Underdeveloped

Over the course of three exhibitions at Garage Rotterdam, the curators Reza Afisina and reinaart vanhoe revisit the term underdeveloped – exploring diverse forms of art­-practice and working methods. The term underdeveloped is among others inspired by the film development process – in which images come out over­-or­underdeveloped. The word refers as well to overdeveloped notions of education, quality and value.

Reza Afisina and vanhoe’s under­standing of an art-practice is one of building together instead of a focus on personal excellence. Through gather­ings, re­-modeling and collective working methods taking place live at Garage Rotterdam, Afisina and vanhoe aim to create a space where artists can connect their ideas and experiences with the input of visitors.

The first Underdeveloped exhibition addresses social and cultural urgencies in Rotterdam, using the space of Garage Rotterdam and the online platform lumbung.space as a digital living room and publishing tool for visitors to share both processes and outcomes with. Underdeveloped aims to build a connected chain of events, emphasizing community and development over definitions or conclusions.

ESSAY BYE REZA AFISINA AND REINAART VANHOE

Underdeveloped
let’s name the series ‘underdeveloped’ you said to me accompanied with a grin/smile. I was a bit surprised but of course I know where it came from. In 2011 we curated an exhibition under this as part of FLESH – OK. Video, Jakarta International Bi-annual Video Festival.

Underdeveloped
Growing up as a photographers/artists in a different era (80ties/90ties) the term underdeveloped brought both confusion and stress. First and far most
the words ‘undeveloped world’ and ‘developed world’ were frequently used in the media, in documentary photography, schoolbooks and in churches. The distinction between both felt uncomfortable but was also believed as a given.

We, in Waregem, felt blessed to live on this part of the world and the only thing we can do for the other part is feeling compassion while believing that the underdeveloped world was just but unlucky to be underdeveloped and living in pre-modern conditions (lacking knowledge, being not ready yet for the modernization etc.). And these terms ‘(under)developed’ are still in full function in my/our own bodies although we know better.

Feelings of superiority are still there; ways of valuing are still at play. A humanist worldview persists popping up as if there exist a worldview for which the West is best geared to interpret and act upon. Where humanist ideas not only give us a feeling of caring for the world but also appoints certain people a superiority in knowing. Framing the underdeveloped countries as the savage, the not yet grown up puts them in the role of: the ones needed to be helped, the ones we should not take seriously.

Though the underdeveloped notion of dealing with the realities of the worlds natures lays in many of our bodies. The so-called properly educated once are so to say the underdeveloped ones who try to drag others into it. How to be proactively humble in understanding the contemporary world as savage as not yet developed? With it’s under/overdeveloped notions of value, education, economy and such. Secondly underdeveloped was a term in the photo/film world. Developing (negative) film to be able to process images into visible photos. When there was no digital film yet we developed films ourselves in developing tanks. There was an uncertainty whether the film was under- over- or well- developed enough. We could adjust the time of developing film according to the strategy of grain or contrast. A film could come out over- or underdeveloped. As such you could risk that the images became pretty vague and you couldn’t see barely anything on the negatives.

The process of developing with developer, stop and fixer often related for me to the notion of the developed and underdeveloped world. Another aspect was that the documentary photography we learned at school dealt about Western photographers travelling the world to portray or objectify the world and often portraying the so-called vulnerable, to underdeveloped ones.

Overdeveloped industry of image-making:
These days we think of the impact of the industry on image-making both by producing constant innovations and tools and its regime on distribution of images. Camera’s these days are so over-developed that making pictures became reasonable easy to make. Platforms to share these pictures are fighting each other over hyper attentions. There is an over exposure on platforms to share these pictures and they are fighting each other over for luring users in. Is the user a maker or a consumer, what is the overdeveloped apparatus of tools giving us back,

underdeveloped understanding:
of being together, of public space, of education, of farming, health, …