Sociological Studies - a programme of videos by Northern Irish and Basque artists in Donostia

Front Line Compilation, the spring-summer programme that DAE is devoting to the artistic get-together between the North of Ireland and the Basque Country goes on. On the 12th and 13th of April the second batch of activities was presented in the Kutxa Hall in Donostia as a mixed programme, which is in keeping with the nature of this project in which a commitment to documenting a specific socio-political reality is combined with artistic reflections: on the one hand, a talk by Karen Downey, the head of the photography archive "Belfast Exposed", part of whose collections were exhibited at the Cultural Centre in Egia and on the other, a screening of videos by five Northern Irish artists and three Basque ones.

The 11 videos that were screened for 50 minutes share certain formal aspects: documentary and pop video techniques, music, punk DIY-style flawed finish, loops... However, unifying factors aside, the audience soon succumbs to the temptation to draw stereotypes such as "over here, a Guinness and a red-haired Paddy; over there, a txakoli and Patxi with a txapela". So, the first names to emerge are, of course, Willie Doherty and Txomin Badiola. However, if the connection between Badiola and the "Basque team" (Iñaki Gramendia, Jon Mikel Euba, Inazio Escudero) is obvious, the Irish side: (Miriam de Burca, Phil Collins, Daniel Jewesbury, Seamus Harahan and Valerie Smyth,) have distanced themselves more explicitly from any links with "the most famous artist who talks about the troubles".

In the absence of any agreement, resort to a sociological exercise: if an urban portrait of the working-class districts of Belfast is the main theme of the Northern Irish, the teenage gang is at the heart of Euba and Garmendia's work. Two principles, the political conflict as a socio-economic conflict, on the one hand, and the gang as a structure that provides social cohesion, on the other, that help to understand what distinguishes some from the others.

Harahan, Smyth and Jewesbury provide a soundtrack for Belfast. The street scenes taken from a window and their unlikely soundtrack by Harahan, a Belfast Londoner, contain the humour and the melancholy drenched in alcohol that are classic features of the Irish bard.

In "Taja y sus amigos", a group on a piece of open ground mix up liquids (coca-cola, milk...) in bottles that look like Molotov cocktails. The rules of group dynamics operate in a surprising way in Garmendia's narrative: it starts with the group as shy performers who have their eye more on the camera and the instructions that they are receiving; it ends with the same group absorbed in their mission and oblivious to the camera. In a wood two hooded men paint the windows of a black Panda in "Gatika doble final". The wood, car and evasive group action are once again the elements that make up Euba's universe.

And, to finish off, two eccentric videos from a sociological viewpoint: Escudero, an expert in auto-sabotage, shows absurd situations in a drifting narrative with music in the background. The documentary medium enables Collins to investigate the idea of conflict. In "Everything is a cut away" the screen is split in two: on the left, an interview with a wounded child refugee in Skopje; on the right, street scenes in Sarajevo... eleven videos for eleven comparative sociological studies.

PERPETUATING SYMBOLS
En 2008 Belfast will be the European cultural capital. The landscape of the city centre is already making preparations for a facelift. Karen Downey, the head of Belfast Exposed, thinks that little will change for the residents in working-class districts. According to Downey, the institutions behind Belfast'08 are the same ones that are responsible for perpetuating the symbols of divisions and fortifications in the city: the peace lines, these walls that separate Catholic and Protestant districts that the city council is still putting up. Their jagged profile will continue to stand out against the harsh gloom.

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