2001, video, 62’, directed by Mike Figgis, Co-Commissioned by Artangel and Channel 4.
“A piece of social history re-lived, not re-enacted.” Michael Morris, co-director of Artangel[1]
Born in London in 1966, Jeremy Deller has produced, directed and curated numerous projects over the years, and is a true inter- and multidisciplinary artist. He collaborates with a wide range of experts and scientists to create exciting new scientific and artistic transgressions. He typically creates films, installations, performances and re-enactments that resonate sensitively with the specific perspectives and concerns of different social groups.
Actions dealing with social issues or so-called artistic re-enactments are not a new concept; the storming of the Winter Palace, which was re-enacted for filming,[2] can be considered as such, as can the re-enactment of the revolutionary Romanian TV and the re-enactment of the Milgram experiment.[3] Furthermore, we can also mention the religious mystery plays and, of course, an extremely rich spectrum of re-enactments can be found in theatre and film. In the alternative exploration and analysis of history, there is a particularly distinctive national tradition in Britain. The hobby-like (social) practice of thousands of amateur archaeologists exploring their past, the traces of the Romans or King Arthur’s castle in their back gardens, is spreading with incredible popularity. When they are not researching, they are recalling it in the form of various heritage events or enjoying one of the countless television programmes on the subject. What we see is a localised and grassroots reliving and re-enactment of a position of world power, of a significant and glorious past, which typically does not address issues of conscience, such as the intergenerational tragedies and traumas of colonialism.
The 1980s saw a major change of era in western societies. Industrial preference ended even within post-Fordist economies, and a type of economy started to emerge based essentially on the service sector, which we can read about in Castells’ writings on spaces of flows and information societies.[4] Global economic processes have emerged, new priorities have emerged, and the issues of sustainable development and environmental protection have become increasingly pressing. The focus has shifted from industrial production, particularly in heavy industry, to the tertiary sector. The world of information technology, the internet and virtuality has also become an essential tool in socioeconomic practices. These processes have changed not only urban space and urbanisation trends, but also the structure of society. Like all major social changes, this transformation was accompanied by major conflicts, and this was no different in Britain. The British miners’ strike of 1984 began in response to the Thatcher government’s economic policy of structural change.
The English miners’ strike for their workplaces, accompanied by clashes with the police, and the negotiations with the government to stave off pit closures lasted for over a year. The scene of the most serious clash was the village of Orgreave on 18 June 1984. The battle started on a field near the plant and came to a head when a mounted police charge swept through the village. Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave evokes this event with the help of contemporary participants and hired extras. What makes his work especially important is that he asked the participants of the ‘battle’, i.e. the miners and police who since then have been living together, to re-enact the events of sixteen years before, which was then filmed. The filmmakers incorporated the dramatic photographs of the actual 1984 events into the re-enacted scenes shot in 2001 and added moving personal testimonies. The 800-strong cast was directed by Howard Giles, a historical reconstruction expert and head of special events for English Heritage. In many ways, the creative process itself is unusual, as neither the event nor the film was directed by Deller, although he is credited as the creator. Deller’s status is made even more ambiguous by the fact that he serves simultaneously as actor, expert(?) and (re)creator of the battle. This ambiguity is intensified by the genre of the work, which is not an art film but a film optimised for TV and produced for BBC Channel 4.[5]
Whereas the English historical hobby primarily concerns art lovers, Deller’s re-enactment features local residents and participants in the former battle (with added extras); however, this is not the most important difference between the two. While the first is a romantic historical game, the second is about a recent, unresolved shock, a trauma in local society. In this case, Deller’s aim was to promote understanding and healing through re-enactment.
The basic characteristic of the event that triggers the trauma is that it transcends the experience of everyday life and thus cannot be reconciled with the experience of life as it was before. Experiencing the event personally is not necessary for the trauma to occur, as the symptoms of trauma are present in the victims as well as in the witnesses. In fact, so-called secondary traumatisation can also affect close relatives and friends of the victim, if they share the traumatic experience of the person. Trauma research distinguishes between individual and social trauma: social trauma is the impact on the basic fabric of social life, damaging the relationships that bind people together and challenging their sense of community.[6] From this perspective, it is not only the former miners and policemen living side by side who are affected, but also their families, in effect the whole community. Trauma persists until the negative experience is transformed into words and stories by the traumatised person. Deller and his fellow artists help to create this story. Surprisingly, in this process, the artist contributes to the re-enactment of participatory performance through his complex, documentary approach.
The TV film itself is a documentary of the work, which serves primarily to show the process and is only indirectly capable of influencing the community in question. The place, its local milieu, is essential for the processing of a truly traumatic experience. As a result, social processes cannot take place in exactly the same way in different time-space contexts. In a narrow sense, this social trauma is specific to a particular community, for whom the climax of the strike, i.e. the battle itself, became a traumatising event for the whole community. Thus, we can conclude that the past, memory, and thus trauma have a spatiality. In this case, they are bound to a specific place and most likely can be resolved most effectively at that same place. By necessity, this major ‘conflict management training’ also had to take place on the border of the village in question. Relph’s observation about places supports the idea that the long-term identity of places depends not only on their physical environment, but also on the events that take place there and the meanings that individuals and groups associate with them, created by people’s experiences and intentions.[7] In this sense, Deller’s social action, as an artistic event, created a site of memory that can be a basis for reconciliation in local society. From this point of view, The Battle of Orgreave can be seen as a novel monument and place of remembrance, and how long it remains so, whether it has and will have an afterlife, is now primarily up to the local inhabitants. However, as Nora argues, the stubborn and organised extraction of memory, its transformation into history, obliges each community to redefine its identity by reviving its own history. The duty of memory makes everyone a historian of themselves.[8]
Jeremy Deller, in his large-scale re-enactment The Battle of Orgreave, recreates the social trauma of the event through the actual place and its identity, involving as many former participants as possible in order to process the traumatic event.
[1] Morris, Michael: Making The Battle of Orgreave, 2002.
https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-battle-of-orgreave/
[2] The Storming of the Winter Palace, directed by: Nikolai Evreinov, 1920, 90 min
[3] Dickinson, Rod – Edler, Graeme – Rushton, Steve: The Milgram Re-enactment, 2002.
https://www.roddickinson.net/pages/milgram/project-synopsis.php
[4] Castells, Manuel: The Rise of the Network Society, in: The Information Age – Economy, Society and Culture, 1., 1996, p. 21.
[5] https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-battle-of-orgreave/
[6] Rüsen, Jörn: Trauma and Mourning in Historical Thinking, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in History and Archaeology, vol. 1, No.1, Summer, 2004, pp. 10–21.
[7] Relph, Edward: Place and Placelessness, London, Pion, 1976, p. 156.
[8] Nora, Pierre: Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, in: Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, Spring, 1989, University of California Press, pp. 7–24, here p. 15.