04 Miceli - Alice PRESS InDepth ZUM Mag2019 PDF

Excluded landscapes: photographer Alice Miceli's project records minefields in conflict zones - ZUM - ZUM 27/10/22 18:29
RADAR
Excluded landscapes: photographer Alice Miceli's project records

minefields in conflict zones
Published on: July 10, 2019
Photograph of the Bosnia series, 2016, by Alice Miceli, part of the exhibition In Depth: (mine fields).
On display in Rio de Janeiro, the exhibition In Depth: (Campos-minados), by Rio de Janeiro artist Alice Miceli, presents
for the first time the complete series of photographs of her project. Made in minefields in Cambodia, Angola, Bosnia and
Colombia, countries that have recently suffered from wars and armed conflicts and that still have locations infested with
landmines. According to Miceli, it is "an interesting challenge to think about the means of photography to precisely
consider what cannot be seen, and how our vision is given, of what it is made, of how it is mediated".
An important part of Miceli's work, photographing "what you don't see" was once the subject of Chernobyl, his previous
project, in which he went to the Exclusion Zone in Ukraine to record the invisible contamination caused by gamma
radiation [read more about this project on the ZUM website]. "In the case of my work in the minefields and already
before, in Chernobyl, I came across problems about the limits of representation, how to try to look at what is not seen,
does not reveal itself. How to look and through what?" asks Miceli.
In an interview, Alice Miceli details the methodology, concepts and challenges to handle a project that puts her in risky
situations in the middle of minefields.
https://revistazum.com.br/radar/paisagens-excluidas/ Page 1 of 11
Photograph of the Cambodia series, 2014, by Alice Miceli, part of the exhibition In Depth: (Fields-mine).
How did the idea for the project In Depth (minefields) come about? And why the choice of these four
countries to photograph?
Alice Miceli: The idea of thinking about crossing minefields as a job began when I was in a residence. I had just
finished my work in Chernobyl and was reflecting on issues that this work had raised for me, which I had found for the
first time when developing it, about problems about the definition and representation of landscapes in image, more
specifically focusing on spaces that were made impenetrable, or inaccessible, as a result of man's action. It is an
interesting challenge to think about the means of photography to precisely consider what cannot be seen, and how our
vision is given, of what it is made, of how it is mediated.
The four countries were chosen according to the intensity of contamination by landmines and other explosives remaining
from wars and conflicts still existing today in their territories.
The first series describes a minefield in the interior of Battambang province in Cambodia. She evolves in eleven
successive photos crossing the field in eleven steps. I worked in collaboration with the CMAC - Cambodian Mine Action
Centre and Victim Assistance Authority, the government organization in Cambodia that is in charge of the national
demining program.
The second series is focused on contamination by mines in Colombia. I traveled to affected areas in Antioquia, around
Medelín, to regions once dominated by the FARC, which mined several airs as a defense mechanism against the army,
which pursued them. This series consists of seven images. I worked in collaboration with the HALO Trust Demining
Program in Colombia.
The third series examines mined areas in the European context, that is, heavily affected regions in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, a contamination by mines caused by the armed conflict associated with the dismemberment of the former
Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The series was captured in nine stages in the community of Obudovac, in the municipality
of Samac. I worked in collaboration with the NPA - Norwegian People's Aid - Humanitarian Disarmament Campaign
in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For the fourth and last stage of the research, I planned to examine the problem of mine contamination in Angola, which
remains among the most affected countries on the planet, as a result of more than 40 years of conflict and civil war, with
mines used by various groups throughout the Angolan territory. I developed the stage in collaboration with the NPA -
Norwegian People's Aid - Humanitarian Disarmament Campaign in Angola.
Diagram designed by Alice Miceli as part of the research to "activate the interweaving between positioning, focal length, point of view and the magnification size of a projected object in an
image".
His artistic approach refers us to elements of land art and performance, bringing these practices to
photography in an original way. In addition, a rigor is perceived in the conceptualization of the project,
in the definition of a methodology for the registration of images. How does this happen in your creative
process?
AM: Our vision (of human beings), our way of seeing what we see, is always a complex construction: physical (optical
and geometric phenomenon), but also physiological, neurological and cultural. And our "vision" is even more mediated
when a man-conceived tool intervenes in the creation of an image. This tool already arrives impregnated with someone's
intention, attention and proposition about how it will be used, already moving in a predetermined direction, predisposed
to create a certain type of image, containing in itself layers of history in its conception.
In the case of my work in the minefields and already before, in Chernobyl, I came across problems about the limits of
representation, how to try to look at what is not seen, does not reveal itself. How to look and through what? In
Chernobyl, due to the fact that, for me, conventional photographic cameras could not really see in that very particular
environment, precisely because it was a medium dominated in an omnipresent way by an ostensibly present and eternal
"nothing" (the invisible contamination caused by gamma radiation), I then considered whether it would be possible to
touch this "nothing" in some way - approaching what It was becoming clear to me that it would be necessary to create my
