I like Melanie Jackson’s work; I saw Made in China, at Matt’s gallery two years ago and was struck by the combination of a possibly true, possibly mythologized, story and her more documentary style. So I approached Jackson’s new work GPS A Global positioning system expecting good things and also intrigued by the work’s premise of unravelling the component parts that make up a GPS unit. I was fascinated and intrigued but... I felt a bit sick… finding the topic “interesting” didn’t seem to be an appropriate level of response, was it me? The strategy and structure of her investigation and the voyaging aspect of her image gathering started to take up a lot of space in the work. Jackson traces each component part or material used in a GPS unit back to it’s source or manufacture. I felt like a bit of a filthy voyeur or detached scientist of the Victorian plant gathering age. Oooh look at how the world works…now lets classify and be masters of the universe. I was being implicated in this massive global system and therefore feeling the weight of my privileged position in the world. But what about the artist, was she also putting herself under that scrutiny… clever. Or is it?
It’s not a startlingly new revelation to me or, I would guess, the majority of the gallery going public that we are beneficiaries of a global network of trade and exploitation. I live in Bristol, so there is no getting away from our national history of profiting from others misery. Jackson’s work, puts artist and viewer in the position of co-voyagers both real and virtual on a mission discover the true implications of world trade for the irrelevance of a GPS. It’s quite a side step. Our common bond of ‘guilty western person’ makes it hard for me to turn and criticise the work as work.
I’m nodding my head saying, yes, yes isn’t it awful and Jackson is right alongside me saying yes, yes I know and suddenly I realise the bone sticking in my throat is the nagging feeling that I am not made to feel uncomfortable enough, this is a nice presentation of a nasty situation. The deconstruction of the “system” is an interesting and fascinating project, but that is just the problem. I find myself full of new facts and information and strangely detached by the systematic nature of her inquiry. I’m also aware that such observational but transformed images, lead to a potential and misleading exoticisation of the other.
For example, Arnolfini gallery wrote, Jackson’s work takes;
“the viewer on a whirlwind tour that stretches from the rubber trees of Sri Lanka to the tin mines of Congo, and onwards to the production lines of China.”
What??? The romantic notions attached to words like rubber trees of Sri Lanka are just cringe worthy… do gallery owners/text writers really think about Jackson’s work as a whirlwind tour…
‘ohhhh sweep us off our feet to far flung exotic places …aaaaahhh bliss!’
I realise I am critiquing an interpretation of the work rather than the work itself but, an artist is in part responsible for how their work is presented. Somehow the focus is misplaced, in short, Jackson has made too much of an object, fetish like, out of the mechanics of this project and for me it’s lost punch in the process. For me it was the mythical aspect of previous works that acted as a resistance to the “reality” that otherwise numbs us. It was the fantasy in her works that actually put them in a realm beyond pure “observation and uncovering of terrible facts”. It’s the stories that really make or break the work and their capacity to resist our observational detachment, we get involved, we want the story to be true, we want the worker to escape. Day dreaming in itself is a form of resistance to the capitalist insistence on efficiency and production at all costs, as are “dancing drinking and singing” as Mark Harris points out in his excellent essay on Jackson’s Made in China.
According to Marx the alienation of the worker is a result of their separation from the end product. I wonder if Jackson’s systematic project was intended as a mirror of the systematic way the working individuals are treated? The comparison has been made between the way Jackson works, using painstaking animation or construction techniques, and the monotonous repetitive working actions of her subjects. Placing Jackson in relation to her subjects in this way is too much of a leap for me. Can you say that animating film footage to your own specification and design in a studio environment is akin assembling microchips and soldering each tiny piece together in a factory? Crucially, as an artist, you are not alienated from your production you are highly invested in it and you and your interests largely drive it. Once it goes out into the world you encounter all sorts of problematic market related issues but the actual work is the fun bit, fine it is a drag sometimes but it’s not a sweatshop.
Does the operation of aesthetics get in the way of the reportage? Am I too occupied with notions of “is this a good piece of work?” to truly consider the subject of that work? Alternatively is the subject of the work, a worthy investigation into the evil workings of global economics, a side step to any serious rigorous consideration of whether this is a good artwork or not? I am cynical but I do wonder, why isn’t anyone more worthy and weighty asking these questions? Is there a lack of rigour in the rush to support artwork that is ‘now’ and ‘worthy’ China and all things related are definitely the “it” kid of current contemporary art circles.
I started off thinking Jackson’s GPS proposition was an interesting and guileful approach, in many ways I still do but, it’ doesn’t make me think any deeper about issues of global economics it just underlines it with a funky colour and then allows you to move on. NEXT…
Please send comments and responses to www.inprintonline.org or for instant postings and potential online arguments www.inprint@blogspot.co.uk where I will be masquerading as me.
Sarah Tulloch 2007
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