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).

DIPLOMAT
Digital film cycle
333 mins.
2016
Commissioned by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art

Diplomat (2016), Kettles Yard, 2018
Diplomat is a digital installation of 100 short films programmed to continuously cycle through a random playing order. The individually numbered films are edited from a single-take shot of the artist performing a 7-hour durational action in response to the 2016 US presidential election. The number of films references the post-inaugural ‘first 100 days’, with a film for each of the president’s first 100 days in office.
The action begins with a warped record – a memorial album issued in 1964 featuring speeches by the then-recently assassinated American president John F. Kennedy. Purchased for $1.00 at a flea market in rural Wyoming, the record is heat-damaged and almost comically warped. The durational filming concentrates on repetitive playing of Kennedy’s inaugural address, which is considered by many to be one of the most inspirational speeches in contemporary Western history. Due to the warping, each time the record is played a different variation of the speech is revealed. The needle bounces across the contorted surface, repeating certain phrases while completely skipping over others. What was once a consistent, fixed form becomes fragmented. Kennedy’s skilful rhetoric is dissected through chance and his message edited at random, disrupting the polished theatricality of the speech as a performative piece of history.
Over the 7 hours of repeated playing, the record begins to deteriorate.
Highlighting its own fragility, the act of playing it destroys it.
'A sly little video work...like a message from another planet.' Adrian Searle