Commissioned by the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and curated by Kettle's Yard, Unknown Unknowns was a project that brought together patient ambassadors for Blood Cancer UK and stem cell researchers working at the Stem Cell Institute. Through a series of online workshops across the summer of 2020, participants developed hand-cut animation sequences exploring their experience 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.
Project outcomes include a short animated film featuring the participants’ stop-motion sequences (Futuramic Unknown, 2020) and an installation (The Night the Mountain Moved, 2020), in the atrium of the Jeffery Cheah Biomedical Center at Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
The Night the Mountain Moved
Hand-cut prints on billboard paper, layered and collaged to wall
2.6m x 9m
2020
The Night the Mountain Moved responds to the project Unknown Unknowns, which brought together patient ambassadors for Blood Cancer UK and stem cell researchers working at the Wellcome-MRC Stem Cell Institute. The nine-meter-long work uses vintage National Geographic magazine photographs depicting momentous events from 1960, that were selected by the project participants and incorporated in their own animated collages. Here, the photos are reimagined and magnified to an extreme scale, emphasising the grain and dots of the original printing techniques. Placed alongside these are more ordinary images, lifted from advertisements, which have been digitally manipulated into vibrant, repetitive patterns. Printed on billboard paper, the images are hand-cut and collaged directly onto the wall. Arranged geometrically and framed by a strip of the familiar National Geographic yellow, the artwork is a meditation on the symbiotic relationship between patients, researchers and charitable funding organisations, and what it takes to confront the unknown - be it our immersive inner world, or that which exists beyond our physical borders.
FUTURAMIC UNKNOWN
6 minutes
2020
Animations by Tania Dineen-Parish, Bertie Göttgens, Elizabeth Anne Holmes, Alison Kennedy, Jessica Murphy, Jane Leahy, Eugene Park, Mel Plumridge, Nathalie Sakakini, Antonella Santoro, and Mariana Quiroga Londono.
Soundtrack by Will Heasman.
In 2022 the Stem Cell Institute held a public panel to discuss the project and creative outcomes. The panel was chaired by Rosie Cooper (Director, Wysing Arts Centre) and featured several project participants and the artist. It was the first time many of them were finally able to meet face-to-face after working together intensely via Zoom during the pandemic.