Abridged 0 - 7: Abandoned Donegal by Abridged

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition:

Abandoned Donegal Denzil Browne Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, 2010

Abridged 0-7

Contents / Page 4 / Introduction / Denzil Browne Pages 5 to 7 / Essay / Greg McCartney Pages 8 to 19 / Photographs Pages 22 to 27 / Essay / Maria Campbell Pages 28 to 41 / Photographs Pages 42 to 48 / Essay / Declan Sheehan Page 49 / Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Statement / Denzil Browne

Abandoned Donegal

Introduction / Abandoned Donegal Denzil Browne

As the eyes (apparently) are to the soul, ruins are to the past and indeed to the present. This is especially the case with ‘modern ruins’ and contemporary abandonment with their implicit stories of hope and failure etched into their fabric. Ruins traditionally are concrete echoes of both hopeful and foolish schemes born of an entrepreneurship based on good or greed. They illustrate perfectly the strength and weaknesses of the human spirit, which is perhaps why we ascribe to architectural abandonment a certain romanticism. Though in the case of modern ruins we do not; they just come and go, usually without much fuss. What was once an integral part of village life is now just an eyesore with no remarkable features at all; its importance as a social and communication hub forgotten to everyone except the old. What was once a bright new industrial beginning is now a bitter heritage of failure. Romanticism is something that comes from deliberate planning, forgetfulness or dissatisfaction with the present. It is an integral part of the heritage industry. The recent past is no place for it. However a certain romantic melancholy creeps in under the doors at the sight of failure and these empty spaces thus reanimate with the half-life that art, theory and the empathy or revulsion of the human heart gives them. They live again. Never as they were though. Traditional ruins tend to become tourist attractions and become a spectacle in themselves. Modern ruins, for the most part tend to be demolished to make way for progress, or if in an isolated area, simply crumble and fade away. The emphasis here has been to highlight the ruins that are not considered romantic or picturesque but instead give vital clues to the social, economic and architectural life of twentieth and indeed twenty–first century Ireland. The scope of this project therefore took in a broad spectrum of modern disused buildings – from urban to rural, from large industry to the local pub – archived in these photos are the collective memories of a changed culture, the forgotten pieces of the past. In some cases the buildings have been torn down since the photographs were taken, leaving the only visual record of the structures in their abandoned state within the rectangular confines of the photographic frame. The Abandoned Donegal project aims to make the public aware of how even the most seemingly insignificant structures can be of interest both artistically and as an reminder of local architectural heritage, by allowing them a glance inside the fading structures they see around them every day.

Essay / Abridged 0-7-1 Greg McCartney

Abandoned Donegal sets out to articulate photographically and archive abandoned commercial premises throughout County Donegal. Denzil Browne travelled throughout the county seeking out the shut down, the locked, the forgotten (and in some cases the very obviously impossible to forget) detritus of commercial failure and social progress. The resultant archive is representational rather than complete, aesthetic rather than scientific and the methodology used in garnering material would include chance as well as informed research. It is not possible, given the resources, for this project to give birth to a complete and comprehensive archive of commercial failure. Neither is it intended to be. What is intended is a representational archive so to speak; an indicator of social, economic and architectural change through the medium of photography; a resource that can be used as a basis for further research, or for aesthetic enjoyment in itself. In other words a catalyst for further action. Browne was given the freedom to photograph how and what he wished, the only curatorial wish was to avoid the romanticism or more accurately perhaps sentimentalism that could easily be applied to such subject matter. This he managed to do with aplomb to use sporting terminology. However I realise that it is impossible to stop the poetic creeping in on the part of the viewer. There is something innate in a person (particularly one with a curatorial slant towards the abridged, that is the shortened, the cut off, the suddenly ended) that makes him or her feel romantic about an empty factory, or at least its photographic representation. It is the emptiness and abandonment of course. Add people and the effect is lost. People decay and die, not fade elegantly and we feel perhaps angry, sorry or uncomfortable about their situation. It is very conceivable that the workers in the closed factory or pub have no romantic notions in its regard. However bricks and mortar in a state of decay or latterly steel and plastic in a state of stasis dig the poetic from a person. This is not to say of course that Browne’s photographs don’t raise debate as to the nature of progress and change. The local shop or pub, (now only a plot device in television soaps and sit-coms) abandoned in favour of supermarkets and clubs thus a centre of communication and even stability was lost; but we have cheaper food and drink and the internet so perhaps we don’t need to know or care who our neighbours are or what they think; the once lively cattle-market now a teenage drinking den; well it keeps them off the streets. We shouldn’t necessarily condemn progress. As much as it makes a captivating artwork I suspect the tacky disco won’t be missed. Most of us make the best of it, perhaps trading community for virtual connectivity, for infinite networking. And yet, we don’t seem healthier for it. Or more secure. Old monsters appear in new guises, the internet stalker; the paedophile stalking the screens instead of the streets. We expect abandonment. No-one has a job for life anymore. We expect

