Output details

Close protection

This three screen video projection is the outcome of my collaboration with the British Army and six contemporary dancers from the New Movement Collective. Filmed at Longmoor training camp, the work investigates ideas of movement, place and visual information using night vision technology used by the army both in combat and for news reports. The Army provided the location, access to the technology and insight into its use and effect, while the dancers responded to this in developing new choreography for the site. The work deals with notions of the covert and the overt, the sense we have of the action taking place as something hidden is foregrounded by the familiar green of night vision camerawork while the nature of dance itself is very much about display. The collision between ideas of movement and action, the hidden and the seen produces a tension in the finished work. This is very much intended, the viewer responding to dance in an unfamiliar place, recorded in an unfamiliar way. This work formally develops interests in night vision and the unseen that I have previously investigated with works such as 'Night Street Touch' (2005) shown this year in my solo show at cgac, Spain; but approaches this in an entirely new way for me, using the evocative nature of the location and recording means to develop a new performance element. A public talk was held with collaborators from the army and New Movement Collective at the exhibition site (September 2013) discussing the insights that each partner had gained. On October 25th 2013, I will be a key speaker at a day long conference on the nature of collaboration at the Winchester Discovery Centre. The work was commissioned by artSOUTH, with a catalogue including images and texts about the work produced in October 2013.