to three years, are given a dose of historical context through the inclusion of ‘Archive Material’, which includes eighteenth and nineteenth century coloured etchings of fungal life from the Wellcome Collection, together with museological display cases featuring the artist’s research materials relating to mosses, peatbog habitats, and peat extraction. These additions gently echo the educational and informative notes, as observed in ‘Entangled Forest’. Natural Interaction is a multifaceted exhibition, where interconnecting works reveal themselves as partially permeable layers, allowing information to flow in subtle and integrated ways. We are told in the audio clips within ‘Rare Frequencies’ that ’we are more similar than we are different’, and that ‘we are stronger together’. Jordan’s exhibition hints that this extends not only between people, but between people and the land, and that we share more than we know if we dig deep enough and observe well enough. The content in Natural Interaction feels not only informative and poetic, but important, in helping us to better connect with our own natural habitats in this time of human-made climate change.
Creative Tourist Nick Jordan: Natural Interaction, HOME solo exhibition preview HOME is jumping into spring with a brand new programme of exciting events, including Natural Interaction, a fresh solo show from artist Nick Jordan. Natural Interaction, from the title to the videos on display, seems to go against the idea of ‘natural selection’ – Darwin’s gift to the world of science. Jordan presents a trilogy of films: Rare Frequencies, Genetic Sequences and The Entangled Forest, all of which focus on ecologically diverse habitats providing home to various species of flora and fauna. The films themselves are interconnected in subject matter and style, with careful documentary footage of natural surroundings, fungi, wetlands, overgrown buildings and even people in cities, displayed with a scientific voiceover of narration or discussions around genetics and the importance of environmental variety. The Entangled Forest is a true highlight of the exhibition, with soothing shots of forest surroundings and ecologist Suzanne Simard’s commentary related to her research into the ‘biological neural network’. Simard talks about the importance of understanding that science is essential in how we treat the natural world, ourselves and other people. Referring to the fantastically named ‘wood wide web’, we learn about mycelium networks and more generally, about the interdependency between human and non-human beings. Highlighting the reciprocal relationships that exist in nature and discouraging separation, whether it’s between human and natural, or the body and the mind, becomes a running thread throughout the video trilogy. Rare Frequencies reiterates this point, by highlighting that despite genetic differences, 99% of our DNA is shared with other humans. The video draws upon conversations with people affected by rare genetic conditions and health practitioners. The discussions are played to footage of a restored peatland habitat on the edge of Manchester, highlighting the diversity of the rare species of wildlife that the area is now home to. The videos maintain a warm, non-judgmental tone thanks to the featured voices and the atmospheric soundtracks created by Otis Jordan and Lord Mongo. Using folk instruments, woodwind and analogue synths, the final effect is perfectly in line with the organic visuals. The trilogy is accompanied by works on paper as well as living organisms on display: visitors will find the artist’s signature mushroom spore prints, in this case, presented as a family tree, a greenhouse, a living microhabitat of native bog plants and archival botanical drawings. Natural Interaction is the perfect combination of art and science, set in HOME’s beautifully airy gallery space. Come with an open mind and you might leave with a heart more open to the people, plants and all other organisms that we all share the world with.