Abandoned Donegal

Abridged 0-7-1 Greg McCartney

new industry to quickly crumble or be relocated to somewhere with cheaper or little wages at all. They make cheaper T-shirts in Thailand. It’s the way of the world. The emptiness of the buildings is reflected in our emptiness of optimism, not individually necessarily but collectively, fed as we are by media hysteria and global capital. In selecting material for the archive it is being recognised that the archive is no longer impartial but is chosen for a specific purpose. It is in essence a curatorially led archival targeting of a forgotten piece of the national heritage and collective memory. As Loveblad points out ‘[a] metaphor is to see the collective memory as continuity and reinsurance for the nation. The archival inheritance is seen as an arranged repository for archival records which have been deemed of national signification. The consequences of this aim are that the archivist has to influence the creation of records, stimulate oral history, become a writer of chronicles, in short, actively seek documentation to fill the gaps’. (Loveblad, Monk, Knight or Artist? The Archivist as a Straddler of a Paradigm, 2003) There is a ‘collection’ of abandoned commercial buildings in Donegal. As there is no collective noun for disparate premises in differing towns a ‘collection’ is as accurate as any. It becomes an archive when it is given archival structures, (though not necessarily accepted standards) thus gaining archival qualities (and in this instance aesthetic qualities) in that the images are brought together, appraised, catalogued and presented. In essence given a set of criteria which defines them as archival, or at least the photographic representation of them. Browne in Abandoned Donegal is chronicling an aspect of societal progress and stimulating debate in regard to modern ‘ruins’ through the creation of an archive that deliberately runs counter to the classic Jenkinsonian archival theory of non-intervention and impartiality. (Jenkinson also had a loathing of what he perceived as ‘collections’). Though in a sense it does not. Jenkinson was willing to allow the creator/ administrator of archival material to select what was held in an archive, so it follows that if ‘archival’ records and an archive itself are created by those who administer the archive they have the right to do as they wish with the material and assign whatever selection/appraisal policy they see fit. The photographic documentation of the buildings covered by the project did not exist prior to its initiation. Therefore they are both a photographic archival representation of commercial abandonment in Donegal and an archive of the project itself. The archival endeavour is no longer passive or merely using material already in its possession, it is creating new archives, filling the gaps in the local collective memory, adding to itself and becoming a basis for future research. Abandoned Donegal is considered as a way of pointing out (in this instance) an often overlooked consequence of progress and change and initiating an photographic/archival project that would socially

connect with the local populace, enable an artist to increase their profile through an exhibition and publication and result in a socially, artistically and architecturally relevant project. Browne highlights the ruins that are not considered romantic or picturesque but give vital clues to the social, economic and architectural life of twentieth and indeed twenty-first century Ireland. If there are traditionally a lot of gaps in historical or archival research - research that leaves out the seemingly unimportant and mundane - these photographs seek to fill those holes by concentrating on seemingly unimportant but often socially vital institutions such as shops, pubs, factories etc. Archived in Browne’s ruins are the collective memories of an ever changing culture, the forgotten (though not necessarily the old) pieces of the past locked away behind boards and fences. Uniquely ‘new’ ruins for example abandoned factories, silos and garages were also concentrated on as it was realised that though through time the social connection between commerce and community change the same failure and decay is still prevalent, especially in this time of economic uncertainty. The implicit aim of the project was to stimulate awareness of and ultimately the reclaiming of these abandoned buildings by the community through highlighting their plight visually. Given the remit and finances of the project this would be done through an exhibition and publication and the creation of an archive which it is hoped will eventually encompass the entire island, each county being documented (not necessarily photographically) by a resident artist. Thus the project is intended to provide valuable archival material, provide public debate with an emphasis on reclaiming community abandonment and provide opportunities for artists to practice and socially engage and for audiences to witness quality exhibitions. That which we leave behind says as much about ourselves as that we cherish. Browne in Abandoned Donegal is mapping a changing society caught in the midst of a fractured world. Ironic as it seems, a world in which though communication and interaction has never been easier, the individual seems more isolated than ever. This is the age of convenience; the social has been replaced by the serial, face-to-face is replaced by face-to-phone, eyes-to-screen and all is left is evidence of those that fell by the wayside. Being human is being contrary so when we see Browne’s subjects we pine for their demise. A function of the photograph and perhaps the archive is to allow us to grieve and remember and to re-experience the lost and absent. There is a kind of sublime in both the photograph and the archive. Both are spaces where we can in the manner of a Casper David Friedrich’s balance briefly on the edge of the chasm of awareness then turn back to the safety of our own apparent security. Though once aware we can never truly feel comfortable in our security as the evidence of failure is made permanent by Browne and then classified.

