Merilyn Fairskye: Connected
Title:
- Connected
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
Pine Gap, a US-Australian Joint Defence Space Research facility and base for global satellite technology is one of the largest ground control centres in the world, located 17 kilometres outside Alice Springs. The base connected the world to Pine Gap. Connected considers how disembodied and shadowy the experience of being constantly connected can be.
Connected adopts a Pine Gap modus operandi. Sites are monitored, from the air and from the ground – Anzac Hill; the airport; the Pine Gap exit; Ormiston Gorge; Hermannsburg Mission; Kata Tjuta – to create a sense of a town and a landscape inhabited by shadows, mirages, and reflections.
People inhabit this space tenuously. You never get to see them. You hear from them, or about them. Every one around Alice Springs has a story, or a friend with a story, that connects them to the base. These anecdotes interweave with intercepted news reports; ambient sounds; static; Morse code from Telegraph Station, the roar of road trains speeding down the Stuart Highway; a lone didgeridoo.
Connected has nine related episodes and is presented as a single-channel DVD projection installation with 5.1 Surround Sound.
