Redmond Entwistle: Red Light
Title:
- Red Light
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Medium:
- Installation, photography
Artist Statement:
Red Light, a newly commissioned project by Redmond Entwistle reflects on the indeterminate space that Belfast finds itself in between the unfinished work of the peace-process, and the phantom promises of the market economy.
Five previously unpublished photographs from Belfast Exposed’s archive will be conventionally hung in the main exhibition space and integrated in a sound and light installation feeding live sound into the gallery from different locations around Belfast’s city centre. The images selected were taken in the early to mid-1990s and are photographs of large crowds, both Nationalist and Unionist, in the centre of Belfast listening to speeches. These photographs are now over a decade old and yet for many in Belfast it seems as if the city is still in a state of suspension. Post conflict, the centre of town has developed as a neutral space through regeneration and improved commercial prosperity, but the overwhelming sense is of a space for consumption and possibly of employment, rather than a civic or communal space where political and cultural differences can be worked through.
While the exhibition at Belfast Exposed reflects on the recent transformation of Belfast’s city centre, three short films shown outside of the gallery in cinemas around the city anticipate some of the prospects and perils of the near future. The films are each approximately 90 seconds long and will be screened within the advertising and preview portion of feature film screenings. All films are based on original interviews with young IT workers in their early to mid-twenties who see a possibility of social or economic mobility in working in the IT industry in Belfast. Three actors re-perform short anecdotes, related during these interviews, which hint at the thwarted desires for mobility and economic participation at an international level that characterises the aspirations of the new economy and the attempt to develop an IT industry in the city. In most of the cases where the films will be shown, the features will be North American commercial films. In conjunction with the feature and in relation to the actual geography in which they are made and then shown, these fragments play on the inconsistency between the circumstances of viewing, and the prevailing cultural experiences and economic aspirations of Belfast.