car valet centre, bridgend, 05/11/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Bridgend

fabric retailers, bridgend, 05/11/2008

furniture workshop, buncrana, 24/10/2008

sanding machine, furniture workshop, buncrana, 24/10/2008

furniture workshop, buncrana, 24/10/2008

Abridged Abandoned 0-17 Donegal / Buncrana

barn, burnfoot, 05/11/2008

grain silo, burnfoot, 05/11/2008

Abridged Abandoned 0-17 Donegal / Buncrana

barn, burnfoot, 05/11/2008

inishowen driving range, carndonagh, 03/12/2008

grain silo, burnfoot, 05/11/2008

Abridged 0-17 Abandoned Donegal / Raphoe

Auction House, Raphoe, 02/11/2008

top: Auction House, Raphoe, 02/11/2008 bottom: Ritz Cinema, Raphoe 02/10/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Carndonagh

clothing factory shop, carndonagh, 03/12/2008

mushroom packing plant, convoy, 02/10/2008

grain silo, burnfoot, 05/11/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Carndonagh

clothing factory shop, carndonagh, 03/12/2008

McGlinchey motors, Donegal town, 08/10/2008

Abandoned Donegal

Essay / Abridged 0-7-2 Maria Campbell

The street becomes a dwelling for the flaneur; he is as much at home among the facades of houses as a citizen is in his four walls. […] The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; newsstands are his libraries and the terraces of cafes are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done. Walter Benjamin, 1938.

In 1927, Walter Benjamin began his intensive and intricate account of the Paris arcades. Das Passagen-Werk translated as The Arcades Project was created as a result of Benjamin’s growing awareness of the tumultuous changes taking place in the city: the growth in consumer culture and the inevitable transforming into a commodity society meant that the cityscape was in a state of constant change. These nineteenth century arcades, described as ‘industrial luxury’ consisted of a group of shops joined together under one glass roof for the comfort and convenience of shoppers so that consequently the ‘…passage is a city, a world in miniature.’ This commercial centre, designed by Parisian architects to provide a safe haven for shoppers used to braving the elements of outside shops, actually results in the creation of a ‘miniature’ new world. It is this concept of a microcosmic society existing within the plush ‘marble-panelled corridors’ of a commercial trading venture that enthralled Benjamin and resulted in thirteen years of study and observations of the traders and their customers. He collected quotations and observations of everything, from the colours of the shops and their garish advertisements to the beggar and prostitute on street corners. Everything that existed at that time and moment became immortalised under Benjamin’s scrutiny, he noted the frenzy of the marketplace with a fervour that reflected this inspiring and sparkling new age of consumerism: One’s attention is spirited away as though by violence, and one has no choice but to stand there and remain looking up until it returns. The name of the shopkeeper, the name of his merchandise, inscribed a dozen times on placards that hang on the doors and above the windows, beckon from all sides. Despite amassing over a thousand pages of quotations equal to the laudatory tone of the above, the writer was conflicted between his interest in the bustle of the marketplace and the sacrifices made for these industrial changes. Established in the nineteenth century, the arcades represented a type of refined bourgeoisie opulence that was well and truly evaporated by the time that Benjamin attended to them.

