Output details

Secretion, 2012. Video installation, colour, sound. Duration 20 mins.

Secretion was commissioned by dOCUMENTA Gmbh (€60,000) following an invitation from the artistic director Carolyn Christov-Barakgiev to participate in dOCUMENTA(13), which was held in Kassel, Germany from 9 June -16 September 2012. On an early research visit to Kassel in 2010, Doherty was introduced to the former monastery at Breitenau, a forced labour camp during the Nazi era, and a site that embodied the aim of dOCUMENTA(13) to engage with place and history. Further investigation into the extensive network of concentration and forced labour camps throughout Germany included a visit to Dachau, one of the places photographed by Lee Miller, as an embedded war photographer in early 1945. Further research into Miller’s archive confirmed the unchanged nature of many of the places that she photographed in 1945 and how they look today. The research was process led and responsive to these findings in locations where the possibilities of small, untold stories existed alongside the bigger historical narratives. This led to the principle research question; how can video be used effectively to interrogate a correlation between the contemporary landscape and collective memory? Secretion speculates about the possibilities of lost and forgotten narratives, located somewhere between recent history and a near future. Drawing on the sci-fi genre to create a vision of a dystopian future, Secretion explores the potential of this genre to engage with the landscape as it looks today but also as a repository of the memories of past experiences and our apprehension about the future. Secretion was acquired by the German Government as part of the art collection of the city of Kassel and is currently on permanent display in Neue Galerie, Kassel. Secretion has also been shown at SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen in 2012 and at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2013.