Idris Khan / Thierry Ballconversation with idris khan and thierry bal

In keeping with the Global Art Forum’s aim to encourage dialogue, Art Dubai has commissioned an artistic production that responds to the notion of discussion proposed by the Global Art Forum.  The artists selected to represent Global Art Forum: 2 Transcripts are is a collaboration between Thierry Bal and Idris Khan for the 2008 transcripts.

Both Bal and Khan engage ideas surrounding photography in their work, though their individual practices are easily distinguished by their very different formal aesthetics. Bal is well-known as a commercial photographer of the contemporary art world while Khan works primarily with existing photographs and scanned material to create layered compositions that transform the images into a new context.

Here, they discuss their experience of collaboration within the framework of Dubai.

Thierry Bal
After our shoot in Dubai we quickly concluded that most of my photographs fitted loosely into various thematics that later served to inform the creation of the composites. I went out there with the aim to create as many finished conceptual works as possible, but in the end it was very evident that some of the photographs were more suitable to be used as part of multi-layered images. The collaboration therefore had a strong ideas component, but there was a physical manifestation too in that you used my photograph as the basis for your composites.

Idris Khan
I think I like the "idea"of a collaboration more than the actual act. I think it is great to talk about ideas and to share experiences, but in the end there always seems to be a problem with ownership. It is evident that we have very different approaches to our work. However, that tension can be used to one’s advantage. As a starting point, I am always interested in what a photograph, or photography in general, can become. I am interested in how as a craft and art form, it is constantly changing, and I do not tend to dwell on the nostalgia of photographic history. How did you experience the collaboration? Do you think I was responding to your images taken at a place where every detail seemed worth capturing? 

Thierry Bal
I agree, nostalgia is very restrictive; you just end up going round and round in "emotional circles". Luckily, I have been confronted with that feeling many times. It is important for me to assimilate different ways of working; it pushes me to explore the many possibilities I have as a photographer. Having said that, on a technical level, I have recently been doing a lot of work with one completely mechanical 67 rangefinder camera, one type of film and one fixed lens. It was very liberating. For this series of images I decided to use certain visual techniques used by the classic photographic essayist without wanting to create some sort of exotic document. In fact, the images are highly critical of photojournalism.  I aimed to steer as far away as possible from the work of photographers like Salgado or Cartier-Bresson. Although their work is hugely important, their images have a negative incendiary effect on me. At any given moment, I was very conscious to try to compress a variety of possible - including less obvious – truths in very deliberate images. I never like to overload the frame. The world of the photograph is contained within the frame only; it is not a fragment of a larger world. I see the composites as a very different way of expressing ideas we had in common. The process is closer to other art forms, such as painting and sculpture. I think the single images inform the composites, but this in turn has an effect on how the single images are being read. I like this constant reciprocity; it is key to the success of the collaboration.

As someone who has used photography in your artistic practice, how do you relate to it? What role does it play, what position do you allow or want it assume?

Idris Khan
It is important for me to understand the disciplines of contemporary art without boundaries or constraints to what is or what is not – in this case – a photograph or even photography. Photography is a constant battle with the surface. I like to think that when people look at my works, they no longer think about looking at what is seemingly photographed, but look at the surface of the image that offers no real sense of depth yet flattens it to the surface of the paper. When someone is engaged with the work, I rarely hear them discuss it as photography but more about looking at the images as a series of marks or traces on a photographic surface. Thinking of analogue photography, I used to think of it as three objects; the object in front of the camera, the negative produced and finally the print. There is a spatial and temporal gap due to the analogue technical procedure. I have always been fascinated by the idea that these objects could be considered transparent. When looking at an image, we seem to look through it at something behind the surface. And these moments for me had a type of lucidity that I found curious. I used to print out images onto acetate with 50% of the opacity reduced, so that when holding the image up to the light you can see the world move behind it. Doing so, the image stops being about the original object and becomes a trace to work with and to manipulate. The first works I made with this technique were a triptych of images based on my own travel photographs. Every… photograph taken whilst travelling around Europe in the summer of 2002, Every… photograph taken in Portugal with my ex-girlfriend and Every… photograph taken whilst on top of the Empire State Building.  At this point, I was interested in trying to make time collapse into one singular image. I wanted to compress these images in order to see if I could create a generic travel photograph – one that said it all, if you like. Instead of collecting memories, as we look at places or at people, I wondered what it would be like to see all those memories combined into one, and remember the trip as one big blur with just a few distinctive traces of memory. I made those images in 2003. It seemed like the right approach to revert to and use your photographs as traces of the ever-changing Dubai landscape.