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Guardian TRUE STORIES: SPACES review – impressive short docs from folk horror to a Lebanese marvel This short film collection from the True Story platform ranges across continents to look at how we interact with our environment. Equally intriguing, though somewhat slighter, are Juan Camilo Olmos Feris’s Burning Land and Natalie Cubides-Brady’s Beyond the North Winds: A Post Nuclear Reverie. Shot in northern Colombia, the former is arrestingly cyclic: it begins with the quiet washing of the prize bulls, then plunges straight into the manic energy of their fights, only to end with a stunned silence. Blood is shed, but the violence also binds the community together. In contrast, Cubides-Brady’s short has the feel of a folk horror. After the disappearance of a fictional researcher, the film explores the facts and lore surrounding the Dounreay nuclear power station in Scotland. While the fictional elements prove to be a crutch, the 16mm short is visually mesmerising, viewing the station as a thing of terror and beauty. Nick Jordan’s Concrete Forms of Resistance is the most compelling work in this selection. Centring on Oscar Niemeyer’s abandoned, dilapidated International Fair project in Tripoli, Lebanon, this architectural marvel takes up 8% of the city’s area, and is beautiful yet ominous; its walls bear the bullet marks where Syrian firing squads carried out executions during the country’s decades-long civil conflict. Originally conceived as a communal, peaceful space, the complex becomes an unwitting, yet resilient monument to wars, unrest, and now the climate crisis. True Stories: Spaces is on True Story streaming platform
ABANDONED, REHABITED, REVISITED LOOKOUTS The abandoned gazebo, built around the huge pine tree, is the opening object of the short film Natural Hosts , filmed with an infrared night vision camera by English director Nick Jordan. It's two minutes in grayscale, an eternal day in which two languages predominate: that of the image, a rough texture, an object that can be seen, a shadow that infiltrates the light; and that of sounds, wind passing through the leaves, rustling in the forest, the woman's voice on the radio making an index of catastrophic, pandemic, human events: a brief history of destruction. The voice and our path are accompanied by the sound of strings that, who knows, offer a theme to our own procession. Lookout is the wooden structure from which you can see the desert of the real: hunting fields, an abandoned house, traces of the passage of time. Lookout is also the gaze that looks at concrete forms, enters the landscape of rubble, examines the ruins, collects abandoned objects that were able, by themselves, to integrate themselves into nature. Empty gas cans, posters of the hunt, torn scripts, signs reporting the presence of missing animals. Concrete blocks hang from a rope like two sugar tablets waiting to serve tea to the owner of the house who will never return. And the wind, the leaves, the light of an eternal day, and the fungus colonies that grow in every corner with their pure forms. You enter the house where mattresses, beds, armchairs, chairs, resting places, suffer the wear and tear of absence and time. Where absence and time are still the sentries charging passage through doors, stairs and windows. Only bats challenge your vigil and our gaze: their fast, disorderly flight, guided only by surprise, prophesies the coming pandemics. But bats cannot stand the invading light, the eternal day that reigns in the abandoned house. On the living room ceiling, her small body rests and prepares the antidote for the greatest destructive agent; for the human gaze that passively observes its own destruction. The bat is thus the anti-human; the winged bomb that nature has prepared for the least controllable of its inventions. Travelling through the house and walking its corridors is to have, on one side, the portraits of the catastrophe that has already befallen us. On the other side, the voice that prophesies from the past; the future event of whose present we are now witnesses. In the background, we know that they are playing strings for a funeral procession. We know of the rustle of the wind in the leaves; of the quick wings that the bat does not control. We know the light that enters. On one side the images and on the other the voice, both running parallel along the corridor. An abandoned house, like an abandoned planet, has many entrances. Entering it is easy, leaving is difficult. And just like bats, we look for an escape route. And let's go through the corridors. We feel that at some point the plug will drop: the images and the voice, which run parallel, will perhaps find themselves inside us."Isn't it bizarre that this most intellectual creature of all is destroying its own house?" The voice that accompanies us, from beginning to end, is that of English primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall, in an interview about environmental degradation and the pandemic. Your deposition lasts two minutes. Director Nick Jordan took it, like a lookout, and climbed his stairs.
BORDERLINES OF THE PRESENT
PHANTOMS OF RESISTANCE Politkrytyka.org, Political Criticism, Ukraine Tripoli is one of the largest cities in Lebanon, the second most populous after Beirutand the poorest city on the Mediterranean coast. Architecturally, most of the city issimilar to other cities in the Middle East, but there is one significant difference - the modernist complex of the International Exhibition, which occupies almost a tenth of the city. These monumental buildings were designed in the 1960s by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, best known for his design of the experimental city of Brasilia, which became the capital of Brazil in 1960. The international exhibition was later named after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rashid Karame, a Leftist and a proponent of strengthening Muslim political influence in Lebanon. For the first time, I learned about the International Exhibition in Tripoli from Nick Jordan's film "Concrete Forms of Resistance", which this year could be seen at the screen in the "Thickets" during the Kyiv International Short Film Festival. This show was one of the few when it seemed that we were back in pre-quarantine life - the effect of watching movies together without plastic-marked seats. The show also resonated with the main characters of the film - the buildings of the International Exhibition in Tripoli, modern ruins, which are gradually absorbing the environment. According to the director himself, he tried to capture the human element, which is manifested in the close relationship between human activity and the reaction of nature to it."The fauna and flora that colonize abandoned spaces are a reflection of human activity, as we have involuntarily created an environment for wildlife to thrive, and often in