Pimps are the iron bearings of this street, and its glass breakables are the whores. Here was the last refuge of those infant prodigies that saw the light of day at the time of the world exhibitions…And near the degenerate giant creatures, aborted and broken down matter. The writer offers us an unpalatable glimpse of the arcades as they appear in the twentieth century, the zeal and daring of colourful shopfronts has been replaced by dilapidated run-down shops ‘selling only buttons’. Despite the overwhelming sense of achievement that accompanied the launch of the arcades, Benjamin was preoccupied by this generational shift that witnessed the style and class of the arcades’ forefathers disintegrate into vice. The entrepreneurial foresight of the original arcades project, not to mention the pleasing aesthetic contribution to Paris, was lost as the original idea was updated and modernised. There is something about the candle-lit windows of the antiquated shops, the sheltered marble walkways of the Victorian arcade that forced Benjamin to re-evaluate change and development. In ‘The Arcades of Paris’, he references the Arcades Project as a book and discusses his true purpose in devoting so much of his life to it: If this book really expounds something scientifically, then it’s the death of the Paris arcades, the death of a type of architecture. The book’s atmosphere is saturated with the poisons of this process, and its people are destroyed by them. Unfortunately, this focus was not enough to see the project through to completion and the manuscript was only pieced together in the aftermath of Benjamin’s suicide in 1940. While he may have failed to entirely encapsulate his vision of the Parisian arcades as a result of the sheer volume of his research, Benjamin succeeded in bringing to light one of the classic stumbling blocks of modern architecture. The pioneering spirit of its architectural predecessor will always lurk in the background, flagrantly flaunting a nostalgia that a progressive vision, no matter how innovative, cannot attain to. The new arcades are portrayed as dilapidated vice dens but one has to wonder if Benjamin is documenting the moral depravity alongside the decrepitude of the buildings because he clings to the nostalgia of the earlier nineteenth century arcades. In light of Walter Benjamin’s studies of the flaneur, many other writers were encouraged to view the cityscape as a type of auxiliary character, a resource that could not only immortalise a moment in the city’s

Abandoned Donegal

Abridged 0-7-2 Maria Campbell

history but also act as an essential background narrative tool. James Joyce, after completing Ulysses, alleged that if the need ever arose, Dublin could be rebuilt brick by brick on the strength of his extensive observations of the city centre in his novel. In order to construct this truly faithful and accurate likeness, Joyce made extensive use of the Thoms Directory of Dublin, actually measuring streets and timing how long it would take to get from one corner of Dublin to another. The cityscape of London has also had an imaginative stranglehold on the minds of several modernist writers, who, like Benjamin were keen to use the city as an atmospheric tool in their work. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway opens with the lead protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, sampling the sights and smells of various London shops as she prepares for a party. The commercial façade of the city facilitates her bourgeoisie whims much like the Parisian arcades. The London experienced by Mrs. Dalloway establishes her upper class position within the hierarchy of society. Unlike the bustling crowds around her, Mrs. Dalloway’s pace is leisurely as she casts a flaneurial glance over the city, intensified by her signature stream-ofconsciousness effect: In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. As Mrs. Dalloway consumes the flavours of this metropolis, it is clear that the ‘tramp, and trudge’ that she speaks of are not her personal experiences of life in London, a fact confirmed by her opening comments to ‘the admirable Hugh’: “I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Really it’s better than walking in the country.” Mrs. Dalloway is defined as a member of the elite upper class, not by the lavish party she is organising, but by the fact that there are no demands on her time and she is afforded the luxury of experiencing both city and country walks. Later in the novel, Mrs. Dalloway’s daughter, Elizabeth escapes the banality of her tutor, the boorish Miss Kilman and as a result, the restrictive confines of social acceptability denoted to her by her bourgeois background. Her familiar route home is replaced by an impulsive sequence of decisions that deliver her onto a bus to the Strand. Whereas her mother’s flaneurial moment

served to simply confirm her position within the elevated echelons of society, Elizabeth’s youthful experience as a flaneur results in a sudden awareness of the schism that exists within London life: those who work and those who are not required to. The professional façade of buildings loom menacingly over her and the idea of ‘hands putting stone to stone’ ignite a spark of ambition within Elizabeth. The buildings represent a collective contribution by a mass workforce. This is a section of society that Elizabeth realises she has been excluded from and resolves to change this ‘all because of the Strand.’ When Mrs. Dalloway walked leisurely towards the florists to choose flowers for her upcoming party, she walked with an air of assurance and contentment. Her daughter, in a different part of the same city, walks with trepidation, in fear of being discovered on the wrong side of the city’s invisible class perimeters: She walked just a little way towards St. Paul’s, shyly, like some one penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a strange house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should suddenly fling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did she dare wander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets…For no Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting. Elizabeth’s tentative trip into unfamiliar territory of the city she grew up in is symptomatic of the psychological and emotional exclusion that results from such stark economic divisions in society as depicted by Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway’s cushioned flaneurial vision of London from the comfortable confines of a Westminster dwelling is exposed as being false by her daughter’s sense of alienation in the city she grew up in. One of the striking aspects of the flaneur’s travels in both Benjamin’s Arcades project and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway are that they successfully create a permanent document through which we can view the past. In Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus Warren Smith sees London through the skewed kaleidoscope of a post-traumatically distressed war veteran who risked his life for his country only to then be exposed to the opulence and selfishness of Mrs. Dalloway. Walter Benjamin captures progress, both architecturally and commercially, in terms of what we lose in the process. What gets sacrificed in the pursuit of modernization? And is it essentially worth it? However, with the continued economic downturn in today’s society, we are not so much concerned with the speed of progress as we are with the speed of recession. Instead of watching buildings creep up over the landscape, we are witnessing their descent. The warehouse-like buildings that flanked our bus journeys to primary and secondary school have been vacated as trade has fled overseas

