Frontiers | Marcel Daniels
5 - 15 December 2012
Frontiers
Take a virtual journey to any
location in the world [1]
Google Earth offers its users the opportunity to virtually travel to remote locations across the globe, promising to make the most far off destinations accessible through satellite technology—the work of Google’s fleet of camera equipped cars combined with the power of the internet. Google Earth is just one of the many vehicles through which the ideal of the internet as a means to connect the whole world is coming true.
Yet for all the accessibility and interconnectivity that the internet provides, the digital divide is a highly concerning offshoot. The gap between those who have access to the internet and those who don’t is enormous, and as the conquerors write history, those with access to and command over the digital sphere, control knowledge and meaning. Of course, the internet allows ordinary people to access various sources of information and actively contribute their own content, but in many ways it simultaneously re-affirms existing power balances. It is precisely this paradox that Marcel Daniels considers in Frontiers.
Daniels’ artistic practice is informed by a postcolonial position and in previous work he has considered the complexities and ambiguities of the contemporary racial and cultural hybrid. Daniels takes as a starting point his own South African heritage coupled with his experiences of diaspora to creatively and critically investigate ideas about identity, ethnicity and cultural difference. In SO WE TOo (2010) Daniels constructed a small-scale wax replica of the townships outside of Cape Town, South Africa. In Frontiers, Daniels is again looking at these township communities, however this time he is considering their digital representation in Google Earth’s Street View.
Daniels used Street View to navigate around the outskirts of Lavender Hills, Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain (all in Cape Flats) and Gugelthu, South Africa. The Cape Flats and Gugelthu are sprawling areas of poverty stricken communities within and on the outskirts of Cape Town that were created under South Africa’s apartheid government. In the 1950s, the Group Areas Act segregated urban areas, designating them to whites or non-whites, with the most developed areas were designated to white people. This meant non-whites living in Cape Town were forced into townships and government housing on the fringes of the city.
South Africa is one of the only African countries to be available on Google’s Street View, but as Daniels’ virtual explorations discovered, you can’t actually navigate through these shanty towns. Google Earth allows you to travel down highways and major roads adjacent to these communities, but it is impossible to travel within them. Daniels’ virtual explorations demonstrate that divisions exist even in digital representations of the world.
The screen captures taken by Daniels are blurred and skewed, an effect created by Google Earth’s rendering of the images. In some cases, what is assumedly Google Earth’s attempt to blur faces to protect people’s anonymity, results in parts of the image also being blurred and obscured by a mistake in the facial recognition technology. These glitches (occurring on objects ranging from portable toilets to an advertising image of KFC’s Colonel Sanders) draw further attention to the problems of these representations. In the largest work within the exhibition, As Sure As God Made Little Green Apples (2012), Daniels transposes a screen shot taken in Street View of Khayelitsha onto a banner. In this work, the distorted perspectives of the Google Earth image are more obvious and the viewer is given the opportunity to consider the validity of the representation. The grid painted on the gallery floor suggests issues of obscurity; the optical illusion creating a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ affect. If you weren’t aware it was there, it could be easily overlooked.
Back in the real world, these townships are at risk of being made physically invisible. During the Soccer World Cup in 2013, walls were constructed between the highway and various shanty towns to ensure that international visitors to the World Cup would not be able to see this side of South Africa [2]. Our inability to render these images in virtual travel is similar to encountering this physical wall; access is denied and the truth is hidden from view.
Amy-Clare McCarthy
Co-Director | Current Projects
1 Google Earth. Get the world’s geographic information at your fingertips. http://www.google.com/earth/index.html (accessed November 23, 2012).
2 Beinart, W. and S. DuBow. 1995. Segregation and apartheid in twentieth century South Africa. London: Routledge.
Yet for all the accessibility and interconnectivity that the internet provides, the digital divide is a highly concerning offshoot. The gap between those who have access to the internet and those who don’t is enormous, and as the conquerors write history, those with access to and command over the digital sphere, control knowledge and meaning. Of course, the internet allows ordinary people to access various sources of information and actively contribute their own content, but in many ways it simultaneously re-affirms existing power balances. It is precisely this paradox that Marcel Daniels considers in Frontiers.
Daniels’ artistic practice is informed by a postcolonial position and in previous work he has considered the complexities and ambiguities of the contemporary racial and cultural hybrid. Daniels takes as a starting point his own South African heritage coupled with his experiences of diaspora to creatively and critically investigate ideas about identity, ethnicity and cultural difference. In SO WE TOo (2010) Daniels constructed a small-scale wax replica of the townships outside of Cape Town, South Africa. In Frontiers, Daniels is again looking at these township communities, however this time he is considering their digital representation in Google Earth’s Street View.
Daniels used Street View to navigate around the outskirts of Lavender Hills, Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain (all in Cape Flats) and Gugelthu, South Africa. The Cape Flats and Gugelthu are sprawling areas of poverty stricken communities within and on the outskirts of Cape Town that were created under South Africa’s apartheid government. In the 1950s, the Group Areas Act segregated urban areas, designating them to whites or non-whites, with the most developed areas were designated to white people. This meant non-whites living in Cape Town were forced into townships and government housing on the fringes of the city.
South Africa is one of the only African countries to be available on Google’s Street View, but as Daniels’ virtual explorations discovered, you can’t actually navigate through these shanty towns. Google Earth allows you to travel down highways and major roads adjacent to these communities, but it is impossible to travel within them. Daniels’ virtual explorations demonstrate that divisions exist even in digital representations of the world.
The screen captures taken by Daniels are blurred and skewed, an effect created by Google Earth’s rendering of the images. In some cases, what is assumedly Google Earth’s attempt to blur faces to protect people’s anonymity, results in parts of the image also being blurred and obscured by a mistake in the facial recognition technology. These glitches (occurring on objects ranging from portable toilets to an advertising image of KFC’s Colonel Sanders) draw further attention to the problems of these representations. In the largest work within the exhibition, As Sure As God Made Little Green Apples (2012), Daniels transposes a screen shot taken in Street View of Khayelitsha onto a banner. In this work, the distorted perspectives of the Google Earth image are more obvious and the viewer is given the opportunity to consider the validity of the representation. The grid painted on the gallery floor suggests issues of obscurity; the optical illusion creating a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ affect. If you weren’t aware it was there, it could be easily overlooked.
Back in the real world, these townships are at risk of being made physically invisible. During the Soccer World Cup in 2013, walls were constructed between the highway and various shanty towns to ensure that international visitors to the World Cup would not be able to see this side of South Africa [2]. Our inability to render these images in virtual travel is similar to encountering this physical wall; access is denied and the truth is hidden from view.
Amy-Clare McCarthy
Co-Director | Current Projects
1 Google Earth. Get the world’s geographic information at your fingertips. http://www.google.com/earth/index.html (accessed November 23, 2012).
2 Beinart, W. and S. DuBow. 1995. Segregation and apartheid in twentieth century South Africa. London: Routledge.