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ARTSDESK REWORK, RENEW Following five decades of
media-art fusing, Les Levine revives his tangible portrayal of the Troubles in “Resurrection” words Amelia O’Mahony-Brady Few artists could be more severed from a sense of ego than Les Levine. His softly-spoken manner is an initial indicator of this; his selfeffacing anecdotes poured through an accent that has no trace of his Dublin roots, but rather alludes to his long-standing US citizenship. Having skipped leaps and bounds ahead of 20th century art circles from the 1960s onwards, Levine’s vibrant strides into video art and, simultaneously, his spearheading of media art saw him lauded as nothing less than a visionary – but starting out, his naysayers were in plentiful supply. “From when I was a very young artist [onwards], I was told I didn’t get the point, the idea, the aesthetics, what it’s all about. Yet after a few years, they’re teaching the things that I first espoused in art schools,” Levine remarks, bereft of bravado. “But initially, nobody in the art world was willing to agree that media ever could be connected to art. Of course, when you think about it now, media is all over the art world!”. Over the course of our conversation, Levine offers up only two adjectives to describe himself: “perfectly ordinary”. Yet, as anyone who has come into contact with his work will agree, the artist’s prolific creative output – stretching from compelling billboard campaigns to evocative, cibachrome photographs – denotes a truly extraordinary eye. This could not be better exemplified than in Levine’s latest visual offering, Resurrection – an IMMA-staged exhibition that marks a contemporary re-considering of his 1972 series, The Troubles: An Artist’s Document of Ulster. The latter comprised a suite of 80 photographs that Levine had previously donated to the IMMA Collection, all captured during significant visits the artist undertook to Derry and Belfast that same year. What’s instantly striking is his commitment to showcasing all conceivable sides of the conflict: Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods are explored in equal measure, from intimate, family-home environments to explosive scenes. He acknowledges this inner will to document without a shred of discrimination, albeit in his typically-modest terms: “The thing is, it is not my job to [discriminate]. It’s not up to me to be throwing my opinions out, or trying to bias something in favour of the way I think. It’s up to me to create a situation which allows other people to find out how they think.” This desire to instigate dialogue underpins all of Levine’s projects, and no less palpably in Resurrection: 13 carefully-composed works see the children he photographed during the Troubles take centre stage. Their vivid, spirited faces amidst these zones of conflict are thought-provoking in themselves, but better contextualised still by the black-and-white borders juxtaposing each photograph (monochromatic contact sheets from the original 1972 series, as to let viewers understand the source). Levine’s powerful usage of text provides the final layer, each work colourfully embellished by a different question: Why is truth the first victim? Is our home truly our castle? Could this be the end of the line? The catalyst for Resurrection’s creation was quite fortuitous. Levine was “looking through my archives in preparation for The Bio-Tech Rehearsals show at Columbia University in 2016, [when] I was struck by the large number of children on the contact sheets of The Troubles… Looking back on these images of children resurrected many strong feelings I had while documenting them, and sent my mind racing through a variety of memories.” Having been stationed in New York for nearly a decade at this stage, garnering rapid success across the US and Canada, he had been attempting to inform his Stateside peers that “media was the thing that the art world should be looking at”, but their minds were still entrenched in the thought that “politicians make a mess of 70