Topographies de la guerre at Le Bal
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011The current exhibition at Le Bal (until December 18th), Topographies de la guerre (‘Topography of War’) explores the fictions and realities of war, and its impact on rural and urban landscapes, through different photo series and videos.
Paolo De Pietri, To Face, 2010
The ground floor eases you in with work by Paola De Pietri and Jo Ratcliffe, whose subtle black and white photographs depict the deserted landscapes of former war sites (the First World War on the Alps and Pre-Alps and the post-independence civil war in Angola respectively). Neither are overtly violent but both show the scars of war and draw on the traditional early use of photography to map out battlegrounds (The Crimean War was the first to be documented by the photographic medium and was included in a thought-provoking exhibition, L’Événement, at the Jeu de Paume a few years ago).
Harun Farocki, Serious Games 4, a Sun with no Shadow, 2010
Downstairs modern warfare is under scrutiny. Collateral Murder, a video broadcast by Wikileaks raises questions about the disembodiment of modern military techniques. It shows the merciless gunning down of civilians in Baghdad and has an uncomfortable resonance in Harun Farocki’s video, Serious Games 4, a Sun with no Shadow, which explores the use of virtual reality in military training and post-conflict trauma treatment. The chilling implication is that killing as easy as playing Doom.
Another fiction is at play in An-My Lê’s series 29 palms, which show a training camp in California where the desert is made to look as authentically Middle Eastern as possible using Hollywood props.
Also includes work by Walid Raad, Luc Delahaye & Eyal Weizman, Till Roeskens, Donovan Wylie and Jananne Al-Ani.
Topographies de la Guerre is on at Le Bal until 18/12/11




















