Richard Mosse: Infra

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Infra offers a radical rethinking of how to depict a conflict as complex as that of the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The images initiate a dialogue with photography that begins as a meditation on a broken documentary genre, but ends as an elegy for a land touched by tragedy.

We re-introduce Richard Mosse, photographer and Pulitzer Center grantee, who will represent Ireland from June 1 to November 24 at this year's 55th Venice Biennale.

Also shown are three of Mosse’s films. While not as evocative as his bold stils, they serve to document very different situations in Iraq and Gaza. Theatre of War 2009, a film shot from one of Saddam Hussein’s hilltop palaces is reminiscent of the photographic work with its virtually static shots focusing on a group of soldiers ‘hanging about’ on the ruins. Every conflict effects different people in different ways, these videos make apparent how Mosse gets right to the heart of each conflict to find a suitable way to best present his experiences to the viewer. Richard Mosse’s Infra project uses obsolete military surveillance technology, a type of infrared colour film called Kodak Aerochrome, to investigate ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A. Hussein, Edward Said. Criticism and Society, London and New York: Verso, 2002. 34. Jacques Rancière, ‘Lyotard and the Aesthetics of the Sublime: a Counter-reading of Kant’, in Aes thetics and Its Discontents, Cambridge and Malden MA: Polity, 2009, p. 88-105. Mosse’s last-minute trip to Moria was the latest segment of a project that has stretched over the past two years and has seen the artist—accompanied by filmmaker Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost—shoot some of the most overcrowded refugee camps in Europe. These include Idomeni, Thessaloniki, Larissa, Elliniko, and Moria in Greece, Ventimiglia in Italy, and the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. Mosse has created images as aesthetically stunning as they are technically unprecedented, the photos’ mesmerizing detail and visceral intimacy shifting into a darkly emotional space with prolonged looking.

Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering. Morality, Media and Politics, Graham Burchell trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 22. The ineffable refers to a philosophical term with roots in Romanticism and the aesthetic of the sublime. Jacques Rancière argues that today’s understanding of the sublime in contemporary art derives from Jean-François Lyotard’s misreading of Kant in The Inhuman (1991), for whom the inability of the faculty of the imagination to picture or fathom what it has been shown gives way to the moral imperative to understand through the higher faculty of reason.34 Trinh T. Minh-ha, Framer Framed, New York: Routledge, 1992, cited in Judith Butler, Frames of War. When is Life Grievable? London and New York: Verso, 2010, p. 8.One might therefore be inclined to think that the last part of the exhibition corresponds to Mosse's need to move away, not only figuratively, from his main themes, an escape towards the uncontaminated landscape, towards the regenerative force of a wise and resilient nature. But on the contrary, even his most recent works, such as Ultra and especially Tristes Tropiques, contribute decisively to tracing a clear and uncompromising arc of research. In the first series, produced between 2028 and 2020, Mosse uses the expedient of ultraviolet fluorescence to ensure that no aspect of nature, including the most violent, is overlooked. In the second series, in which the line of action is dictated by satellite vision, he uses the Brazilian Pantanal, the scene of the now infamous fires, to record even the most imperceptible climatic changes. The Enclave depicts a complicated, strife-ridden place in a way that reflects both its complexity and that of any attempt to communicate warfare and trauma through the lens. The work’s strategy of beauty and transfixion combats the wider invisibility of a conflict that has claimed so many lives. Barbara Kruger, in Karen Raney (ed.), Art in Question, London and New York: Continuum, 2003, p. 118. Mosse made photographs of the war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo using colour infrared film with which he intended to create a new perspective on conflict. [2] Kodak Aerochrome is a false-color infrared film originally intended for aerial vegetation surveys and for military reconnaissance, such as to identify camouflaged targets. It registers light that is invisible to humans, rendering the grass and trees and soldiers' uniforms in vivid hues of lavender, crimson and hot pink. [ citation needed] He used this same film to make a documentary film entitled The Enclave, with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost. This work was published in three publications, exhibited in solo exhibitions, and won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2014.