Jeremy Deller
The Battle of Orgreave Re-enactment,
co-commissioned by Artangel and Channel 4, 2001; Film (directed by Mike
Figgis) on DVD, English with German subtitles, 61 min., 2002
Jeremy Deller’s project
The Battle of Orgreave,
which is about the conflict between the Thatcher government and the
British National Union of Minework ers in 1984–1985, illustrates
Deller’s interest in social and especially political relationships.
Deller’s artistic praxis consists of collecting, archiving, drawing,
photographing, filming, and documenting, and he works from very
different perspectives – as a curator, art historian, film maker,
producer, organiser, and publisher. He is interested in the forms and
conditions of solidarity and community, which feed on individual
interests, stories, and experiences. The miners’ strike 1984–1985,
which was triggered by the threat of pit closures, was the hardest
dispute between the British government and the miners’ trade union
since 1926.
In the mid 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was determined to break the power
of the trade unions by any means; the conflict climaxed on the 18th of
June 1984 in a violent clash near the coking plant of Orgreave in South
Yorkshire. Mounted police units dispersed the protesting miners. With
this event that heralded the end of the last large-scale miners’ strike
Margaret Thatcher’s victory over the British trade unions began.
In
a search for traces of this event that lasted three years, Jeremy
Deller revived history in cooperation with former protesters: aided by
so-called “re-enactment” groups, miners, and policemen who participated
in the historic event, he recreated this “battle” on the 17th of June
2001.(1)
Because the reports in the media about the 1984
strike were strongly influenced by the government, and the workers and
trade unions were described as “the enemy within” (Margaret Thatcher),
Deller did not use contemporary media reports for his project. Instead,
he used the memories of the protagonists – miners and policemen alike –
as the basis of the re-enactment. Thus the (distorted) image projected
by the media is corrected, and The Battle of Orgreave has a strong
emancipating function.
The re-enactment and the documentary,
which Mike Figgis made for Channel 4 (he combines scenes of the
re-enactment of 2001 with photographs of the clashes of 1984)_,
generate a new and different practice of the historicisation of recent,
still sensitive English history, which remains relevant today for
existing political and social conflicts.
Renate Wagner
(1) The
project was organised by Howard Giles, an expert for historical
re-enactments and former head of the English Heritage event programme.
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