Abandoned Donegal

Abridged 0-7-2 Maria Campbell

in fear of the encroaching recession. The local mart that spewed out farmers and their price-tagged cattle every Tuesday afternoon lies deserted. The lived-in sweet shop owned by brother and sister for several decades receives no light through boarded up windows. Children whose grandparents met there will never stand on tiptoe and peer at the huge jars of brandy drops. The skeletal remains of these abandoned buildings symbolize the moment where the microcosmic world created by industry falters and collapses in on itself, leaving a gaping wound within the community. The photographs captured in this magazine by the artist document the sense of loss that accompanies this abandonment of commercial and agricultural properties in Donegal. These haunting images reflect the sense of displacement that lingers long after these buildings have disappeared. When a company roots itself within any rural community, it does not just perform an economic service by increasing employment figures, it also inevitably alters the aesthetic of the local environment. These buildings become a part of the tapestry of our childhood memories, an unofficial landmark that lingers long after its dilapidation. The photographs of the abandoned Fruit of the Loom factory belie its previous existence as a bustling workplace; the smell of gurgling dye that emanated along the streets at certain times every week; the noisy camaraderie of the factory workers at lunch-time. However, the desertion of the work floor and the barren space that stretches out in front of the camera lens succeed in capturing this series of forgotten narratives, potentially breathing new life into an abandoned space. Considering the innovative nature of the Parisian arcades and the fact that Walter Benjamin felt compelled to document these changes in the arduous Arcades project, attention is drawn to the disappearance of that same flaneurial spirit from todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s society. The art of the flaneur lies in the ability to take a walk, without direction or purpose, to appreciate the world around you. As Benjamin worked on the Paris Arcades, the marketplace was just opening up, the life of the consumer was newborn and the city streets were beginning to fill with trade. The images of abandoned buildings, as documented in this magazine, bear witness to the spirit of the old life of the consumer, the lost marble-panelled walkways of Benjaminâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Parades are the forgotten ceramic tiles of the old Donegal Creamery.

One only knows a spot once one has experienced it in as many dimensions as possible. You have to have approached a place from all four cardinal points if you want to take it in, and whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more, you also have to have left it from all these points. Otherwise it will quite unexpectedly cross your path three or four times before you are prepared to discover it.

The theme of this magazine has been Abandoned Donegal and it could be considered apt that this documentation of derelict commercial and agricultural buildings should take place during this current economic slump. However, as Benjamin noted in his Moscow diary, we must appreciate a building from several vantage points before we can feel like we have truly discovered it. What Browne has achieved with this sequence of photographs is to illuminate the forgotten angles of these forgotten buildings, to document a cycle in the tapestry of these buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; existence and to appreciate the space that continues to exist beyond this demise.

the old mart, letterkenny, 15/06/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Letterkenny

the old mart, letterkenny, 15/06/2008

donegal creameries, letterkenny, 13/04/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Lifford

arcade / snooker hall, lifford, 17/09/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Lifford

Abandoned Donegal / Milford

fruit of the loom, milford, 13/04/2008

body repair workshop, muff, 03/12/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Stranorlar

garage, stranorlar, 02/10/2008

top: vincents, newtowncunningham, 05/10/2008 bottom: pub, ramelton, 14/09/2008

garage, stranorlar, 02/10/2008

Abandoned Donegal / Stranorlar

Abandoned Donegal

Essay / Abridged 0-7-3

NOUS REFUSONS D’ÊTRE RÉCUPÉRÉS [1]

