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Hawk & Dove Film and installation

Invited by the curator to develop a new site-specific artwork for 5x5 (Washington DC’s inaugural public art festival), I proposed an enquiry into the origins and consequences of the military-industrial complex via the institutions responsible for generating the political and cultural conditions from which it emerged.

The research further developed my pseudo-ethnographic methodology of ‘field-craft’ (a form of intellectual fieldwork combining the participant-observer model developed by anthropologists with the tradition of institutional critique developed by Fraser, Haacke et al) by addressing political institutions directly, and by examining the impact of factional politics on the dissemination of knowledge. Using media archaeological practices in response to theoretical texts by Huhtamo, Hertz and Parikka, the film uses prototype drones to encourage contemporary viewers to puncture the totality of Foucault’s panoptic machine. The work led to further research into drones (dronology.com, forthcoming film Volo, and a curated film programme for exhibition in the US in 2013 and the UK in 2014).

Screening at the Library of Congress. Silver vinyl prints and digital video comprised site-specific installation at Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library (20 March-28 April 2012). Video and prints exhibited for Magnificent Distance (Globe Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, August 2012), eponymous publication (pub: Grit&Pearl), including commissioned essay by Alistair Robinson (curator NGCA).

Research also presented: paper “The Proposition’, ‘How Do We Look’ MOCA, Los Angeles (April 2011); public lecture, Library of Congress, Washington DC (April 2012); ‘Envisioning a Future for Public Art’ Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC (March 2012); Intersections-hosted day symposium (Aug 2012); Ronit Eisenbach article for Public Art Review (2012); screening at DARC, NYU (Oct 2013). Supported financially by Arts Council England, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Newcastle City Council and the Library of Congress. Exhibition widely discussed in the US media (including New York Times 21/12/11, Washington Post 27/12/12).