Joanna Wright with Taloi Havini
The Best Tools I Have Are My Eyes
Processes of extraction and exploitation are as ubiquitous in the systems and technologies which produce our visual culture as they are in the machinery of war and colonisation. This idea recurs in the presentations of the Artes Mundi 10 artists, and nowhere moreso than in the work of Taloi Havini, the recently announced winner of the AM10 prize. As the final instalment of the AM10 journal, we’re proud to present a text by Ynys Môn-based documentary filmmaker and researcher Joanna Wright, for which she initiated a dialogue with Havini, having been struck by her work at Mostyn, a gallery Joanna grew up going to. Their conversation is far-reaching, illuminating both artists’ long-term engagements with ethically explosive questions of seeing and being seen – visualising and being visualised – and both the difficulty and necessity of maintaining your own communities, artistic and otherwise, when the paths presented are so often insufficient.
Mae prosesau o echdyniad ac ecsbloetiaeth yr un mor greiddiol i’r systemau a’r technolegau sy’n cynhyrchu diwylliant weledol ag i beirianwaith rhyfel a choloneiddio. Dyma un o linynnau cyson Artes Mundi 10, yn enwedig yng ngwaith Taloi Havini, a gyhoeddwyd fel enillydd gwobr AM10 yn ddiweddar. Fel y comisiwn olaf yn y gyfres hon o ysgrifau’n ymateb i’r rhaglen, dyma ddarn gan Joanna Wright, ymchwilydd a gwneuthurwr ffilmiau dogfen o Ynys Môn, a gychwynnodd sgwrs gyda Taloi Havini ar ôl gweld ei gwaith yn Mostyn, yr oriel tyfodd fyny’n ymweld â hi. Mae eu sgwrs bell-gyrhaeddol yn amlygu astudiaethau hir-dymor y ddwy artist o chymlethdod moesol y strwythurau sy’n ein galluogi i weld a chael ein gweld, i ddelweddu a dod yn ddelwedd, yn ogystal â pha mor anodd ac angenrheidiol yw ffurfio cymuned wrth weithio o fewn strwythurau sydd bron â mynnu cyfaddawdu hygrededd.
JW: I’ve been reading around the history of the drone, looking around how the drone is deployed in topography surveillance, and reading corporate drone brochures, where the language is quite extraordinary; all these claims for a view with no distortion. And this is an interest within my own practice: does the development of technology mean that somehow our understanding of the world is perfected, or is it actually the opposite.
TH: I think there is a danger. The idea that the more you advance the technology, you become more impotent. We are becoming quite useless as humans, our reliance on artificial intelligence. I will never forget when I said to a geologist, “you must use very high end tools when you go to find minerals and things,” and he said “the best tools I have are my eyes.”
Joanna Wright is a documentary maker, artist and creative producer based in Llanedwen, Ynys Môn. She is currently an artist research fellow at MIT Open Documentary Lab Co-Creation Studio.
Artist, gwneuthurwr dogfen a chynhychydd creadigol yw Joanna Wright, sy’n byw yn Llanedwen, Ynys Môn. Mae’n artist-gymrawd ymchwil gyda Co-Creation Studio yr Open Documentary Lab yn MIT.