Archive

Powwow

Mixed media on canvas boards and moving-image work
2001–2009

Powwow began in January 2001, on the day of George W. Bush's inauguration as President of the United States.

Curious about the relationship between political leadership and individual responsibility, I telephoned the White House and asked if I could speak to the newly inaugurated President. Unsurprisingly he was unavailable, but I was invited to leave a voicemail. I asked him to look after the planet and not start any wars.

Shortly afterwards the United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. Looking at a newspaper photograph of Bush delivering a speech, I became interested not simply in the individual, but in the public performance of political power itself. I made a toner transfer of the image onto a small canvas board. Almost immediately I realised the project could not stop with one politician. If the work was to say anything meaningful it would have to include every national leader in the world — not only presidents, but prime ministers, monarchs, military rulers and dictators. The subject was not personality but the office of power.

The project became a daily discipline of research. As I worked my way around the world, leaders were voted out of office, overthrown, resigned or died. Rather than begin a new painting, I transferred each successor directly over the image of their predecessor. The process gradually buried earlier leaders beneath those who followed.

The transfer process itself became central to the work. Toner transfers made with acrylic gel inevitably lose fragments of the printed image, while the white areas of the original photograph disappear completely. As successive portraits accumulated, each panel developed into a dense palimpsest in which faces dissolved into one another, producing ghost-like images that reflected the instability and continual transition of political power.

The accumulating layers also resisted simple political interpretation. A panel in which a single face remains clearly visible might represent a dictator who has held power for decades, but it could equally depict a popular democratic leader repeatedly returned to office through elections. Likewise, the darkest and most densely layered panels are not necessarily records of political instability. They may instead reflect the regular and peaceful transfer of power within a healthy democracy. The work avoids assigning moral value to the images, allowing the visual consequences of political succession to emerge through the process itself.

Powwow was first exhibited in 2007 as part of Conflict at 20:21 Visual Arts Centre, where Emma Cocker wrote the accompanying critical essay.

Film

The paintings later became the basis of a moving-image work. Each panel was digitally scanned and sequenced so that one leader slowly dissolved into the next. The soundtrack combined simultaneous readings of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in seven languages associated with the United Nations, creating a layered chorus of voices in which individual languages became inseparable while remaining collectively present.

Powwow
Moving-image work by Richard Bartle

In 2009 Sheffield Contemporary Arts Forum commissioned the video work from the original Powwow assemblage for inclusion in the Sheffield Pavilion project at the 11th Istanbul Biennial.

The film premiered at the 11th Istanbul Biennial in 2009 as part of the Sheffield Pavilion, before being screened internationally.

Screenings
11th Istanbul Biennial · 2009 · Istanbul
Pan-demonium · 2009 · AC Institute, New York
Object Image, led by Fatoş Üstek · 2010 · no.w.here, London
Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival · 2010 · Denmark
Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival · 2010 · Czech Republic