Taryn Simon
Con­tra­band

Con­tra­band com­pris­es 1,075 pho­tographs tak­en at both the U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion Fed­er­al Inspec­tion Site and the U.S. Postal Ser­vice Inter­na­tion­al Mail Facil­i­ty, both locat­ed at John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in New York, and func­tion­ing as lim­i­nal spaces between the U.S. and oth­er nations. For one full work­ing week, 24 hours per day, Simon remained on site, pho­tograph­ing items detained or seized from pas­sen­gers and express mail enter­ing the U.S. from abroad.

The result­ing project cat­a­logues the expan­sive inven­to­ry of objects, pre­sent­ing the col­lect­ed items alpha­bet­i­cal­ly and under­scor­ing ran­dom pat­terns and con­nec­tions among them. Using a foren­sic pho­to­graph­ic pro­ce­dure to doc­u­ment the seized items, and a pre­sen­ta­tion strat­e­gy draw­ing upon sci­en­tif­ic and muse­o­log­i­cal method­olo­gies, Simon removes the con­fis­cat­ed items from all con­text, and instead posi­tions them as sym­bols of illic­it desire, ille­gal trade, and gov­ern­ment con­trol. Each item is labelled accord­ing to offi­cial clas­si­fi­ca­tions includ­ing ​‘aban­doned’, ​‘ille­gal’, ​‘unli­censed’, and ​‘coun­ter­feit’. Simon’s inven­to­ry includes pirat­ed movies; coun­ter­feit cashier’s checks; fat, sausages, deer blood, and duck tongue; coun­ter­feit Louis Vuit­ton hand­bags and Patek Philippe watch­es; coun­ter­feit Xanax and erec­tile dys­func­tion med­ica­tion; GBL (a com­po­nent of date rape drug); and a dead bird intend­ed for use in witch­craft rit­u­als. This glut of repet­i­tive goods yields a view of the social whole, char­ac­terised by its reflex to pro­duce, accu­mu­late, con­sume, and trans­port with­out lim­its. Simon’s pho­tographs thus cap­ture both the strict logis­ti­cal con­trol of the air­port, which adheres to legal restric­tions on cer­tain cat­e­gories of for­eign objects, as well as the chaos and dis­or­der that remain despite this con­trol – scru­ti­n­is­ing the bizarre, the for­got­ten and the banal with a cold, admin­is­tra­tive gaze.

With debates around bor­der secu­ri­ty and trade agree­ments occu­py­ing a cen­tral role in cur­rent polit­i­cal dis­course, Con­tra­band under­scores the rou­tine deten­tion and denial of the pas­sage of objects and peo­ple, as well as the delib­er­ate obscur­ing of the inno­cent or unknown in a bureau­crat­ic fog. Tap­ping into the dif­fuse anx­i­ety of the present moment, where­in mun­dane objects like bananas, bulbs and nest­ing dolls can be seen as threats, the seized objects in Con­tra­band func­tion as sur­ro­gate por­traits of their own­ers, deper­son­alised and processed by ​‘the machine’.

Con­tra­band is accom­pa­nied by a ful­ly illus­trat­ed cat­a­logue – now in its sec­ond edi­tion – with a text by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artis­tic Direc­tor, Ser­pen­tine Gal­leries, London.