Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary: Allan Sekula “Okeanos”

Vienna, February 21–May 14, 2017, http://www.tba21.org

Oceans as a metaphor for the immateriality and fluidity of labor in global capitalism – this could be the tagline of the exhibition. Allan Sekula was from the 1960’ generation, and kept his critical leftist position throughout his career as an artist employed in academia. His territory of choice were the oceans, the fluid space between continents. Within this environment, he traced the effects of capitalism onto the ecosystems in a broader sense of the word – sometimes the object of his investigation might indeed be the actual ecosystem impacted by an oil spill, resulting from the capitalism-induced “economic necessity” of moving large amounts of oil across the globe, at other times it may be the symbolic ecosystem – the economy – of ship crews, container terminal workers and colonial enclaves.

Working primarily in the medium of photography, Sekula seemed to struggle with the old photographic dilemma how to picture the invisible relationships that shape our material world. Therefore, his photographs often come accompanied by rather long text hovering between descriptive and poetic.

The exhibition presented a balanced selection of media: two large projections, photographic prints, a projected slideshow and a lot of books. The book format was very suitable for Sekula’s work. The exhibition itself was minutely installed and thought through. One large and very long video (Lottery of the Sea, 2006, 179 min.) served as a central reference point. The still prints related to locations and events that could be seen in the film and thus served as mutual footnotes to each other, offering different entry points into the same material. Nevertheless, it was not an easy exhibition. By casually walking through, one could hardly get anything else than a superficial feeling that this is something about ships, ports and the sea as the title already suggested. It required more time and study, by reverting to the books on site, to become familiar the relationships Sekula attempted to convey.

Ultimately, one could not avoid the reflection, in the line of inquiry of Sekula himself, on the significance of the fact that an artist, working for most of his life in academia, indirectly funded by the industrial-military complex, produces work that is critical of the industrial-military complex. This critical work is then acquired into the collection of a descendant of the Thyssen family, a typical representative of the European industrial-military complex with a long tradition in banking, steel and industrial production, including shipbuilding. Is this the closing of a “natural” cycle, a happy end or bitter irony?