Output details

Analogue Kingdom

'Analogue Kingdom', Artist Film/Photography/Radio Ephemera Commissioned by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3 for ‘Cut & Splice: Transmission’, Wilton’s Music Hall, London, UK 2010

'Analogue Kingdom' is an artist’s film portrait of Gerald Wells and his British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum. The research explores the extent to which documentary portraiture can uncover aspects of personal identity through a combination of oral testimony and the subject’s own contextual environment.

Johnson examines Wells’ realm of analogue transmission equipment to illuminate how a sense of personal identity is built through the idiosyncratic juxtaposition of personal anecdotes and collected artefacts. Wells’ unusual environment provides a context in which to consider the place of analogue technology in a digital age, particularly resonant at the moment of a digital switchover that has opened the radio spectrum to a new generation of wireless internet and simultaneously rendered a form of technology redundant.

The work was commissioned by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3 for exhibition as an installation at the ‘Cut & Splice: Transmission’ festival (2010). The research was extended to include a series of medium format photographs and a collection of analogue radio ephemera.

An essay outlining the research was published in 'Cut & Splice: Transmission' [ISBN 978-1-907378-03-4]. An interview was broadcast on 'Hear and Now' on BBC R3. An online interview features on Sound and Music’s website.

The work has been presented as a single-screen work for film festivals and symposia including: DOCUDAYS, Beirut (finalist, International Documentary Competition); DocDays, Curzon Soho, London; GZDoc, China (finalist, International Documentary Competition); Japan Media Arts Festival; Message-2-Man, Russia (finalist, International Competition); Nottingham Contemporary; Open City Documentary Festival, London; Raindance Film Festival, London and SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions of the project presented as an installation, include 'Wireless Worlds', Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery (with related film 'Tune In'), and 'Obsession', South Square Gallery, Bradford.