UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS (2020) is a project bringing together patient ambassadors for Blood Cancer UK and stem cell researchers working at the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre. Through a series of stop-motion animation workshops held via Zoom, participants developed hand-cut animation sequences exploring their experiences of ‘the unknown’ in relation to living with blood cancer, the challenges of research and the global uncertainties of Covid-19. Animation materials included paper, velvet and issues of National Geographic published in 1960, the year Blood Cancer UK officially became a charity.
Commissioned by the Wellcome - MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute as part of its Public Engagement programme, project outcomes include an animated film featuring participants’ stop-motion sequences (Futuramic Unknown, 2020) and an installation for the Jeffery Cheah Biomedical Center at Cambridge Biomedical Campus (The Night the Mountains Moved, 2020).
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Reading time: 6 minutes
2021
Afterword traces the fortune of a 356kg pile of 100,000 pennies through a series of international events that occurred between 2018 and 2021. Presented as a webpage, the work draws on an archival collection of images, letters, videos, print articles, crime reports, and retrieved internet articles from the global media coverage of Brownsted’s public intervention Pence Sterling (2018).
Organised in a factual timeline that begins with a dilapidated public fountain in Cambridge city centre and concludes with the forced closure of Chinese free-press newspaper Apple Daily, Afterword is the digital record of an unfolding social experiment on value, freedom and the politics of finance.