The exhibit, "The House of Osama bin Laden," is one of four works nominated for the Turner Prize, the United Kingdom's most prestigious art award. It is given annually to a British artist under the age of fifty. The winner will be announced Dec. 6.
Artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell created a three-dimensional video interactive of the house that the al Qaeda global terrorist organization founder and leader lived in west of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Bin Laden is believed to have abandoned the home in the late 90s, just before the military campaign that drove the conservative Islamic group the Taliban from power.
The whereabouts of bin Laden, whom the United States and other Western intelligence experts say orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, remains unknown.
What is now known, however, is that the radical Muslim and Saudi-born millionaire once lived in a beautiful area.
According to an interview with Langlands and Bell in the current issue of British Archaeology, a family who lived near the house introduced the artists to the commander of the Afghan militia who now occupies the residence. The journey to the house was long and harrowing, due to live anti-personnel mines and discarded ordinance.
"We had to work very quickly because the house is in a remote area — it's a beautiful location on a rocky promontory projecting into a lake, with a 360 degree view surrounded by high mountains — and we had to return to Kabul before nightfall," they told British Archaeology. "This meant we only had time for 35mm still photography, and taking measurements and notes. If we'd had more time we would have shot some video footage."
They added, "Because bin Laden is such a notorious character, people were not surprised by our interest, and they did not object to us taking photos — and we collected a few shell cases. However, when we started to take measurements and write them down, they did not like it at all, and we had to leave."
Their recreation of the house allows viewers to virtually move through its sunny, whitewashed rooms and ample storage cupboards. It somewhat resembles a tropical resort getaway, save for the ominous presence of bunkers.
Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, told Discovery News, "I featured Landlands and Bell's Afghanistan work in British Archaeology because of the strong resonances with what archaeologists do."
"Their 'reconstruction' of Osama bin Laden's house is like an archaeological excavation," Pitts explained. "Houses are key arenas for archaeologists to explore the lives and minds of ancient people, and increasingly we are recognizing that the way in which we build and use our own homes is quite specific to own our culture and times.
"When Langlands and Bell invite us to enter their version of bin Laden's house, recorded and created of course in the absence of any of its original occupants, they are doing what archaeologists ask when we read their excavation reports — to try to understand people through the spaces they once inhabited and the things arranged around those spaces, perhaps even to identify with them by seeing the world as they might have done."
Pitts added, "One possible effect is the recognition of an underlying humanity that comes from the juxtaposition of the familiar — a home environment — with the strange or even unsettling world of a house created by people with such different values from our own."
The exhibit, which opened Wednesday at the Tate, will continue through Dec. 23.
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