ways we cannot control." Comparing Kyiv and Tripoli, especially half a century ago, is not the best idea. But despite the visible differences, the almost imperceptible similarity of these cities is manifested in unfair urban planning and contempt for cultural heritage, its gradual oblivion and disappearance. In this text, I return to Concrete Forms of Resistance to reflect on the socio-cultural contexts of Lebanese history, the utopian ideas of modernist architects, and, most importantly, attempts to overcome socio-economic inequalities through architecture and their impact on the city. "Golden Age" of Lebanon In his film, Nick Jordan captures the current economic and social situation in Lebanon through the stories of six narrators living in Lebanon. And also how carpenters, whose workshops are located on the territory of the International Exhibition, earn a living to afford basic necessities. According to the director, his film is associated with "the loss of public space or the unrestrained commercialization of public space, as well as the lack of affordable housing." Lack of social housing and accessible public spaces are inextricably linked to the political history of independent Lebanon. In its history, only a short period has been marked by reforms in the social sphere for the benefit of the majority of the population, and it is with this period that the buildings of the International Exhibition in Tripoli are connected. Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, and for several decades before the 1975 civil war was one of the few economically prosperous countries in the region, not least thanks to foreign investment. Nevertheless, Lebanon's political system after gaining independence only remotely resembled a democratic one. In 1958, General Fouad Shehab was elected President of Lebanon, which for a short time gave a chance to socio-economic reforms and hopes for a fairer state. As a result, in the 1960s, the Lebanese government introduced elements of the welfare state, accompanied by significant investment in the social sphere. In particular, water supply has expanded, rural areas have been electrified and the health sector has improved. Lebanon's political and religious elite did not support Fuad Shehab's socio-economic, political and administrative reforms and sought to maintain a status quo that prioritized their financial interests over the needs of the majority. Therefore, the government was unable to continue the reforms initiated by the politician after the end of his presidential term in 1964. Despite the government's efforts to implement social reforms in the country, urban development lacked proper control over urban planning. This has led to the uneven development of urban areas, including the coexistence of luxury housing in central areas and informal settlements on the outskirts, deepening economic inequality, overpopulation, destruction of architectural monuments, privatization of urban infrastructure, including in the medical field. Ignoring the need for social infrastructure and investing in real estate for quick profits has resulted in the construction of luxury villas and housing estates instead of affordable housing, hospitals, schools and libraries. War for the city In 1962, Lebanese government officials invited architect Oscar Niemeyer to design the International Exhibition Complex. This project was one of the attempts to decentralize Lebanon's economic and cultural activities, which have so far been mainly concentrated in Beirut. Due to mistakes in construction, use of poor quality materials, corruption, and most importantly - resistance from Syria. The construction of the International Exhibition lasted more than ten years, and its opening was scheduled for 1976. However, in 1975 a civil war broke out in Lebanon, which lasted 15 years and left unfulfilled the dream of a utopian mirage in the Lebanese desert. During the civil war, the exhibition buildings were used as a base for the Syrian military. According to Miri Minkara, a Tripoli resident, tour guide and activist for the preservation of the international exhibition, these buildings have been used as a military base for longer than anything else. In addition, according to researcher and dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in Britain, Adrian Lahud, the project of the International Exhibition was to mark the process of forming a new identity of a country seeking to free itself from the burden of postcolonial past. "The need to find a language or grammar to convey the universality of this desire, along with the practical requirements for the place of exhibition, was to be formed within the barely defined outlines of the national imagination. This problem was exacerbated in a state with only a nominal form of representative democracy and state institutions in their infancy, which had little social legitimacy.” The choice of the architect to design the exhibition was not accidental. Oscar Niemeyer had left-wing political views and was a communist, which was in line with the political course of Lebanon at the time. At the same time, he came from outside Europe, and therefore did not evoke "associations" with the colonial past of the state. According to Mira Minkara, the decision in favor of Oscar Niemeyer was also related to the process of migration of Lebanese to Brazil, which began in the late nineteenth century and continued throughout the twentieth century. According to Mira Minkara, government officials forced residents and landowners in the part of the city where the international exhibition was planned to sell their land for nothing. In fact, the state took away local land. However, according to Mira Minkara, this has had a positive effect on the city, because, given the general lack of urban planning, over the years, this place could become a chaotically built center of luxury real estate. Instead, today it is a 100-hectare plot of land inside Tripoli that is free of buildings and cars, much of which is a green area. Given the location of Tripoli in the context of climate change, this provides additional arguments for the transformation of the abandoned complex into an urban public space-park. Forms of resistance According to director Nick Jordan, the architecture of the international exhibition in Tripoli is opposed to the influence of time, environment and historical events, especially those related to the Civil War. "I feel the resistance of the Lebanese people, who have been through so much but are still boldly fighting the corruption of the government and the economic injustice they face every day. " Concrete structures - not the most suitable material for the desert climate - are a physical reminder of both the horrors of the civil war and the short period of Lebanese history, marked by relative economic prosperity and social change. According to Oscar Niemeyer, despite being significantly different from other city