Satellite Contact

Satellite Contact - Installation View
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Satellite Contact is a two-screen video portrait of the British National Archives (formerly known as the Public Records Office). Satellite Contact never touches the ground: it takes the viewer on an hour-long roller-coaster ride through the guts of one of the most extensive national archives in the world. In a digital age, the mechanical eyes of two cameras facing forward and backward, move to the rhythm of another mechanised system, used for circulating and delivering papers. The video cameras trail documents from strongrooms, along corridors, above ceilings, behind walls and out into the hubbub of the public reading rooms. Creating a mise-en-scène of the materiality of the archive, Satellite Contact touches the very fabric of the architecture which houses a vast historical resource. Surprising patterns and forms, ranging from the Mondrianesque to constructivism, the monochromatic and to minimalist seriality emerge from and recede into the internal lining of the building. The two synchronous cameras reveal an inhuman rhythm of perception: they see what cannot be seen by human eyes, and make connections between the material, functional, ontological and poetic qualities of the archive, as well as evoke networks of communication, digital data-flow and neo-Fordist production lines.