UNDER CONSTRUCTION

December 13, 2021 § Leave a comment

The absence of updates has, in part, been due to the focus on finally building a new website.

The intention is that the site will, simultaneously, be an archive and repository of the cycle of projects, to date, including, SOUTHERN CROSS (1999-2002), The Breathing Factory (2002-2006), Ausschnitte Aus EDEN/Extracts from Eden (2003-2009) and THE MARKET (2010-) and a means to update on a new project, alongside ongoing events, publications etc. All material will be available and made accessible to download. It is always appreciated when people check here and so thank you for your interest and your patience.

The website can be accessed at markcurran.org and will go live in early 2022.

The Economy of Appearances – Installation (Film)

March 25, 2016 § Leave a comment

‘In Mark Curran’s practice, projects unfold over time. (Since the late nineties) Curran has undertaken a cycle of long-term, ethnographically-informed multimedia research projects addressing the predatory context resulting from migrations and flows of global capital…in this major exhibition, The Economy of Appearances, Curran draws these projects together for the first time, expanding the enquiry with newly commissioned work completed in Amsterdam. Incorporating photographs, film, sound, artifactual material and testimony, themes include algorithmic machinery of financial markets, as innovator of this technology, absorption of crises as normalisation of deviance, and long range mapping and consequences of financial activity distanced from citizens and everyday life’ Helen Carey

from Installation at Limerick City Gallery of Art (Autumn 2015)

Filming Isabella Walsh
Editing Isabella Walsh & Mark Curran

Thanks to Arts Council Ireland, Noorderlicht Photography, NEPN (University of Sunderland), Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT), Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Gallery of Photography & Culture Ireland

Full information here (e-flux).

Installation images here.

(Installation) Ausschnitte aus EDEN/Extracts from EDEN – PhotoIreland 2012‏

July 8, 2012 § 2 Comments

Globalisation promises that all will be wonderful…but people know now it is an unfair process and they are affected by it…even their very existence…
(Marco, student, Cottbus, Lausitz, Eastern Germany, January 2007)

‘untitled’, section(map), Cottbus, Lausitz, Eastern Germany (glass slide, single projection)

in the programme of PHOTOIRELAND 2012
Dublin, Ireland
presents an installation of
Ausschnitte aus EDEN/Extracts from EDEN
a project by Mark Curran
as part of the Main Exhibition – On Migration 
Opening 18.00, Moxie Studios, Dublin, Friday, July 13th and continuing until July 26th
The Lausitz lies in the southeastern part of the Province of Brandenburg in the former East Germany(Deutsche Demokratische Republik) where it meets the Polish border. Of Sorb origin (a Slavic language group), the region has been shaped by the timeline of industrialisation, where along with its capital, Cottbus/Chosebuz was defined as a Model State and energy heartland of the DDR. The Tagebau, part of the largest opencast mining territory in Europe, now owned by a Swedish energy multinational, lies north, east and south of the city. While it continues to be extended, the braunkohle (lignite) will eventually be completely depleted.

Angelika, Tagebauarbeiterin, Tagebau Jaenschwalde, Lausitz, Eastern Germany, July 2008 (still, two-channel digital video, looped)

Having first visited the region in late 2003, seeking the impact of global capital in a periphery of Europe, as had been experienced in my native Ireland, I quickly realised that it was in fact the antithesis of this experience. Prior to the global economic collapse, but as evidenced by the above prophetic words of Marco, I encountered an emptying and the recognition that the same globalising forces which had transformed unrestrained the landscape of my origins, were indeed transforming this landscape through its forces of withdrawal and seepage – a globalised hemorrhaging. As a result, jobs were and continue to go further East while its younger population migrates to the West and in 2007, the Lausitz came last in a national survey addressing future prospects.

‘untitled’ (empty housing project in process of being dismantled), Neu Schmellwitz, Cottbus, Lausitz, Eastern Germany, August 2007 (glass slide, single projection

Informed by ethnographic understandings and incorporating audio digital video, photography, cross-generational testimony and artefactual material, the project has been constructed in the context of a landscape shaped by and inscribed with the utopic ideological aspirations of modernity – industrialisation, socialism and now at great cost, globalisation. In totality, the region invokes Marshall Berman’s ‘wounds of modernity’ resulting from the ‘cycles of destruction’ necessary for the functioning of capital. A pivotal emphasis for the project, is the catalyst for the region itself, the Tagebau and critically viewing it as perhaps a metaphor for late capitalism – finite, fragile and ultimately, unsustainable.

The production of the project has been generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.

Further information and location of exhibition available here.

Video documentation of the installation of the project as part of Encontros da Imagem in Braga, Portugal in 2011 can be viewed here.

Ausschnitte aus EDEN/Extracts from EDEN (installation image, Braga, Portugal, 2011, photograph courtesy Jorge Inacio)

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