buildings, the International Exhibition was to be integrated into the space thanks to several roads that would cross it and connect the complex with the surrounding areas. Initially, it was planned that part of the complex and the city near the coast would be occupied by a new residential area with collective housing, but it was never built. The desire to build such housing, in turn, was associated with the utopian ideas of Oscar Niemeyer, some of which are quoted in the words of the architect himself in the film Nick Jordan. According to Niemeyer, in the future housing should become simpler and cease to be divided into slums and palaces. According to the architect, “now the advantages of architecture are used only by those who have money. The rest live in the wilds.” .Therefore, Niemeyer conceived the architecture of the future as open to all. However, in the case of the International Exhibition it happened differently. In addition to the fact that its territory is now closed to the public, the exhibition itself, unlike the original plans, was built in such a way that its space formed an airtight elliptical shape, separated from other parts of the city by a four-lane highway. The International Exhibition in Tripoli differs from other similar complexes in that the exhibition space is complemented by buildings focused on the production of culture, including theater, amphitheater, museums. This resonates with Niemeyer, who believed that in the future theaters, museums, stadiums and cinemas would increase as everyone could afford to visit them, "because today the poor can use nothing, they know architecture only at a distance”. However, even if the International Exhibition had been completed and opened, it would most likely have been used more often by the more affluent inhabitants of Tripoli. After all, one of the narrators in the film "Concrete Forms of Resistance" says that today around the architectural complex live mostly people with high incomes. Despite attempts to create value for local residents in the form of cultural and residential spaces, the project of the International Exhibition from the very beginning focused on Western businessmen, investors, expats and tourists. Modernist architecture was a pretext for state intervention in urban space and the incomprehensible destruction of much of the city, as well as a tool for creating space that does not fit into the local context. Finally, the project of the International Exhibition "as an instrumental intervention in the urban area seems to be a progressive social reform, but only continues and consolidates the uneven development of the city". According to Adrian Lahoud, the project of the International Exhibition in Tripoli was directly related to the bureaucratic-technocratic type of state apparatus in Lebanon, which developed in the 60's. However, when the laissez-faire returned to market logic and the movement to the welfare state came to a halt, not least because of the civil war, such a large-scale intervention in the city space became impossible. And Oscar Niemeyer's project was forgotten and abandoned. Phantom space According to Mira Minkara, the territory of the International Exhibition used to be associated with the Syrian military base and caused fear in the locals, but today this space is "phantom" - Lebanese people do not associate or identify with it. For a long time it was impossible to approach here physically for security reasons, but now the inhabitants of Tripoli mostly bypass this place because of its actual emptiness, lack of ability to interact with space and bizarre architectural forms, unusual and unlike anything else in the city. Mira Minkara believes that the territory of the exhibition should be legitimized as an open public space and given the official status of a park area, and the buildings should be recognized as cultural heritage. Today, the organizers of exhibitions, fairs, conferences, installations, concerts sometimes rent part of the buildings of the International Exhibition for their events. In addition, citizens use the area as an area for jogging, walking and relaxing in the shade of trees. But now the architectural complex is closed to the public, so only holders have access to it. The closure of the International Exhibition becomes apparent from the first frames of the film "Concrete Forms of Resistance", when the viewer sees the concrete walls surrounded by iron wire. These walls seem to protect the area from unwanted guests. In 2004, the Tripoli Chamber of Commerce and Industry developed a project to transform the International Exhibition into a tourist destination that could be visited by millions of tourists each year. Other plans for the exhibition include the creation of a business hub on its territory. The authors of such projects do not care much about the preservation of the original complex or worry about its architectural integrity. In the film, Vassim Nagy, an architect and professor at the University of Lebanon, notes that cooperation with the private sector in preserving the International Exhibition is possible only if a national strategy for the protection of architectural heritage is adopted. Only this will protect the architectural complex, and potentially - open to everyone's public space, from becoming a commercial theme park. Activists, including Vassim Nagy and Mira Minkara, are currently fighting to create such a space. Modernist architecture in the cities of Ukraine may also not seem to be of cultural value and worth preserving. Of course, modernist buildings in Ukrainian cities differ from the Rashid Karame International Exhibition: most of them were not designed by "star" architects, so they may raise questions about why they should be preserved and whether it is more appropriate to build something newer, more modern. However, such buildings are often an integral part of the municipal infrastructure of the surrounding urban areas, the construction of which in Soviet times was part of a holistic design and urban planning. Today in the cities of Ukraine, as well as in Tripoli, there is a lack of integrated urban planning and socially oriented urban policies. Therefore, the chaotic construction of residential complexes and commercialization of public spaces prevails. At the same time, there is a lack of affordable social housing and the development of municipal infrastructure. As in Lebanon, Ukraine does not have a comprehensive policy for the protection of cultural heritage, and therefore state institutions are unable to prevent the destruction of modernist buildings, often with examples of monumental art. Under such conditions, only activists can force decision-makers to take care of the cultural heritage that ultimately belongs to all of us. The text was published within the framework of the journalistic project "Uncultural Space". The project was implemented with the support of the Foundation. Roses Luxembourg in Ukraine.
