Richard Mosse: Incoming
The Curve, Barbican Centre
15 February – 23 April 2017
Recent Prix Pictet photograph prize winner Richard Mosse, created an immersive multi-channel video installation in the curve gallery space in the Barbican. Using advanced thermographic imaging technology developed primarily for the military, he captured film footage of refugees.
The 52 minute long footage was projected across three large screens filling the entire wall from floor to ceiling creating an IMAX style immersive experience, which heightened the powerful visuals. The footage captures the day to day activities of the refugee struggle from the mundane waiting, to the danger of border crossings. The colour and detail of the figures are lost in the limitations of the camera technology reducing the refugees to eerie anonymous black and white shapes and sinister ghostly features. This feels like a comment on the way the media and right wing politicians have often portrayed refugees by stripping away their individuality and dehumanising them by seeing them as simply a mass of people.
Human body heat is experienced through touch and intimacy, a connection between two people and a quality that is lost once a body has died. Mosse’s use of heat detecting technology is therefore a touching comment on this it and seems ironic therefore that the effect of using this type of technology serves to create alienation of the viewer and removes the humanity of the figures on the screen.
One core theme that I have been exploring in my own practice has been the disconnection we feel with nature. Mosse also explore disconnection, although his focus is between humans, and I found it fascinating the way he portrayed this through his use of the technology he chose to use. On a personal level I also felt particularly moved by this piece having been involved in the Calais refugee camps earlier in 2016 as well as currently planning an artist residency in Lebanon, where I will have the opportunity to work in the Syrian refugees camps over the coming summer. I have been exploring the possibility of incorporating these experiences into my arts practice and found this work an inspiring example of how this can be done in a very sensitive and powerful way.
