Daniel Turner / Compresseur
For more than ten years, American artist Daniel Turner has worked from disused sites, with their infrastructures still charged with the human presence of former occupants or users. In this context, a ‘site’ is the location of an industrial activity (factory, laboratory, etc.) or a socalled ‘total’ institution (psychiatric hospital, prison, etc.). Harsh and inhospitable, almost unbearable to inhabit, these sites nevertheless exert a strong attraction on the artist who turns to them to explore their aesthetic resources. In this way various objects, materials or equipment abandoned in the bowels of the place in question are removed, either to be exhibited as is, or to undergo reduction or transformation processes. Turner’s predilection for metals, linked in part to his father’s profession (a shipyard welder and scrap metal merchant), makes him not unlike the alchemist seeking to convert lead into gold, to sublimate waste and to ‘make the invisible visible’: the invisible being the soul of objects, the atmosphere of places, the spirit of materials. For his first museum exhibition in Belgium, Daniel Turner has turned to a highly charged site: the former Forest Prison (Prison de Forest - 1910-2022).
‘‘The basis of my practice is archaeological. When I speak about my working process, I speak in terms of ‘mining’ because, in a sense, I’m working as an amateur miner: sourcing materials, sifting for materials, and extracting materials.”
Daniel Turner
Forest Prison
Located on Avenue de la Jonction opposite the Prison of Saint-Gilles, the Prison of Forest, now permanently closed, opened its doors in 1910. It was designed by Édouard Ducpétiaux – creator of the Belgian penitentiary system – on the cell-based model, inspired by the panopticon principle invented in 1791 by Jeremy Bentham. The cell-based model was, however, distinct from the panopticon in that its primary intention was to keep prisoners apart in their daily lives rather than holding them under constant observation.
The prison’s architecture, typical for the penitentiary establishments of the 20th century, takes the shape of four cell wings fanning out star-wise from central surveillance offices. Originally, men and women were confined in separate wings. In 1921, a psychiatric annex was added to the building. From the 1980s onwards, Forest Prison was confronted with serious overcrowding. Cells originally designed for two persons (9m2) now had to accommodate three inmates. Lack of space, absence of toilets, unsanitary conditions and dilapidated conditions were prisoners’ daily lot. In 2012, for example, the prison housed 706 inmates in a total of 405 cells. In 2013, detention conditions were judged degrading for the first time by the CPT (European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment). In November 2022, the last inmates from Forest Prison were transferred to the Haren “penitentiary village”, which will eventually group all inmates from the three Brussels prisons of Saint-Gilles, Forest and Berkendael.
Today, many associations are fighting for the emergence of a new, more humane prison model, on the lines of certain experiments carried out in Germany and Finland.
Podcast
Démêler les pinceaux
In this episode, we take you on a journey through the putting together of an exhibition by American artist Daniel Turner, starting with his search for materials in the Forest Prison through to the installation of his works in the exhibition rooms of MACS.
