Staging Disorder

‘Staging Disorder’ is an exhibition of photography, sound and moving image exploring the contemporary representation of the real in relation to modern conflict.

Curated by Christopher Stewart and Esther Teichmann, the exhibition is initiated and supported by Karin Askham, Dean of the School of Media.

'Staging Disorder' includes selected images from seven photographic series that were made independently of each other in the first decade of the new millennium: Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s ‘Chicago’, Geissler/Sann's 'personal kill', Claudio Hils’ ‘Red Land Blue Land’, An-My Lê’s ’29 Palms’, Richard Mosse’s ‘Airside’, Sarah Pickering’s ‘Public Order’ and Christopher Stewart’s ‘Kill House’.

These artists portray mock domestic rooms, aircraft, houses, streets and whole fake towns designed as military and civilian architectural simulations in preparation for real and imagined future conflicts across the globe. Their work poses questions about the nature of truth as it manifests itself in current photographic practice.

These themes are also extended throughout the LCC gallery spaces in work by sound artists from UAL’s Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) research centre. CRiSAP artists Cathy Lane, Angus Carlyle (and his collaborator, the anthropologist Rupert Cox), David Toop and Peter Cusack add a multi-dimensional resonance to the photographic works with sound and moving image installations and written texts.

The show coincided with a symposium on 27 January 2015 featuring speakers Sarah Pickering, Beate Geissler (Geissler/Sann), Alexandra Stara, Paul Lowe, Jennifer Good, Paul Tebbs, Pratap Rughani, Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle.