Texts > An assault on reality.
Geert Goiris takes pictures of locations. He frequently does so in remote areas as Spitsbergen, the Scottish Isle of Skye or deep into the Finnish woods. There he chronicles the odd manifestations, which refer to human interventions in the landscape. With a healthy share of irony, he simultaneously tackles photography itself. Obviously Goiris is aware of the affluent history of images and the saturated visual culture.
Goiris: 'What unites the different works
of the exposition, I would call traumatic realism, assigning
to the word 'trauma' its original sense; a breaking point,
not in the psychological sense of coping with ones past. A
cardinal work of the exposition shows a pavilion, which resembles
a flying saucer. It is located somewhere in the Finnish woods
and there is no road leading there.
I wanted to create an image that refers to a familiar fiction
while simultaneously subsisting of the straightforward registration
of a real location. A possible interpretation would be that
we are dealing with a crashed UFO. On the one hand this is
a relatively naïve and imaginative interpretation. On
the other hand this saucer has been lying there since the
sixties. It is a forgotten utopia. The object on the picture
is the prototype of the 'Futuro', an experimental modular
and transportable living arrangement, which was developed
in the sixties and produced by Matti Suuronen. Now it has
nearly become an anachronism.
I find it fascinating to watch a science-fiction
movie of the '50 and observe how they were thinking of life
in the year 2000. We would all be flying around and be leaving
our day-to-day worries to computers. Meanwhile our reality
has overtaken that utopia. Yet our life reveals a consequential
science-fiction quality. We are strongly influenced by that
dated fiction.
That's what I mean with the breaking point, the fuse of fact
and fiction. One can also see that on the pictures of the
rescue station, "Machine". It's a model on which
evacuation exercises of ships and drilling rigs are practised.
The construction is lit and helicopter rescues are simulated.
Analogous to the picture of the anti-skid course where jets
of water are poured on the road, the issue at hand is the
taming of a risk: a controlled risk: to skid from four to
five. The English express this with a demure term: 'contained
rage', a 'controlled and enclosed anger'.
You intertwine reality with the surreal, everyday life with fiction.
Goiris: 'Indeed. The insinuating character of the images is qualifying. They bid for the creation of stories or projections. The moments and locations represent another situation. While observing the recording of the anti-skid course associations of fire-fighting operations come to mind, on the picture of the golf course the landscape resembles a carpet, as if an alien machine has flattened everything. It seems familiar and completely tamed and precisely because of that it acquires a, 'unheimlich' character. I consciously assemble specific pictures: the UFO close to the golf course, next to the machine. Thus I emphasise the traumatic. I don't insinuate much more than that. I try to select my subjects in such a way that they can generate their own stories.'
How much importance do you attach to the location of the shootings? In the exposition you move from Scotland to Finland and Norway to wind up in the Tsjech Republic, passing Ireland.
Goiris: 'By bringing together various landscapes and climates, a rather mental landscape emerges. The significance of the location shifts from real to ideal.'
Do you see your work as an extension of the New Topographers, such as Stephen Shore of Lewis Baltz and - a little later in the history of photography - figures as Andreas Gursky or Thomas Ruff ?
Goiris: 'Formally I am under their tribute. I partly adopt the typically remote registration. I am not a snapshot photographer, who uses the camera as a prolongation of his body. Concerning the purification of the image, I am both influenced by Stephen Shore as by the earlier work of Gursky and Robert Adams. Nevertheless the human absence is pushed further than was the case with the German School. I take the "extraterrestrial viewpoint" even more literally.
I am not a dogmatic adherent of the "New Topography" or of the Bechers. The mere copying of the German school lead to a new academicism with many of us. That mars a generation of photographers, who held a very original vision. The Becherschüler had a very clear agenda and still leaves its mark on a great part of contemporary artistic photography. Some people just take over the formal characteristics: a large camera, an urban landscape, a panoramic view, geometry and rigid lines. I find it contemptible because it utterly excavates the original intent. The style is taken up, there is no content or meaning.
Contrary to the New Topographers of the German School I allow for romanticism and even sensationalism, because I observe how fiction gradually dominates our society more and more. To me romanticism is an exaggeration, that same exaggeration that is continually employed in advertising and popular visual culture. I want to allow for this exaggeration and handle it purposefully.'
Isn't it a typical Belgian inclination towards surrealism as well?
Goiris: 'Yes, but isn't surrealism a loaded term? I would rather call it conceptual realism. Surrealism evokes too much of the dream world, or the unconscious. To me these images are part of a collective consciousness; they are constituents of a language that everyone speaks. But like the surrealists, I don't locate the bizarre next to daily life, I place it in daily life. As I did with the UFO, which as an icon is very recognisable. Because of the camera that transposes so accurately, the spectator's perception is however very much focused on the object itself: the unique specimen, which is dilapidatedly lying in the Finnish woods. Thus the spectator can deduce the particular history of the object itself.'
Since you deal with icons of popular culture so directly and look at the world with such a mediagenic awareness, you come close to pop art.
Goiris: Yes, but I am afraid that the way pop art observes the world cannot be reconciled with the romanticism I don't shun. Pop art has to be seen as an extension of capitalistic consumption. I try not to consume the places that I take pictures of, I try not to consume them nor offer them for consumption. I try to underline their enigmatic appearance and pass it on even stronger. Like a highlighted passage in a text, I try to elevate an element of a landscape and pass it on.'
You produce your work in a limited edition. Isn't that at odds with photography's capacity to reproduce endlessly?
Goiris: 'To immediately include the spectator's scale in the image, a lot of my pictures are printed on a large format. As I also regard these pictures as a recording of times and consider the storage life to be important, I usually work on cibachrome. Both of these elements result in a high production cost. The choice to present my work in an edition of for or five samples is of a pragmatic nature. At the moment a larger edition is financially infeasible. The sale of a work firstly remains a way to undertake new journeys to make new images.'
What's your position on unicity? The purchaser knows that there are only five specimens of the picture. Doesn't this result in the picture becoming a fetish?
Goiris: 'Indeed, I find this rather annoying
myself. It is in fact anti photographic to limit an edition.
With other photographers the unique or rare sample comes more
naturally. Craigie Horsfield for one treats his prints to
such an extent that they become objects with a strong presence,
an aura. Such is also the case with Dirk Braeckman's work.
My images don't necessarily have to be rare, but the larger
the edition, the more work I put in the following up of the
prints. But I would regret that because of this, expensive
pictures become elitist. That's why I am searching for alternative
ways of presenting them. For a while now I am working on a
consecutive series of images, the Resonance Project, meant
to once be gathered in book form. To me this seems the ideal
presentation of my pictures.'
The world has become a village of which every nook has been
seen and photographed. Is there yet something to discover?
Can one still be surprised?
Goiris: 'Of course! But that's just what I mean. The more we are sitting in front of the television, the more we are inclined to think that the world is built up out of sequels, quotations and clichés. When we come outside and experience the "being-there", we are confronted with a double emotion. It is weird that ones initial reaction, upon entering the desert is one of : Hey! Just like in the movies, or just like on that postcard" Only later the real experience commences. As if the endless mimesis and diffusion of all these images acts as a buffer between the discernible reality and us. On the one hand I personally can still be overwhelmed by a landscape. On the other hand I can put things into perspective, because I know that even this impact is conventional. When I was in Spitsbergen, I was very much impressed, grateful for my presence there and for being part of this sublime landscape. But the wonder and the respect almost felt as an obligation, imposed by culture. Furthermore I always know that I will be leaving in approximately ten days. I know it's all safe. If I were to be utterly alone there, I fear that the isolation and the grandeur of the landscape might not be impressive, but frightful.'
Life as in an anti-skid course.
Goiris: 'But it is, isn't it? I am standing there as a photographer communicating according to customary ways. In order to pass on a certain meaning I too have to quote and code, otherwise my work would be naïve, resembling the pictures of a travelling agency. Then it would be too much a glorification of the exotic as is the case in Ansel Adams' work. Magisterial craftsmanship aside, his images seem very lifeless to me. As if it were pictures of a reservation or a scenery.
I am interested in speed and stillness
and therefore time itself sometimes becomes the motif of a
photo shoot. I often use a long exposure time. I find it fascinating
that the camera is capable of summarising a whole hour in
one single image. That type of photography intrigues me; the
film can perceive a wider spectrum than our eyes, it can observe
very quickly or very slowly. In most of my pictures the camera
is not so much a witness to the moment, but it registers a
state of being, a lapse of time. Such condensation of time
is the reason why I enjoy travelling remote regions. There
the geological time is much more present than the human time.
Thus all the elements that testify of a human presence are
seen from a different angle.'
How do you see the connection between the picture's narration
and its original location?
Goiris: 'To me a picture is successful when the representative and the narrative element alternate. I try to approach the location in such a way that they start to play a symbolic role in a story. The landscape as a background or a context then forms the steppingstone of such a procedure.'
Do you see yourself as a photographer of documentaries?
Goiris: ' What I find interesting in documentaries is the search for an objective relation between the documentarian and his subject. His responsibility towards the way of things. I feel it's important to pass such responsibility. Nevertheless I also manipulate, not by means of the digital but by means of the insinuation. I think that this is contemporary; the perception of the world is determined by speed and progress. We are very much liable to the creation of a myth be it in the form of a commercial, a movie or on TV. I do take pictures of places as a means to detect the narrative aspects. My choice for the moment of registration, the shaping and the angle is determined on the basis of their narrative relevance.
During a registration I remain true to reality, but in the assemblage an important fictional fraction emerges. It is not a noncommittal situation to place a UFO next to a golf course. In that moment I determine the context. I assault reality. My pictures refer to the clichés that are contained in our collective memory. I set forth with an imaginative vocabulary that I toy with. Then various meanings can be interchanged. In principle through photography one can pass all the lies of the world by merely showing the world'
Can you still look at an image without engagement? We are all granted an immense amount of reference points and clichés.
Goiris: 'Yes indeed, but everyday, people are born about to lead their own lives. Every man is a product of his time and thus will look upon images with a lot of preceding images as his reference points. We left behind the times where photography was a naïve procedure. And yet everyone will make use of his or her proper accents. When I see how the television news has evolved over the last ten years, I am amazed. An obscene craving for sensationalism is often confused with taking responsibility: "the world must know". The documentary became coverage photography, lost her neutrality and turned moralising. A corpse maintains a reality, which in itself is not something obscene or a taboo. But on television the regularity is so much dramatised that nothing remains but a sentimental flash that lulls us into an entertainment neurosis.'
Bert Danckaert
(translation: Siska Van Daele)
Geert Goiris - Possibilities (inertia)
Solo exhibition Netwerk Galerij.
12/01/02 > 16/02/02