****PLEASE NOTE****
Due to unforeseen circumstances, ‘Mark Curran’s ‘ausschnitte aus EDEN/extracts from EDEN’ has had to be cancelled. Thankfully, a selection of Mark’s work is present in the group show, ‘Long Way To Paradise’ curated by Barry W Hughes of SuperMassiveBlackhole. All the details are here:
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The Lausitz lies in the southeastern part of the Province of Brandenburg in the former East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) where it meets the Polish border. Of Sorb origin (a Slavic language group), the region has been shaped by the timeline of industrialisation, where along with its capital, Cottbus/Chosebuz was defined as a Model State of the DDR. As part of the largest opencast mining territory in Europe, the Tagebau lies north, east and south of the city and continues to be extended, leading to epic scale destruction of the surrounding landscape and century-old Sorb villages while the braunkohle (lignite) will be completely depleted by 2030.
‘God made the Lausitz and the Devil hid the coal beneath’
‘Der Herrgott hat die Lausitz erschaffen und der Teufel hat die Kohle darunter versteckt’ (Sorb saying)
Having first visited the region in late 2003 in search of the impact of global capital in a periphery of Europe, as had been experienced in my native Ireland, I quickly realised that it was in fact the antithesis of this experience, encountering an emptying and the recognition that the same globalising forces which had transformed unrestrained the landscape of my origins, were indeed transforming this landscape through its forces of withdrawal and seepage – a slow hemorrhaging – jobs going further East and its younger population migrating to the more prosperous West.
Info
Opening day: 6pm 14 July
Dates: 14-31 July
Opening hours:
Mon to Fri 10-6pm
Fumbally Exchange
Fumbally Lane, Off New Street South,
Dublin 8
Location Map
In 2007, the region came last in a national survey addressing future prospects. Incorporating audio digital video, photography, cross-generational testimony and artefactual material, this project has been constructed in the context of a landscape shaped by and inscribed with the utopic ideological aspirations of modernity – Industrialisation, Socialism and now at great cost, Globalisation. Pivotal to the project is the catalyst for the region, the Tagebau and critically seeing it as a metaphor for globalisation itself – finite, fragile and ultimately, unsustainable.
‘Extracts from EDEN/Ausschnitte aus EDEN’ has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
About the photographer
Mark Curran (b. 1964) is an artist and educator who lives and works in Berlin and Dublin. Presently completing a practice-led PhD through the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, DIT, Dublin, he also lectures on the BA (Hons) Photography programme at IADT, Dublin and is Visiting Faculty on the MA in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Incorporating multi-media installation informed by ethnographic understandings, Curran’s practice presently focuses upon the role and representation of globalised landscapes in the predatory context of migrations of global capital. His first long-term project, SOUTHERN CROSS (Gallery of Photography, Dublin 2002), was widely published and exhibited and The Breathing Factory (Edition Braus/Belfast Exposed Photography/Gallery of Photography 2006), the outcome of his doctoral research has been extensively presented internationally, including DePaul Museum of Art, Chicago (2010) and the Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai (2010). extracts from EDEN/ausschnitte aus EDEN will also be presented as a solo installation in the programme of ‘Encontros da Imagem’, Braga, Portugal in September 2011 and will feature in a forthcoming publication by the University of Westminster, London.
Supported by Dublin City Council and the Arts Council of Ireland and curated by Helen Carey, Curran has been awarded the lead commission to mark the forthcoming centenary of the Dublin Lockout, a pivotal moment in Irish labour history to be marked in Dublin in 2013. The multi-sited project will focus on the functioning of the global stock markets.
