Richard Mosse / The Enclave by Jack Shainman Gallery

In this video for Jack Shainman Gallery artist and photographer Richard Mosse about his his last film, The Enclave (2013). This monumental piece, for the Irish pavillon at the 55th Venice Biennale 2013, is now currently on view at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. The Enclave, a major six-channel video installation, is the culmination of Mosse’s work in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Mosse was drawn to eastern Congo because of the inherent problems of representing its cancerous cycle of war. Struck by the absence of a concrete trace of the conflict on the landscape, Mosse documented rebel enclaves and sites of human rights violations in a way which attempts to overturn traditional realism, and see beneath the surface. Using an extinct type of infrared film once employed by the military to detect camouflaged installations from the air, Mosse renders “The Heart of Darkness” in irradiating Technicolor. With a significantly slower life than images constructed by photojournalism, Mosse’s highly aesthetic approach considers problematic imagery from an oblique angle that strategically allows a different temporality in seeing. Mosse embraces the infrared medium’s subtle shift in wavelength in an attempt to challenge documentary photography, and engage with the unseen, hidden and intangible aspects of eastern Congo’s situation – a tragically overlooked conflict in which 5.4 million people have died of war related causes since 1998.

The Enclave

39 minutes 25 seconds

16mm infrared film transferred to HD video

Produced in North and South Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 2012-2013

Director / Producer – Richard Mosse

Cinematographer / Editor – Trevor Tweeten

Composer / Sound Designer – Ben Frost

Production Assistant – John Holten

Colourist – Jerome Thelia

Copywrite 2014 Jack Shainman Gallery. All Rights Reserved.

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