Accidentology (i)
2 - 5 May 2023 - Hockney Gallery, RCA, London.
Armelle Skatulski, "Catastrophe," from Protocole de destruction series, C-type from 4"x5" negative, 2017.
Administrative duplicates from archival holdings relating to the 1985 Simon mining disaster were stored in a warehouse adjacent to the Centre des Archives Industrielles et Techniques de Moselle until destroyed by a third party. The 1985 Simon mining disaster, which occurred in a Charbonnages de Fance coal mine in the town of Forbach is the last large scale mining disaster to have taken place in France.
Accidentology (i), Solo show, Hockney Gallery, South Kensington, Royal College of Art. Image © Armelle Skatulski, 2023.
This solo show at the Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, is the culmination of Armelle Skatulski's practice-led research at the RCA funded an AHRC Doctoral Scholarship.
Hockney Gallery, South Kensington, London.
2nd May - 5th May 2023.
With the support of the Royal College of Art, UKRI and the Arts & Humanities Research Council via a Techne DTP scholarship.
Armelle Skatulski, "Untitled" from Accidentology (I): Simulations, screen print on paper, 2022. Transfers from archival documents to screen print media. The project takes as its basis simulation experiments undertaken for an inquest relating to the 1959 Sainte Fontaine coal mining disaster, France. From archival documents yielded by Charbonnages de France, the former French National Coal Board to the Centre des Archives Industrielles et Technique de Moselle.
Artist Statement
The documentation of work accidents takes place in a tension between production and destruction, the archivable and the unarchivable, the biopolitical governing of labour and the speculative economics of capitalist extractivism. The work that I am presenting as part of the RCA Research Biennale is the outcome of research, led by practice, into the normalisation of work accidents through the study of photographic documents produced by a former coal mining corporation in the North of France. These are now deposited in the public archives of the Centre des Archives Industrielles et Techniques de Moselle (The Industrial and Technical Archives Centre of Moselle).
The research analyses how photographs of work accidents and of accidents simulations function in the archival-industrial complex of the corporation, as materially and logically correlated with the process of extraction. The relationship of the work accident to its photographic documentation is considered from the perspective of a biopolitical analysis of power and a dispositival interpretation of corporate archival practices.
By resorting to various processes for the transfer of photographic documents from their original archival form to various formats of reproduction - such as screen prints or digital composites - the research probes a tension between the infrastructural, logistical dimension of photographs and the unruliness and transformative power of an affective response to such documents by a viewer or an interpreter.
© Armelle Skatulski, 15 June 2023.
This research was undertaken with the support of the Arts & Humanities Research Council and exhibited as "Accidentology (i)" at the Hockney Gallery, Royal College of London, South Kensington, London, from May 2nd to May 5th 2023.
“A genealogy of transparent models (iii),” from Accidentology (I), screen print, acrylic paint on paper, 29x41cm, © Armelle Skatulski, 2023.
Simulation model representing the subterranean topography of the 1959 Sainte Fontaine coal mining disaster, France. From archival documents yielded by Charbonnages de France, the former French National Coal Board to the Centre des Archives Industrielles et Technique de Moselle.
Selection from the Initiation Materials series (2016-2017) and the Answer to dust series (2017-2022), Accidentology (i), Solo show, Hockney Gallery, South Kensington, Royal College of Art.
Image © Armelle Skatulski, 2023.
Armelle Skatulski, Untitled, from The Answer to dust series, 2017-2022, digital collage, giclée print on archival matte paper, 29.7 x 42 cm.
Armelle Skatulski, Untitled, from The Answer to dust series, 2017-2022, digital collage, giclée print on archival matte paper, 29.7 x 42 cm.
Armelle Skatulski, "The duplicate," from Initiation Materials series (2016-2017), giclée print on Hahnemühle Pearl paper, 60x40cm.
Armelle Skatulski, "Untitled (the archive and the ruin)," diptych, from Absent Machine series (2017-2022), giclée prints on Hahnemühle Pearl paper, from 4x5 inches negatives, 50x40cm each.
