Belfast Becoming Past, Becoming Future

Overview

The commissioning organisation (Belfast Exposed) published a Call for Artists/ Photographers in September 2001, inviting interest and methods for documenting Belfast as a post-conflict city and posing the question: What kind of city is emerging from three decades of violent conflict? The idea that a city may be continuously and simultaneously becoming past, and future suggests the present as the architect of both. The Call for Artists led to two residencies involving Belfast-based photographer John Duncan and German photographer Claudio Hils. The photographers created the work and Belfast Exposed provided some financial support, managed relationships and produced and edited the exhibitions and publications.

John Duncan produced an exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Trees from Germany and Claudio Hils produced an exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Archive_Belfast.

The Residencies, exhibitions and catalogues were funded by Arts Council NI Lottery (New Work) and the Archive_Belfast catalogue was also funded by te Goethe Institute.

Trees from Germany

In November 2002 Belfast Exposed Photography commissioned John Duncan to produce a photographic work of Belfast post-conflict on the threshold of progress. The work presents a detailed account of the current phase in Belfast’s evolution. John Duncan’s photographs were largely taken in those post-industrial areas of Belfast inside the belt of motorways that surround the city centre. They record the emergence of a ‘new Belfast’ amid the old, showing a city in the process of becoming something new, but still retaining the familiar features of the past.

Archive_Belfast

Archive_Belfast documents the evidence left by years of violence in Belfast contained within information archives throughout the city, where photography is employed as a means of interpretating objectively, e.g. medical x-rays, police forensic photogrpahy, surveillance cameras. It also records private and semi-public stores of conflict-related memorabilia in community collections and private homes. Claudio Hils developed the concept for Archive_Belfast through a series of conversations with representatives of participating groups, where he was granted permission to document conflict related archives and records in participants’ collections.

Lead Creatives

• Claudio Hils, photographer (Archive_Belfast)
• Klaus Honnef, Anna M. Eifert-Kornig, John Taylor, writers (Archive_Belfast)
• John Duncan, photographer (Trees from Germany)
• David Brett, Glenn Patterson, writers (Trees from Germany)
• Karen Downey, Curator, Belfast Exposed
• Pauline Hadaway, Director, Belfast Expos

Collaborating organisations