2018
This fifth issue of the TRACES fanzine is a milestone, marking the midterm of our collaborative research project. It has been conceived as a “beacon”. Rather than a dictionary, a glossary, or a thesaurus (which are meant to provide ‘definitions’), this fanzine has been understood as a tool that brings together selected key concepts emerging from and/or grounding the TRACES project.
Forward by Francesca Lanz.
This issue presents the essay “Squaring The Circle: Some thoughts on tracing the remains of Long Kesh/Maze prison in Northern Ireland” by Martin Krenn and Aisling O’Beirn. “The Circle” is a term that is commonly used for an area in the “H Blocks” of the former prison Long Kesh/Maze that contained the administrative hub and was continually surveyed using CCTV. Although the prison shut its gates nearly 20 years ago (2000s), the surveillance of The Circle continues to be “broadcast” by a surveillance box monitor, that is one example of infrastructural hardware which made it past the prison gates after its closure. Many other objects and artefacts from the prison still survive, despite much of it being demolished in 2013. As well as artefacts that were once part of the fabric or administration of the prison, artworks made in the prison also exist.
The dialogical art project Transforming Long Kesh/Maze (TRACES CCP5) investigates the material culture of the Maze/Long Kesh site based on collaboration and dialogue.
Many institutions around the world hold collections of human remains. The most contentious of these were gathered during colonial periods where indigenous communities had ancestral remains traded, stolen or gifted to collectors. The TRACES Dead Images project has gathered together voices which need to be heard from across the world, voices of contemporary indigenous people, scholars, curators, artists and members of the public. The vehicle for the dialogue is a panoramic photograph by Tal Adler, depicting the human remains of ancestors held in the Natural History Museum of Vienna.
Forward by June Jones.