Declan Sheehan

In which the author encounters abandonment, alienation, commodification, recuperation, reification, spectacle, and ideology: some abandoned ideas, some historic ruins… scattered within that woebegone millieu of the oppostional political and cultural thought of an earlier age. Is their anomie due to decrepitude and wretchedness or was it, in some sense, always already there, as if a newfangled façade had only a limited lifespan, obscuring abandoned ruin ? Re the political economy of cultures, let us follow the philosophy of Jeremy Prokosch: “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my chequebook.”. How exemplary of the process of commodification in action! [2] Our buildings - places of industry, exchange, leisure, education, and homes - are commodities. Commodification: the double aspect of commodities - their use value and their exchange value – their status as commodities in a capitalist system - the projection of a monetary or exchange value upon everything… Commodity fetishism: workers alienated from the product of their labour by the compartmentalised means of production, then taking that product’s exchange value as the exclusive or primary manifestation of its status; any lasting awareness of the process of production or work committed to the product is erased. From cultural artifiacts to genetic code; things and people; from the concepts of home to house of worship; all are commodities. Regardless of any intent or any value within any other system of judgement (be it aesthetic, emotional, ethical, whatever) an exchange-value in terms of finance is projected upon anything and everything. And when that exchange value requires it, a home, a dwelling place, a house of worship or site of exchange or industry or pleasure, is abandoned: for now, an abandonement is of more value than the continuation of a function, be it aesthetic, emotional, ethical, whatever. For, rest assured, if the continuation of a function had a greater commodity value than its abandonment, then an encounter with this place would be a different tale. Commodity fetishism: the status of an object within the social relations of an age – that is, the exchange value designated by society upon

an object – erases its use value. A complex transformation occurs between object and concept/social-value developed around it. NOUS REFUSONS D’ÊTRE RÉCUPÉRÉS Recuperation is a process by which not objects but “radical” ideas and images undergo commodification, and are incorporated safely (and profitably) within mainstream society. And recuperation may be read as an extension, through a kind of mirroring, of commodification. In recuperation, (the term developed within Situationism) any commitment to develop or enact subversive concepts and to revolutionise social relations is erased, and the ‘revolutionary’ or subversive concept is reduced to commodity status as a simple attitude or pose which is open to all to adopt or buy and sell. The notion of a “counterculture” or a ‘radical chic’ is a conclusion of such process of recuperation. Beat writing for example, no longer serves any function developing a social movement of oppositional ideas and actions as a counter to processes of alienation; rather the notion of Beat has a contemporary function thematizing anthologies of poems and prose, fashion and lifestyle. A further example of recuperation: a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1972 film Tout Va Bien wherein a man at a hypermarket is selling pamphlets about the Communist Party platform. A group of young people, after he is unwilling to debate with them, challenge him with the accusation that he cannot sell ideas as if they were vegetables. The scenario is outlined as follows in one study of the Nouvelle Vague; “Hawking ready-to-wear liberation clichés, the communist militant is himself a figure of alienated and alienating intellectual discourse…” [3] Alienation and strategies against it: Guy Debord expanded and remodelled previous discussions of alienation for his contemporary mediatised age, the period from the 1950’s onwards of mass culture and mass consumption. Debord looks to Lukacs’ discussion of commodity reification: the discussion of fragmentation imposed on methodologies of work, the imposition in modern capitalism of a financial exchange value upon all forms of work, “the objectification whereby the relationship between things replaces that between people”[4] and attendant social processes of depersonalisation and alienation. For Debord, consumer society had produced newer and more totalizing instances of alienation, through the form of the image, over and above the previous instances of alienation from the commodity form: in advertising, publicity, and media. Debord also looks to Lefebvre’s argument that Marxist analysis “be extended to

Abandoned Donegal

Abridged 0-7-3 Declan Sheehan

cover every aspect of life, wherever alienation existed – in private life, in leisure time, as well as at work.” [5] “ In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” [6] Debord argues that in contemporary consumer capitalism, there is not merely the case of workers being alienated from commodities; in addition, people are alienated from their whole lives, which are sold back to them in the forms of ‘spectacle’ – with both leisure and work culture predefining roles and isolating individuals. An example of the overarching import of the spectacle - an experience of being a tourist in somewhere new is inadequate unless it is also transformed into photo-opportunities: a snapshot gives possession, ‘graphically transforming space into its own material image’. [7] Alienation is made whole, “People thus become spectators of their own desires, which are taken away from them and transformed into commodities.” [8] Debord did draw on the philosophical writings of Hegel, and it is interesting to trace a flow of concepts backwards: there is the opportunity to reflect retrospectively, as it were, upon the development of a concept. Unbeknownst to itself, in a similar manner, the theme of abandonment, the theme of this project of documenting abandoned property, is a further link to Hegel. For Hegel, the bargain of wage/contract for work provokes alienation; Hegel writes with suspicion and distrust for ‘consumer goods’, and their relative lack of value, well in advance of the consumer age of the twentieth century. He writes, in a sense prefiguring aspects of later critique of consumer capitalism, that these goods ‘fulfil their destiny only by being used up and worn away and they correspond to what they are supposed to be only through their negation.” [9] These goods manifestly do not have the value of property; property for Hegel assures freedom for the individual. The bargain of wage/contract for work holds potential for alienation because it does not provide property. Hegel, likewise prefiguring Debord’s critique of the subsumption of personality/self within the spectacle, writes that certain things are inalienable and cannot be accepted as items for brokerage within any wage/contract for work established for a worker. To Hegel, the following are not to be accepted as applicable for barter: “the whole of a workers

