First move

Abstract

Moving image with sound. Running Time 00.02.15. Aspect ratio 4:3. Source footage: Digital video. Presentation format: Digital video, large monitor or projection. Visual technique: Moving image montage of a found postcard and video documentation of a construction site. Location: Cabot Circus shopping mall construction site, Bristol, UK. Direction, camera, sound and editing: Sophie Warren & Jonathan Mosley. Sound: Field recording, manipulated. Copyright the artists. Use of the black and white photographic still ‘Relaying the James Caird’ by Frank Hurley from the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, 1914-1916 courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society. Synopsis ‘First Move’ is the first station of a lost city, a thought held in the mind, an action suspended, a splicing of time, an aspiration lost, a dream about to begin. ‘First Move’ is one of a series of montages using found postcards, photographs and video or still image documentation of construction sites. As part of our everyday we have been encountering many large scale construction sites and master planned schemes. During the construction phase these sites seem to hold many possibilities in their ‘incompleteness’. They are catalysts for a roaming imagination. As the construction progresses the possibilities are closed down as the building becomes closed in. ‘First Move’ retains a state of temporariness as a state of need, inviting new meaning and narratives, and rupturing the autonomy of the final, realized building.