Terra Incognita

Goodfellow, Paul (2013) Terra Incognita. [Show/Exhibition]

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Abstract

Terra Incognita
The stimulus of this show is derived from the title, Latin for unknown lands. The phrase ‘Terra Incognita’ would be used on maps to describe areas that had been unexplored and deemed unexplorable. In this exhibition artists were invited to investigate their own ‘terra incognita’ and take inspiration from sites of interest as well as experience and memories. Terra Incognita was the first exhibition of the ‘Emerging Curators’ programme at MIMA, (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art). The show was held at ARC, Stockton Arts Centre, Stockton, (1 June-6 July 2013).

Title of work: ‘System Walk: Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, 2011-2013’
For this exhibition Goodfellow installed a display cabinet that contained materials that illustrated some of the systematic processes involved in his on-going systems art project Systems Walks. In particular the cabinet contained work from an on-going series of walks that began in 2011 in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.

The cabinet contained
1. Photographs
2. GPS Data
3. Maps generated from the GPS data
4. Explanatory text

1. Photographs
6 photographs, from a series of 25 photographs from the System Walk ‘Prenzlauer-Berg, Berlin’, (2011-2013, Ghost Photographs)

2. GPS Data
Spread sheets containing the GPS coordinates for the walks for the years 2011-2013, with the coordinates that relate to the 25 photographs highlighted in green.

3. Map generated from the GPS data
A map of the area generated from overlaying the GPS data from the walks and marking coordinates that relate to the 25 chosen photographs.

4. Explanatory text
Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, 2011-2012 and Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, 2012-2013 are two sets of 25 photographs captured during a walk in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin between April 2011 and April 2013. They are from the Ghost Photographs series of artwork that have been generated from the System Walk project of the artist Paul Goodfellow. This particular walk has been repeated three times since 2011. Each time the artist captured the walk with a time-lapse camera worn on the chest. The camera was set to take a photograph automatically every 10 seconds and this, along with the hands-free approach removed the authorial intent of the artist in terms of composition, and exposure settings.
The photographs are double exposed to show two of the walks in a single shot. The first set are composed of the photographs from 2011 and 2012, and the second set is 2012 and 2013. The walks started and finished in exactly the same geographical locations, but there was no attempt to synchronize the photographs temporally or spatially between each walk and this has created interesting slippages of time and space. As the walk was repeated from memory small differences between each walk, such as when a road was crossed, the weather, or the configuration of pedestrians, has created small but significant afterimage distortions. The photographs show the chance compositions that have been generated over the passage of time between the two events. The double exposure gives equal weight to both walks, (the photographic pairs), making it unclear which photograph is the memory or ghost image and which is the return journey.
Paul Goodfellow, May 2013

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