time…political beliefs… civil liberties...” ethical life; private personality; he also “saw the employment contract as a violation of freedom of personality”. [10] This can be considered as a pre-figuration of later theorists: Lefebvre and Debord, for example, argue that private life, leisure time, and desire are corrupted via a process of alienation within contemporary capitalism. Alienation No precise definition will be given here; the term has variants within its meaning in Marxist, modernist or existential readings: senses of exclusion, unbelonging and loneliness. Some important distinctions can be made. i. The term’s specific Marxist usage refers to the relation of workers’ to the products that their labour produces, but which they do not own and which become commodities. Marx suggests that this relation is as to an alien object. Marx, when writing of alienation, is writing of an objective reality; he is arguing that the objective conditions of capitalism, which he is analysing, cannot be reconciled without political change. ii. Hegel, rather, argues that alienation is a subjective reality in its time; that there is a requirement for a philosophical project of reconciliation, which will explain society to his contemporaries in order to stave off their subjective feelings of alienation, which exist as a result of their misunderstanding of their contemporary world.[11] iii. Within existential philosophy, it is argued that objective alienation is part of the ‘human condition’ which must be lived with and accepted and affirmed. iv. “Pure objective alienation”[12] The Frankfurt school (Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas et al), argue that one impact of ideology is to disguise the actual alienation of a class from their society, and to blind that class to this reality. It is argued that the use and abuse of culture and mass-culture is the pre-eminent means for carrying out such deception. Adorno and Horkheimer identify even the technological mechanisms of mass culture as implicit in the deceptions carried out by the culture industry. Arguing against any claim that would explain their contemporary culture industry in terms of technological developments, they outline “the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself.” [13]

Abandoned Donegal

Abridged 0-7-3 Declan Sheehan

Culture? Ugh! The ideal commodity – the one which helps sell all the others! [14] This intensive ideological dissection of the culture industry by the Frankfurt School – seemingly regarding works of mass culture as almost designed solely in order to blind an alienated class to the dominant ideology at work in society – shares some language with that of Debord and the Situationists discussing the spectacle. Adorno and Horkheimer write of a cinema audience equating a film with reality; of men moulded as a type in every cultural product; of a spectacle that is illusory; of a culture industry that represses; of pseudo individuality presented therein. [15] This argument presented by the Frankfurt School – of a hidden domination over culture by ideology – is reflected in the two analyses of ideology developed by Louis Althusser in the 1960s. Althusser argued that there was no escape from ideology: “a system (with its own logic and rigour) of representations (images, myths, ideas, or concepts) is a practice through which men and women live their relations to the real conditions of existence”.[16] This is not a conscious process, as ideology is profoundly unconscious in its mode of operation. There are common viewpoints of ideology acting as the basis of individuals’ outlook on life – eg. religious, political, ethical – we recognise them even if we do not believe them, and see them as imaginary. Even when accepting them as illusions, they do make allusion to reality, hence are worthy of our study to discover “the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world”. [17] The maxim with which Althusser follows these remarks, “ideology = illusion/allusion” acts as a brilliant shorthand dissection of analyses of alienation, commodification, recuperation, reification, spectacle. Althusser’s presentation of ideology collapses any false boundaries that could be made between the real conditions of existence at the level of representations and reality – between myths, concepts, ideas, images, discourses and our interactions with the real conditions of the world. There is of course no separate realm of representations; an argument reflected in Debord - “the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life”. [18] Both Althusser and Debord see ideology and the spectacle respectively as dominant over all classes of society; once again, there is no ‘exterior’ to the system.

For Althusser, the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) – such as organized religion, the family, organized politics, the media, the culture industries – are the realization of ideology as lived material practice – religious, ethical, legal, political, aesthetic: “an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices.” [19] It should be noted that the for Althusser the Repressive State Apparatus – army, police, prison system etc – are in place as a correction to the misbehaviours of ‘bad subjects’ of the ideology. Note should be made here, that this text is now entering into a process of at least revisionism and at most recuperation: Debord’s analysis of the Spectacle, and Althusser’s analysis of Ideology, were theories which manifested themsleves in such separation each from the other that Peter Wollen has written of them as “complementary halves of the ruptured unity of western Marxism…two fundamentally opposed totalizing myths… one for a true revolutionary subjectivity (Debord), and the other for a true revolutionary objectivity (Althusser)”. [20] The process of recuperation - in this case, it is being manifested by the apparent progress within this text to attempt to cement together two such opposing oppositional forces as the theories of Debord and Althusser - is always there and makes the demand that one stays wary. And such speculation requires that this text deserves abandonment. Declan Sheehan, July 2009

