gaelen pinnock

These works are photographic collages that form part of a series that looks at the South African urban landscape, and in the case of this specific typology, the military–industrial complex.

The broad series looks at the landscape as if it were an archipelago of islands. Each island is a discrete shape, separated from its neighbours by green belts, highways and railway lines. This can be seen in private homes, larger suburbs, industrial establishments and entire inner city precincts. Most of these islands are fortified with walls, booms, electric fences, private security and 24-hour surveillance. In this sense, they are like medieval citadels – secured city-states to keep the fear out and comfort in.

This planning ideology was inherited from both apartheid and modernist approaches to urban planning. It is now continuing to be constructed on platforms of fear, crime and neoliberal gentrification, sanitisation and control of public space by private and semi-private security organisations.

This specific typology of citadels draws links to the National Key Points Act  of 1980 which was created to hide and protect installations of strategic importance to the apartheid government. We may not take photos of, have access to or gaze too long at a “Key Point,” yet the list of such locations is not publicly available. The current government stands accused of using the same act to hide controversial developments in a shroud of media restrictions and legislated secrecy.

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Three of the above Citadels were selected for inclusion in ABSA L’Atelier’s top 80 young artists of the year for 2014.