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| Atlantic Wall by Magdalena Jetelova was at the Orchard Gallery, 14 March - 25 April, 1998. |
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| Other articles by Colin Darke |
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| Atlantic Wall |
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| Magdalena Jetelova's show, Atlantic Wall, at Derry's Orchard Gallery, consists of ten large black-and-white photographs of concrete bunkers on the Jutland coast - relics of Germany's defence strategy of the second world war. Lasers are projected onto the constructions to form short textual phrases, descriptions of their significance, quoted from French philosopher Paul Virilio's book Bunker Archaeology. They look like documentary records of a performance/event, until one discovers that they were made with no audience. The final photographic product is the art work and we receive the theatricality of its construction second hand. |
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| The Atlantic Wall of bunkers, which follow the western European coast from Norway to Spain, was built between 1942 and 1943 by the Todt Organisation, initially under General Fritz Todt and later the Nazi's favourite architect Albert Speer. The TO was a paramilitary organisation, with its own uniform and answerable only to Adolf Hitler. Many of the bunkers are remarkable objects, compared by Virilio to the Egyptian mostabos, the Etruscan tombs, the Aztec structures..." and to the architectural work of Le Corbusier, but with an added "repulsiveness". They remind one of first-half twentieth-century visions of the future, with the overbearing pessimism of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. They were built without foundations and over the years they have shifted in the sands, many sitting at angles, like sinking ships. |
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| Jetelova wisely chooses not to allow the structures' architectural features to interfere with her work, shooting them from angles which understate their form, presenting them as ugly concrete lumps and thus enhancing their oppressive stature. Their setting, in the otherwise romantic context of the seascape, further heightens this ugliness. There is only one exception to this, in which the bunker fills the frame and its architectural reference is of significance. The stage-like construction contains the phrase Absolute War Becomes Theatrality (sic). |
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| This is one of the ten direct quotes or paraphrases from Virilio's book, an exploration of the significance of the Atlantic Wall in relation to the historical meaning of war, shifting with technological development. Early in his book, Virilio says of his research, "I would hunt those gray forms until they would transmit to me a part oft heir mystery, a part of the secret a few phrases could sum up..." In her project, Jetelova is continuing this aim, transmitting the same to her audience. |
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| While this attempt to explore such mysterious and secret qualities demands an interaction based on intuition, it remains true that in order to make an informed reading of Jetelova's work it is necessary to read Virilio's book. The context within which she was making the photographs is the context required to view them. This is clearly problematic if one unfamiliar with the book is to enter into any satisfactory dialogue with most of the show. For some pieces, where the text is a response to the physical or aural qualities of the structures, this problem hardly arises. This Waiting Before the Infinite Oceanic Expanse, for example. Or An Empty Ark or a Little Temple Minus the Cult, which is Virilio's initial conception of the bunker, unable to relate them to fortifications of old, guarding specific areas of economic or military significance. |
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| The Speed Confirms Everything, however, refers specifically to his writing on the relationship between war and technology, in which the former determines the latter. Airborne weaponry travels the straight line between armies/cities and the increased speed and deadliness of ever-developing missiles reduces the size of the world. The same technology increases the scale of war's arena, until it encompasses everybody's space (hence The Disappearance of the Battleground). |
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| Here, Jetelova's use of lasers takes on a new significance, in which her method of imposing text on the bunkers echoes the advances in military hardware. This emerges again in her A Rupture Between Violence and Human Territory (where the text itself is ruptured across the land and the bunker's surface), referring to Virilio's assertion that these advances are a result of the military dominance of science, where the arms economy now serves to defend itself, more than territory. Magdalena Jetelova's photographs are inseparable from Paul Virilio's book but the work does have a life and dynamic of its own, and the show can be enjoyed without access to its source material. |
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| Colin Darke |
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