[1] “We Refuse to be Recuperated” (Odeon) Example of grafitti from the Paris streets of the Les Evenements of May 68. Higgins, Lynn A., New novel, new wave, new politics: fiction and the representationn of history in postwar France, Lincoln, USA, University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Page 118 [2] Jeremy Prokosch is a character - a film producer - in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Le Mepris. [3] Higgins, Lynn A., Page 132-3 [4] Walsh, Alan. “Sidewalk Sunbather” in Film Ireland #94, Sept/Oct 2003, Dublin. Page 21. [5] Wollen, Peter. “Bitter Victory” in An endless adventure… an endless passion… an endless banquet: A Situationist Scrapbook, London, Verso, 1989. Page 11 [6] 9. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle, Michigan, Black and Red, 1977. Point # 1 [7] Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” in Jameson, Fredric. The Jameson Reader. Page 125

Abandoned Donegal

Abridged 0-7-3 Declan Sheehan

[8] Higgins, Lynn A. Page 122 [9] Hegel’s Theory of Property, Part II: Class Consciousness. Page 173 [10] ibid, Page 171 [11] Hardimon, Michael O. “The Project of Reconciliation: Hegel’s Social Philosophy”, in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Volume 21, Number 2, Baltimore, Princeton University Press, Spring 1992. Pages 165 – 195 [12] Hardimon Page 189 [13] Adorno, Theodor & Horkheimer, Max. “The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception” in During, Simon. The Cultural Studies Reader, Routledge 1993. Page 31 [14] Situationist wall poster which International Times once ran as its front page, reprinted in: Gray, Christopher, Leaving the 20th Century: the Incomplete Work of the Situationist International, Brussels, Free Fall, 1974 [15] Adorno, Theodor & Horkheimer, Max. Page 34-41 [16] Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Prentice Hall. Page 95 [17] Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation). Extracted in Evans, Jessica & Hall, Stuart, Visual Culture: The Reader, London, Sage, 1999 Page 317 [18] Debord. Point # 6 [19] Althusser, Louis. Extracted in Evans, Jessica & Hall, Stuart Page 318 [20] Wollen, Peter. Page 16

The Artist Denzil Browne Artistic Statement

My photographic work has long been concerned with states of abandonment, I favour the unpopulated image catching forever still the mark of Man’s passing through his environment, his existence only confirmed by the evidence of his actions left in his wake. Ruined and derelict buildings are particularly charged with meaning, the walls soaked in the minutiae of daily life, their state of decay indicating how life is in constant flow and change – these buildings can tell us as much about the future as they are full of the past. Previous projects have included ‘Damaged Collateral’ a series of images depicting the sense of alienation and paranoia infesting our city streets. These images were produced using a self constructed pinhole camera which greatly increased exposure time to around 60 – 90 seconds allowing the neon light in the rain -slicked streets to saturate the film with colour. A side effect of this long exposure time is that those still out on the streets in the rain at 2 am do not record on the film as their movement is too blurred to be distinct, echoing the sense of alienation tangible on the night-time streets.

Education University of Ulster at Belfast 1995 1998 Ba (hons) Visual Communication specialising in photography

Awards Irish Arts Council Jan 2008 Youth Arts Initiative May 2007 NIVT April 2002 Group Exhibitions 1999 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

‘fig.Ment’ ‘B – lomo’ ‘20’ ‘Damaged Collateral’ ‘Flipside’ ‘Photokina’

Clear Spot Gallery, Belfast Context Gallery, L’Derry Workhouse Museum, L’Derry Context Gallery, L’Derry Flip Vintage Clothing store, L’Derry Cologne Trade Fair, Germany

Solo Exhibitions 2010 ‘Abandoned Donegal’ Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny

Acknowledgments / All photographs copyright Denzil Browne Curated by Greg McCartney Essays copyright Greg McCartney, Maria Campbell, Declan Sheehan Designed by John McDaid at The Verbal Arts Centre The Artist would like to thank all the owners of the buildings photographed who gave their permission, help and a little history on the buildings’ uses over the years... Many Thanks to Greg McCartney and abridged magazine All photographs are available in the following print specification: 30 x 20” Printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Mounted on Diabond /aluminium Artist’s contact info: E: woodstocklegstock@hotmail.com T: +353 (0)74914 0739