own tools, from scratch, to show this absolute visual impenetrability.
Once Chernobyl was completed, I still wanted to continue with this problem. I began to wonder what other types of
impenetrability would exist here, with us, on our planet. Looking at minefields was the next logical step in these
questions, considering another situation that offered me an interesting variation of the problem, because in this case of
the fields taken by landmines and other explosives of war, the impenetrability shifts from the problem of vision itself, as
had been the case in Chernobyl, to the depth of space, which brings with it a whole new set of
I could have considered, for example, to stay only outside the field, at the entrance edge of the mined area, and stop
there, capturing in the image a horizon, a depth only contemplated, but never reached. How did this tragically happen to
photographer Robert Capa, who died by stepping on a land mine in Indochina, having seconds earlier captured an image
that extends to a horizon that he himself never reached. Carrying out this problem, from where Capa was interrupted, I
just wanted to continue. This is the performative aspect of the work, in which my body, in the outside the frame, is not
only looking at an impenetrable depth from an exterior, but moving through it, producing images from inside the areas
taken and considering, in these crossings, how this penetration takes place both in the physical space of depth and in the
visual result of the image.
The methodology of the work was developed from this diagram. Among several drawings and drafts from the time of the
beginning of this work, this was the first that made sense to me, which helped me begin to understand how to activate
the interweaving between positioning, focal length, point of view and the magnification size of an object projected in an
image.
The focal length of a lens determines its viewing angle and, therefore, how much of the object will be enlarged in the
image from a certain position. In the diagram, different focal lengths are represented, in successive points of view on the
same axis, in order to keep the object always at a constant magnification size in the image, in order to precisely activate
the issue of the positioning, look and body of the photographer in the outside the frame, at the moment and place of the
exhibition, in a situation - that of the minefields
Photograph of the Angola series, 2018, by Alice Miceli, part of the exhibition In Depth: (Campos-minados).
His previous project, Chernobyl, also dealt with the record of a landscape where the invisible is the
threat that remains after the tragedy. In addition to this, do you see other relations between Chernobyl
and the project on the minefields?
AM: Unlike remote and immeaque natural landscapes, both Chernobyl and the remaining minefields around the world
are not only the result of traumatic facts of the past, but spaces that remain in the present time, urgent, and that
continue to occupy and negatively claim parts of our ad infinitum world.
Photograph of the Bosnia series, 2016, by Alice Miceli, part of the exhibition In Depth: (Fields-mine).
Is there any difference between the four countries you chose to photograph? Did the different
landscapes change the photographic result of the project?
AM: Yes. It's as if different landscapes had different timbres. I think a lot in musical terms, since work deals with
interval problems. For example, at first we have an equal and regular division of space, given by the diagram, as if it were
the regular temporal division of a score in bars. These spaces are then activated, perceived and experienced through the
possible path in each minefield, which in turn depends on the topography and the specific contamination of the area
crossed. In theoretical geometric terms, there would be an infinite possibility of points of view aligned on the same axis
between two points given in space. In fact, when crossing each minefield, the pattern of contamination by landmines
updates this infinite virtuality and reduces it to a restricted number of points of view, creating a tension between the
egalitarian division of space, given by the diagram, and the way in which my body is forced, due to the irregular patterns
of contaminations, to cross each of these spaces. This is the reason why work exists as a set of photographic series, and
not as unique images that could be dismembered. What I had to avoid and evade, where it was not possible to step, from
where it was not possible to photograph, that is, the space between each image, is of equal importance to what appears
captured in them.
Photograph of the series Colombia, 2015, by Alice Miceli, part of the exhibition In Depth: (Fields-mine).
Do you already have a new project? Does your interest in registering "invisible landscapes" continue?
AM: I remain interested in places that, even in our globalized time, seem to remain off the map. Places that remain in
the sense that continue in the present, even if forgotten. Let's see now what the next destination will be. ///
More information about the exhibition In depth: (mine fields) here.
Alice Miceli (1980) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. From 1998 to 2002, he studied a bachelor's degree in cinema at
the School of Cinematographic Studies, in Paris, and in 2005 he graduated in History of Art and Architecture from PUC-
RJ. He participated in the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010); in the exhibition The Materiality of the Invisible, in
Maastricht (2017), Basta! at the Shiva Gallery in New York (2016) and the Cisneros Fontanals Grants & Comissions
Award in Miami (2015), among others.
Tags: contemporary photography, war, Land Art, performance, Conflict zones

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Excluded landscapes: photographer Alice Miceli's project records minefields in conflict zones - ZUM - ZUM 27/10/22 18:29

Excluded landscapes: photographer Alice Miceli's project records

More information about the exhibition In depth: (mine fields) here.

Tags: contemporary photography, war, Land Art, performance, Conflict zones

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