Thierry Bal
I see Dubai as a place of experiments, not only with regards to architectural projects – which is the most obvious manifestation of that - but what is more interesting to me on a socio-demographic and cultural level. Dubai has to experiment if it wants to make a mark: due to its location, its climate and the fact that the region cannot for much longer rely on oil. But there is a desire too. Dubai is a very new city, impatiently trying to shape an identity, and this is naturally going to be reflected in the way people go about their lives. One soon picks up on an overriding sense of enthusiasm, coupled with a lack of cynicism. There is a common prejudice in the West that Dubai represents bad taste and megalomania. There does seem to be an element of unstable, nervous hyperactivity, but I genuinely think that will be gradually replaced by a more sustainable way of development. A new city needs a certain intelligence in its planning, or it will collapse under its own vanity. But I believe Dubai can achieve this - a huge amount of talent and resources support that. It would be shortsighted to try to understand Dubai from a unilateral old world perspective and I wanted to avoid that in the photographs. I would single out the image of the bent palm tree, as a good example of what I wanted to do. I found the tree in a building site downtown Dubai, part of an artificial palm tree forest; nature, sure, but completely manipulated. The tree seems to kneel in front of the Dubai skyline, which is part concrete, part desert. The apparent lack of distinction between nature and culture is further enhanced by an uncanny resemblance between the bark of the tree and the honeycomb structure of the skyscraper being built in the image background, the tallest building in the world.

Idris Khan
Dubai is a transitional city. Due to its rapid increase in wealth and the freedom to build pretty much anything, architects are rushing there with the rare opportunity to make history. How can they say no? There is also a huge time factor: It takes half the time to have something built in Dubai than in the West. Architects can work on more projects in a shorter amount of time. This is a place that has built itself faster than any other in the history of the world. I remember when we were out photographing around one of the many building sites in the Dubai Marina, we were approached by a Punjabi security guard who expressed interest in why we wanted to photograph nothing more than rubble and dust. So we asked him, " What is it YOU like about Dubai?"" Yes Yes", he replied. "It is beautiful. I like it, but its fast and busy. In 6 months, 18 buildings will have been erected where you are standing right now!"I also remember talking to an interior designer at the art fair who recently moved to Dubai after changing careers from being an artist, first in Pakistan, then in New York. "Why do you like Dubai?""It is f***** amazing!"It is exciting to live in such a transitional place: Every time I open my curtains in the morning I have a new view!"Thierry, with this in mind, did photographing Dubai become a more important event for you?

Thierry Bal
Of course, conversations with "locals"did inspire me, but I tried not to be lead by too many fixed ideas about Dubai. Going back to what you were saying earlier, another magical moment happened on the day we were at the Marina: the peacock. As some kind of deus-ex-machina, this wonderful bird appeared, completely at ease in what can only be described as a very alienating urban landscape. Not only was there something extremely poetic about its graceful movements among the bulldozers and concrete pillars, but it also led me to think about notions of vanity. But, in a way that metaphor is too perfect, and the images I took look staged. I like this blatancy. A complete oxymoron: the bird was so tiny, so seemingly insignificant in the sea of concrete. I saw it as a f*** you! message to cynicism. And it also reminded me of the vanitas paintings, symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, which allude to the transience of earthly life and the futility of pleasure. However, there is no pessimistic message. The peacock represents vanity, but equally the exuberance and enthusiasm of Dubai.

Idris Khan
I got a sense of sadness when I saw the peacock. It looked scrawny and its feathers were broken and disheveled. It suddenly dawned on me that I had not seen any sort of wildlife for days… (apart from art dealers) Dubai is moving so rapidly that being there to document its movement creates a hastened history it does not really have. With this in mind, it is hard to not think of photographs taken in this context as documents, and they make me ask myself, "Where is the poetry?”

Thierry Bal
It lies in the intricacy of a successful image. You are totally right though, there was so much going on that there was a natural urge to photograph incessantly. But it is very important to know what to filter out and when to stop pressing the shutter. I feel this is also perfectly represented by the composite on the cover of the book. In Dubai we stayed near Al Wasl Road, an important artery that links the east with the west of the city. The Burj Dubai, which is the tallest building in the world, was situated on the other side of this motorway, linked with the hotel by a perfect perpendicular imaginary line. It was uncanny. We got completely fascinated by the tower’s sheer dominance of the skyline and decided to walk towards it, following as straight a path as possible. However, it seemed we were never really getting closer, and at one point we had to abandon the journey, because we could not continue along the same path. We never reached our end point, but that seemed very apt. From that moment, I was very aware that wherever we went in the city, the unfinished tower would always be visible but forever far removed. We were faced with the "unreachable". In my mind this experience became a metaphor for the fallacy of photography and images in general. There is always deceit, bias, distortion.
Marvelous.

Idris Khan
You are so right. It seemed like the Burj forced you to keep looking at it, demanding for it to be photographed over and over again. That is where the collaboration started for me. I found myself forced to look. In the composites, each layer used is a fallible human decision. When I layer each scan, there is a decision made as to what I want to stay and what has to disappear. The decisions that are made become intrinsic to the work. The transparency allows me to split time and space and thus flatten and compress them into a singular moment. The time span is collapsed leading the viewer not to see the spatial relationship. And that is what is key in The Burj composite, the building is repeated in the image, almost haunting the viewer. At a closer look there are figures in the foreground playing football or cycling, capturing ghostly traces of what Dubai was and what its future will be.

Photo Credits:
II, Dubai © Idris Khan / Thierry Bal

 

 

 

 

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