Junk Garden No. 2 by Bashar Khalaf
The Field of Dreams, or dreams as minefields, is nothing more than the dysfunctional and non-operative dreams of ‘junk’. They remind us of their dynamic state, the unavoidable multiplicity of their possible outcomes and their subordination to the modern, brutal and dominant structures that govern forms of life. The conceptual paradox lies in granting the energy of dreams to bygone ‘steel’ structures – bulldozers, vehicles and surveillance cameras – giving them an immense power to reinvent themselves and generate their own symbols for understanding the world.
We witness the shattered ‘machine’ losing itself in the chaos of its struggle with destiny, much like a war in which power crumbles before the energy of scrap metal to reveal and portray the true face of the world. The machine is confronted with its own existence, given a tragic form and drawn into a profound engagement with the cycle of time, as though repositioning itself differently in relation to the world and others. This proximity to ruin – made visible in Bashar Khalaf’s atemporal images of shattered bulldozers, exhausted vehicles and other forms – accompanies the old in its sorrowful decline, allowing it to see itself anew and return to us once more, but in a distorted, fragile and painful form.