CONCRETE HOPE: Concrete Forms of Resistance, directed by Nick Jordan “Tripoli was lucky to have this project in the heart of the city, but the project was unlucky to be in Tripoli”. With this sentence, the narrator of Concrete Forms of Resistance (Wassim Naghi) dictates the melancholy tone of his analysis of the design and use of Oscar Niemeyer's architectural project for the Permanent International Fair to be held in the city of Tripoli, Lebanon. I say "would be" because it never really was. The documentary develops in a technically conventional way and can easily be classified as an exhibition, according to the definitions of Bill Nichols. But the lack of experimentation typical of contemporary cinema finds a strong argument in its favour: utility. Like the aim of an architectural work, as Niemeyer argues, plasticity is of no use if there is no use. In this case, the film, like the Feira project, would become a ruin. Thus, the narrative line takes us through the history of the city, contrasting Niemeyer's social lines to the real destiny of his work, unfinished due to a civil war, used as a field of execution and even considered to become a commercial centre. Nothing that was imagined at the beginning came true. Humanity has the power to build, but also to destroy, and in our history, we have made much more use of the second option. Even today, we seek to impose cultures and lifestyles, in a constant clash of worldviews that ends up segmenting us and mischaracterizing the purposes of our planning as a nation. The film thus comments on Lebanon, but is in frequent dialogue with Brazil. The building represents much more than a simple event that never occurred. It is an idea, a society plan, which celebrates life, pursues equality and values humility, as it is aware that we human beings are finite and insignificant without one another. It is the embodiment of the architect's ideals that clash constantly with the political moment in the world and with its current mode of production, where there is no room for anything other than the superficial, where art resides as a mere product and not as an instrument of change. In this way, the negligence of city governments towards construction, its abandonment and its isolation from the population, only reinforce the intention of scrapping and the division of peoples. The art here manifested by architecture, which could unite different cultures, as the International Fair was intended to do, is uncharacterized and taken over by war, by the army, by violence. In this context, the film celebrates Niemeyer's work as resistance. Not only the literal resistance of his concrete that insists on standing, but that of his ideas in a world dominated by hate speech. Ideas that are bombarded, scrapped and neglected, but that continue to survive and, like the concrete, will keep the hopes of a new social organization, that appropriates these spaces for its real purpose.
Reimagining the Film Festival Landscape in the Time of a Global Pandemic: The 27th edition of the UK’s largest documentary festival, the first year under the leadership of Doclisboa’s former director Cíntia Gil and her new artistic team, took place on an online film platform called DocPlayer. The whole program presented on this platform, of which I can only highlight a small section here, is firmly rooted in both historical and contemporary actuality and closely interwoven into the conflicts and contradictions that we are faced with now, thus manifesting cinema both as consolation and a radical platform for change. There are several main themes that become visible and weave through all the strands, yet they all relate to one concept that has suddenly become of greater importance than before the pandemic: namely the landscape and how it represents change, history, memory and, above all, displacement. Sheffield Doc/Fest's 'Ghosts & Apparitions' section occupies a unique position by offering an inventive context surrounding contemporary new documentary cinema, while simultaneously creating parallels between the present and the past. This strand forms an investigation into cinema’s representation of history and its ability to alter it alongside memory and the spectators’ vision of reality. Cinema’s visual flexibility makes the invisible visible as it forces its spectators to look at reality in a different way.
Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan interview, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, 2019 (Stratum film)
ThisIsTomorrow Nick Jordan: Mental State Signs at Paradise Works Alongside his artistic practice, Nick Jordan has produced mental health training videos for the University of Manchester’s hospital teaching unit, encountering many cases of ‘disorder’ as a result. This latest body of work, presented at Paradise Works, on the border between Manchester and Salford, responds to one kind of psychosis in particular: a manifestation of schizophrenia known as ‘thought broadcasting’, whereby patients believe that their thoughts are being transmitted and heard by others. Entering the gallery space, you are immediately gripped by a palpable atmosphere of paranoia – strikingly akin to the stifling climate of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. And, as in the dystopian masterpiece; surveillance is a dominating theme. Two large black-and-white photographs show austere-looking buildings which register as impenetrable watch towers – one with a steely grid of countless blacked-out windows, the other with a plethora of satellite dishes protruding from its roof. Hanging alongside and preserved in two glass display cases are a hoard of complex diagrams, charts, yellowing typewritten letters, peeling photographs, bulky old film reels, and a pile of officious-looking clinical index cards with scrawling handwritten annotations, that carry a faint yet definite hint of obsession and/or compulsion. An electric buzz and the crackling sound of transmission signals fills the air, leaked from Thought Broadcasting; Jordan’s hybrid documentary which plays in a curtained-off room, featuring a soundtrack score by artist Lord Mongo. Described by Jordan as ‘part clinical-observation video, part psychological horror’, the short film portrays the strangely detached, silently watchful presence of several white-coat clad clinicians, juxtaposed with the fragmented, anxious inner world of a patient plagued by the inescapable army of satellite dishes and transmission towers that now populate the modern landscape (rarely noticed by most due to us growing so accustom to their presence.) Yet it is the fine, perhaps somewhat arbitrary line between what is judged to be a ‘correctly-ordered’ and a clinically ‘mal-ordered’ (psychotic) view of reality that the exhibition riffs upon. In light of the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 and growing public awareness of the way that governments and corporations intercept, harvest, monitor and analyse our thoughts, attitudes and behaviours through our online activity; is it not in fact ‘deluded’ to deny that a form of ‘thought broadcasting’ is actually endemic to modern society? The very notion of anyone possessing a perfect, non-distorted handle on ‘reality’ is also brought into question through the subtle blurring of fact and fiction that occurs throughout the exhibition. The archival material is mostly genuine, salvaged by the artist from the former psychiatry video unit of an abandoned hospital in South Manchester. Yet it is interspersed with a number of ‘decoys’, such as the drawing of an electricity substation described as being by a schizophrenic patient, but which is really by the artist’s son, Fine Art student Isaac Jordan. Likewise, the two secretive-looking buildings – one labelled the ‘Psychosis Research Unit Manchester (PRUM)’, the other the ‘Manchester Institute of Psychiatry (MIP)’ – are, in ‘reality’, simply an unidentified block on one of the city’s outer-ring roads, and the locally-nicknamed Toast Rack (previously a catering college, now due to be redeveloped into luxury flats). Elsewhere, a photograph showing a vast store of patient records has in fact – as so often occurs in today’s visually-saturated culture – been digitally manipulated for heightened effect. (Which begs the starkly Platonian question: Is our commonly-shared, strictly-defended understanding of reality nothing more than the version of the world that is presented to us?) These playful fabrications are mostly the exception to the rule, however. What is most notable overall is the distinctly ‘crazed’ impression that the largely legitimate, seemingly unintelligible collection of archival material gives. Why are we so obsessed with observing, monitoring, documenting and classifying the behaviours of others? Can ‘reality’ really be tamed into the schematic flow charts and technical terms we attempt to map onto it? Who should be the one to judge the ‘reality’ of another or its validity, and what does that judgement (in clinical terms referred to as a patient’s ‘mental test score’) mean? If psychosis is characterized by an impaired relationship with reality, are we not all psychotics together? I.e. ‘normal’. Corridor 8 Nick Jordan: Mental State Signs, exhibition review by Robbie di Vito Traditional display cases and framed documents are offset by text-based paintings and large black-and-white photographs. The work leads the viewer – both literally and conceptually – through the gallery space to the video installation ‘Thought Broadcasting’ (2017) presented at the back in a darkened room. The film draws on real-life accounts of a particular form of schizophrenia whereby the patient believes their thoughts are being transmitted and heard by others, in this case mediated electronically. It is the mistrust of media technologies on the part of these patients that raises the most interesting questions here. “It’s not just mobile phone signals, my thoughts are carried through electricity, transmitted, everywhere. I can feel it.” * It seems that, as a society, our only way of dealing with various forms psychosis is to document them fastidiously, from a place of remove. But how far are we willing to discuss the extent to which these disorders are symptomatic and indicative of what is fundamentally wrong with the world we have created for ourselves? “I think that other people must be sick in some way.”* After all, can the feeling that one is constantly being watched and surveyed really be the delusion of a paranoid mind in light of today’s ‘surveillance society’ and recent debates surrounding data protection? The whole aesthetic of the show seems to hint that not just media technologies but our urban environment itself (or the combination of these elements) can have a pernicious effect on the human psyche. In Jordan’s work, man-made structures seem more unnatural than ever. Technology emerges as a strange, unsettling force of which humans are subjects rather than masters. “The technology is already, like, betraying me.”* The patient interviewed in the film doesn’t necessarily come across as being ‘mentally unstable’, so much as a coherent individual troubled by genuine phenomena. Rather than focusing on attitudes towards those with mental health disorders (though this could be a fruitful line of discussion), Jordan raises a very different set of questions such as: Why do we study these conditions in the way that we do, and why is it that we seem to find mental illness so infinitely more disturbing than physical illness? It is as if society regards ‘neurotic’ conditions as some kind of threat to our way of life. The attitude of the psychiatric patient towards the world seems more relevant here in its own right, than a discussion around common perceptions of those diagnosed with mental health disorders. What is truly unsettling about Mental State Signs is the frightening but unavoidable suggestion that the psychiatric patient may have something important to tell us about the world we live in and certain aspects of our society. It is almost as if this is the true reason why so much research has gone in to mental health disorders. Overall, the exhibition offers an open-ended argument via a series of hints and suggestions which subtly warn of the potential effects of urbanisation, surveillance and a too-close relationship with media technologies. One possible inference from the film is that cases of psychosis or schizophrenia may even be a kind of early warning system for potential alterations in the human condition, resulting from our ongoing relationship with technology. In any case, Jordan’s work offers an engaging, even absorbing discussion of the nature of sanity in the 21st century. *(Patient in ‘Thought Broadcasting’): Off the Trail
Last Acre (2016) a short film by artists Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, documents the commonly witnessed (but less often considered) phenomenon of ramshackle dwellings thrown up intuitively by unskilled home builders and often found on Britain’s unkempt and otherwise unpopulated coasts and estuaries. Romantic pioneers, alienated misfits or politically motivated enemies of the status quo make up these marginal, malformed communities, invoking ancient laws that permit a dwelling to be erected and inhabited on common land as long as certain basic criteria are met.
Nick Jordan Interview at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, 2016
Sight & Sound Strange crannies of the world: the best of British live action at Encounters 2015 From Iceland to Bangladesh to west London, public and private spheres were played off one another in this year’s native highlights at the Bristol short film showcase.
In
many ways, John James Audubon (1785-1851) resembles one of the elaborate
and unique drawings that illustrate his famous Birds of America.
On first glancing through his writings, the image Audubon presents
of himself is that of a natural woodsman, an autodidact who embodied
Rousseauvian principles to learn “to follow Nature in her
walks.” However, like the pictures in Birds of America that
appear to look so natural, to effortlessly present American wilderness
“drawn from life,” yet under closer scrutiny reveal
themselves to be a highly stylized artistic compositions, so, too,
does Audubon come to unfold a much more complex and contradictory
persona upon closer inspection. Audubon’s Ornithological
Biography (the text that accompanied the lavishly illustrated
Birds) indeed constitutes some of the most significant
nature writing in early America. The texts are also remarkable forays
of a mind attempting to come to terms with itself through a highly
creative use of descriptive ornithology for that most perennial
of American genres, the autobiography. Audubon’s descriptions
of birds, then, are never really just about birds, the more you
read into their intricate descriptions. They are records of a consciousness
working through the staggering wonder and beauty of the new world
as it negotiates a deep ambivalence about the changes civilization
and culture were then wreaking on the wilderness.
Published on the occasion of ‘Cairo;The breaking up of the ice’, an exhibition by Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan, Cornerhouse, Manchester, Jan 22 to Feb 28 2010. The full version of this essay appears in The Audubon Trilogy: Delineations of American Scenery & Manners, a new DVD & chapbook publication by Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan
The Audubon
Trilogy: Fugitive Narratives and the Drama of the Natural World A showing of
the documentary film The Audubon Trilogy: Delineations of American
Scenery and Manners will take place Thursday, June 24 at the Morris
Library Auditorium. British filmmakers Jacob Cartwright and Nick
Jordan set out to create a stirring document of American cultural
and natural history while using the writings of famed ornithologist
John James Audubon.
