Fig. 1 City_Scape Installation. An immersive and yet uncanny’esque demonstration of architectural evolution, embodying the anthropomorphic nature of ‘The City’, a creation we exist alongside.

'Cityscape' is a socio-political lensed video and sound installation, addressing the looming pressures of major city living. In London, we anthropomorphize through the nomenclature "The City" a place that indexes and symbolizes wealth, capital and status. Ever-growing and 'looming', the spectral element that quietly stands unresisted, continues to dominate not only the skyline, but, politically, environmentally, financially, or socially we are subjected to the effects of exponential capitalist "progress" beyond what is sustainable. This work embodies the geometries and structures that counter natural order, primal reckoning, and psychological understandings of contemporary living. This project has been in its evolution over a long while now. I have been using my reaction to a city ever changing as a driver for this work. As an experiment and an ontological inquiry this work is a documentation to process the fabric of a city across the medium of film. I want to find any potential within this process of making. The use of technological advancements such as the iPhone, apps and editing platforms, lends to my potency as a multi-disciplinary artist. The work is successful in the fact it can loom in the same way that the real and physical nature of tower blocks do. Using J. G. Ballard as a source of inspiration and research, I have arrived at a place where I want to extract the uncanny from the overwhelming nature of commerce, finance, and insurance have and the nebulous world of the stock market that exist and dwell within these structures of power and places of immense wealth. What I am trying to convey in this work, and this the critical element, is our subjugation via multinational doctrine and contemporary economic policy.

My process is made up of trying to interpret the impact these places as sites of power reflect upon me as a subject. Yet, I feel no connection to the business of commerce and finance, politically the work questions their impact and growing dominance of fiscal policy that produces consequences for the forgotten sections of society. How to connect this powerlessness to the work is instrumental in juxtaposing it to the majesty and vastness of the glass and steel that dominate the skyline as well as our lives in passive and constitutive ways.

But, before the work can resonate in a subjective constitute, one has to consider how the work will ‘be’ presented. I chose to make a dark space to enact this method of production. (see fig. 1-3 below)

nb. Hover over images with cursor

Fig. 1, Setting projectors in basement to test how the film would look in black out conditions.

Fig. 2 Running audio via a laptop and speakers.

Fig. 3 Two proctors. The orange one has the image 'shuttered'. (cropped physically)

A test run of the layered paper acting as screens. This gives a depth of field effect to the viewing

Stuart Lee, Test work. A series of filtered edits laid over different screen depths in a dark space.

So, In a continuation of investigation and research into the dark space I made a work in my studio called - Untitled (2021) - the work uses darkness to act as the medium for light. In a scientific age where we are discovering that matter only consists of 5% of all that is within the entire expanse of the observable universe, light and matter are in the minority. Dark Matter and Dark Energy tell us more about what we do not know, understand or are able to grasp. With this approach I am setting out to explore the fundamental context of darkness and re-articulate the concept of nothing. This investigation into darkness, nothingness and vacant spaces ties into the overarching framework of the concealed. Again, and this is what is critical to my method of process, the withdrawn needs a space to sink back into. Darkness is a perfect way of artistically demonstrating such environments of withdrawal.

Cityscape: Looming Futures Within Passing Moments

But, before the work can resonate in a subjective constitute, one has to consider how the work will ‘be’ presented. I chose to make a dark space to enact this method of production. (see fig. 1-3 below)