Allan Sekula
Aerospace Folktales, 1973
Photo-audio-installation
51 black-and-white photographs, baryta paper (prints 1984),
48 photographs 14,8 x 22,4 cm each and 3 photographs
22,4 x 14,8 cm each, mostly paired in 23 frames,
framed 55,9 x 71,5 cm each
3 red canvas director’s chairs, 6 potted fan palms,
3 simultanous, not sychronized sound recordings,
total duration 17 min, 21 min and 23 min
Edition 1/2
Introductory Note
(Text excerpts from Photography Against the Grain, 1984)
In its original version, Aerospace Folktales was a bit like a disassembled
movie. The work was made up of three separate narrative elements:
images, a spoken “sound track,” and a written commentary.
The images consisted of 142 photographic prints and titles grouped
into subordinate narrative sequences. The “sound track” consisted of
four conversations, ranging in form from polemic to anecdote. The
sound track was seventy-five minutes long and played continuously in
a small room adjoining the larger exhibition space. On another occasion,
the tape played from behind a large potted plant. The written commentary
was displayed at the end of the photographic sequence, and
constituted the self-implication of the artist.
The later version evolved out of informal presentations of the work
using two slide projectors. The general narrative flow of the original
was maintained, although individual sequences have been shortened
considerably. The four conversations have been reduced by two. (AS)
Interview with the Engineer
... Perhaps the major difficulty that I have encountered is being able to
contact people who might have knowledge of positions which you
could fill. Many times, you were sidetracked by receptionists, office
personnel, clerical staff, and so forth, especially if you visited a corporation
or business establishment or government agency. Letter writing
is not as effective either, because many times people would not take
the time to thoroughly scrutinize and evaluate the potential of a man’s
background. And they would maybe read one or two sentences, and
jump at a conclusion, “This isn’t the person we want,” and throw it in
the wastebasket, or file it. ...
There is a demoralizing reaction on the part of the individual experiencing
unemployment. At first, he might feel very confident that he has
something that will impress a potential employer. And as time goes on
and when he is faced with refusal after refusal, he begins to doubt, and
then that doubt turns into what you might call a discouragement. You
just don’t care whether you are going to continue on any more looking
for a job—it is a futile waste of time. And it takes a terrific amount of
persistence, you might say, or call it intestinal fortitude. ...
What worries me more than anything else is the fact that we are deemphasizing
technological supremacy, we are ignoring completely the
necessity of research and development, we are coasting along on the
know-how which has developed over a period of years; but it is only a
question of when we are going to run out of information. We constantly
are being challenged for foreign competition, and it is only a matter of
time before that competition may stifle our technological superiority.
Many of them are borrowing our industrial know-how, compressing into
a few years what took us decades to gain.
Industry is only interested, it seems, in profit-producing activity.
Today, anything directed toward information, that does not produce a
tangible entity, is anathema, as far as industry is concerned. They don’t
want to talk about research. They’re interested in production for production’s
sake: “How much? How many dollars will this bring in?”
This can be fatal, economically. Our military supremacy, our economic
superiority, and even our emotional stability can be seriously threatened
by this type of philosophy. ...
Interview with the Engineer’s Wife
... Oh, he goes through his spells of being disturbed and upset, but
not as much as he would if it had been unexpected. He anticipated it,
and saw it coming, and felt we were going to have this layoff: He felt, I
don’t know why he knew it, but he wasn’t surprised. I think he was a
little chagrined that for the first time in his life, well, he’d always been
able to sell himself. He could always, when he got into an interview,
and got to talk to somebody, he could make a good impression, he
could convince them that he was doing something. But what he ran
into was this screening out, this shunting people aside.
There’s this attitude, if a man is out of a job, there’s something
wrong with him. ... The standard reaction was, “Well, you’re too proud
to take something, you set your standards too high; if it were me, I
wouldn’t be without money, I’d take the first job that comes along.”
We heard that over and over again, “You’re putting too high a price on
your services. You gotta bend, you gotta bend.”...
Only for a short period of time during the space race—building the
missiles, getting the Saturn up there—that’s when industry began to
pay men to think. ...
I grew up with seniority. Lived in a railroad town, and there was a
definite hierarchy of seniority in the railroad. You had a position based
on your length of service. And when there was a layoff; which came
fairly frequently, because it was a seasonal job—when the lakes froze,
the railroads stopped running, only a few trains went, instead of the
rush-rush of summer season and spring—there would be a certain
number of railroad men who would be laid off during the winter and
have to survive as best they could, because there was no relief; no
social security, no unemployment then.
That was one reason that people had their little farms that help carry
them over. The farms weren’t very productive, but at least there was
milk, vegetables, and things that they could live on. Some of them had
little businesses that their wives ran, like a corner grocery store. There
was always some kind of extra thing they did to make money, in addition
to their job during the layoff times. But I can remember hearing
them say, “I was bumped”—railroad slang for the fact that when the
layoff came, somebody with more seniority than you took your job, and
you either bumped the man below you or you just kept right on going. I
think the analogy comes from switching the train, just as you bump the
car off, so you were the one who was bumped off the end of the train.
…
A Commentary
… my father built a middle class submarine because he was sailing
in a blue-collar ocean and he didn’t want the sharks to eat his kids
i kept getting that feeling when i went back there with my camera
the apartment was a submarine it was underwater it was a cave with
conical lamps in every corner we were stuck in the middle of the
maginot line we had an airforce to protect us a dozen plastic fighter
planes he had even encouraged us to build the models i mean being
an aerospace engineer he had a certain affection for airplanes he had
always wanted to be a pilot when he was a kid but plastic airplanes
were always more encouraged than plastic dragsters the models were
totems in some kind of mad hierarchy that rated engineers higher than
mechanics …
and so everything had its place everything had its order i mean it
was his only defense los angeles was madness it was anarchy it was
cancer he really believed that and he had to make a stand somewhere
and so when he would direct his children to brush the living room rug
and straighten the lamps it was like his vision of armies of ghetto kids
being deployed to clean up watts it was like marching through east la
replacing the barrio with an architect’s vision of high-security suburban
malls it was a holding action he was caught in the middle ...
my father's image of crisis is ahistorical he struggles in the present
he doesn't speculate he doesn't compare past and present condition if he
were to compare past and present condition if he were to ask himself how
upwardly mobile he's been he'd have to admit a setback of sorts i mean
after two and a half years of unemployment he managed to land the same
job he held sixteen years ago doing process chemistry for the air force
now my mother views the world very differently at least when she
talks to a tape recorder she doesn’t make speeches she delivers anecdotes
she incises fragments of past history to provide context for some
present moment i wonder why she’s able to think more historically
than my father i wonder if her existence at one remove from the
management produced image of the white-collar technician her support
role her unpaid labor that provides management with well-fed
well-cared-for labor forty hours a week her rearing of future white-collar
technicians has somehow left her history intact ...
so i have written down some things so you will understand what i
am talking about so you won’t think i’m documenting things for the
love of documenting things obviously i am not national geographic
looking for native customs or alligators i’m not trying to discover
my self i am not trying to present you with a record of my anguished
investigations this material is interesting only insofar as it is social
material i do not think that i can provide you with an object with no
relation other than an art relation to your world...
(Allan Sekula)
GF0030028.00.0-2003
select
share