alan butler . structures, simulations, psycopolitics and labour
Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter for the last two years (further subjugation in this Kafka-esque farce, that I have written about elsewhere3), I have presented these photographs in photography festivals and biennales around the world. While I have spent today writing this specific text for a new journal in Brazil, I am struggling to respond to the email requests wishing to include work from this series in various galleries and museums around the globe. I am already late sending this text to the editor. The idea, or maybe my story, has seemed to have captivate the people who have engaged with it. So here I might now explain how this virtual work has become real work. Earlier this year I produced a short film under the Down and Out in Los Santos umbrella. It was a sort of postmodern replica of a Henri Cartier-Bresson interview, addressing various approaches to making photographs in the public realm. It was included in The Rencontres d’Arles4, arguably one of the most significant photography festivals in the world, if not the most significant. I found myself traveling to the south of France for the opening week. I was to be among the thousands of photographers, curators and writers from around the globe that had converged in this ancient Roman town to observe and experience cutting edge lens-based art. I met lots of photographers at exhibitions, dinner, and over drinks at the various parties around the town. Many of these photographers were not in the exhibition, rather it is an industrial pilgrimage of sorts. With an unconscious slip into ‘junket-mode’, I found myself handing out name-cards and explaining my project’s modality to professionals from all over the world. It was quite an experience, but I couldn’t help feel that something was off. I wasn’t a photographer in the sense that these people were photographers. I didn’t even own a camera! I had emerged out of a fissure in the fabric
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