New Scientist This bizarre little book - a beautifully illustrated, 45-page introductory guide to some of Britain and Ireland's non-native plant and animal species - is presented by its publishers as a "cross-pollination of fact and fiction". As well as information about invaders such as the American bullfrog, Chinese mitten crab and the pharaoh ant, be prepared for some fabulous anecdotes, such as the claim that the toxic hazards of the giant hogweed only fully came to light in the summer of 1977 "when, under the influence of the film Star Wars, many children made impromptu light sabres from the stems". Or that shortly after the death of Princess Diana, who was fond of grey squirrels, five dozen of the animals were found drowned in the lake of her home, Kensington Palace, allegedly killed by royal gardeners desperate to be rid of them. Lab Times You
can blame George Lucas for the mess. After the Hollywood producer
brought out his film Star Wars in the summer of 1977, thousands
of British children spent sunny hours fencing each oth er with “light
sabres”. Unfortunately, these play fights were more similar
to the light sabre battles in Star Wars than the children expected.
Within a few days hospital accident and emergency units were overcrowded
with screaming children suffering from grave “Darth Vader”
burns. Nursing staff treated acres of swollen, painful blistered
skin. What had happened?
The
Guardian Squirrels
and Hard Nuts Cartwright and Jordan are artists, who describe this little hardback as a "cross-pollination of fact and fiction". The reader may find it hard to separate the strands. Can it really be true that between 30,000 and 50,000 road accidents each year in the UK involve deer? According to a website called deercollisions.co.uk, it is. On the other hand, I do not think that itten crabs, plaguing fishermen, steal a bait called "Urk". A stew of grey squirrel, we read, was known in the US South as "limb chicken", and was a favourite of the young Elvis Presley. The Princess of Wales used to take Princes William and Harry to scatter nuts for the grey squirrels in the garden of Kensington Palace; after her death, five dozen squirrels, allegedly the victims of vengeful royal gardeners, were found drowned in the palace lake. Alien Invaders has entries on 10 species that have become ruthlessly efficient at adapting to their new home in the UK. There are silhouettes in the text - of Elvis, for example - and slyly humorous colour plates. The combination of fact, bizarre anecdote and invention gives to the species a patina of myth. Cartwright and Jordan may have human analogies in mind. Garageland byCathy Lomax There
is however a darker side to the fun. The success of these invaders
implies that they may be Darwin’s fittest, something that
will no doubt alarm those of a right wing disposition as they contemplate
human immigration. And the book’s crazy cultural anecdotes
worryingly recall alarmist rumours about immigrant communities in
host countries. The purity dichotomy is typified by the Bluebell;
the Spanish Bluebell has hybridised with the British leading to
a real danger that the weedy British version will become extinct.
But fear not as this has led to legislation that makes it ‘Totally
illegal to offer bluebells for sale or to smoke them’! New Statesman Strange
and Wonderful The
other day, looking for books to buy as Christmas presents, I went
strolling along Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road in London.
There are huge biblio-emporia here - Borders, Waterstone's, Blackwell's,
Foyles - covering thousands of square feet, offering big discounts
on prominent titles, and staffed by friendly and sometimes knowledgeable
men and women. Yet, for all the deft displays, the cheerily laid-
out tables and the handwritten recommendations, what was striking
was the sameness of the titles. Freakonomics, Smash Hits annuals,
biographies of 18th-century courtesans, novels by long-established
writers: everywhere a dulling homogeneity. Alien Invaders from: The Saatchi Gallery, editorial, September 9, 2006: Speaking
of otherworldly beings, 'Alien Invaders: A Guide to Non-Native Species
of the Britisher Isles (Volume 1)' is a wonderful collaboration
between Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan, recently published by
Bookworks. Researching invasive non-native species of plant and
animal life, the project documents, through drawing and text, the
discovery and history of selected alien species introduced to the
British Isles, and the effect on native wildlife. Presented as a
cross-pollination of fact and fiction, the book is fashioned as
a illustrated natural history guide, offset by the artists' interventions.
Who ever thought the American Bullfrog, Giant Hogweed, Spanish Bluebell
and Welsh Catfish would create such controversy - but believe me,
I've seen gentle-looking conservationists get hot headed about those
non-native bells taking over Abney Park Cemetery, and it was a reminder
of humanity's urge to possess and compete, chillingly vivid and
real as evolution itself. Bizarre as the examples may seem, these
artists are really onto something. £6.50, available from Bookworks. Let the
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