In Possession of a Picture, or, what is and what is to take place hereafter
As part of AGENCY: The Work of Artists, Montalvo presents in its Project Space, In Possession of a Picture (2008), by frequent collaborators, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne. Their installation consists of a set of 50 photographic diptychs based on incidents in which people have been stopped or detained for photographing or videotaping particular sites in the USA (bridges, casinos, banks, landmarks, tourist attractions, etc.), or in which people were detained for other reasons and subsequently found to be in possession of videotapes or photographs of particular sites. The images in question are not publicly available; we don’t know what they look like and we do not have access to them. We know only that there were incidents and that some pictures were taken.
Each diptych references a particular incident. The site itself—Disneyland, downtown Atlanta, the J.P. Morgan Chase building in Dallas, and so on—is represented by an image selected from the millions of available pictures circulating on the world wide web. The unavailable image—the picture that someone was found to be in possession of—is presented as an empty rectangle with a simple black border. The empty image defines a space into which we can project anything—the assumption that evil is being plotted against the sites, our beliefs about what these sites represent, and our imagining of their future disappearance through potential acts of terrorism.
In addition to their installation In Possession of a Picture, on March 19 Meltzer and Thorne screen their latest film This World, Then Another, an observational documentary about students in Al-Zahra Mosque Qur’an School for Girls and Women in Damascus, Syria, as well as their award-winning film, We Will Live to See These Things (2009), shot over a tumultuous two year residence in Damascus. The screening is followed by a Public Conversation with the artists and a response by Saba Mahmood, Associate Professor of Social Cultural Anthropology at UC Berkeley.
