A Profound Difference

Installation with 8mm cine film, projectors, and polling booths

Staged for FORMAT19, 15th March 2019

The UK referendum on the decision to leave the EU on 23rd June 2016 was a highly contentious event. It divided and polarised the country. The result showed 48% in favour to remain against 52% in favour to leave. What it also demonstrated, fuelled by very negative campaigning on the remain and leave campaigns, was a division between age groups, genders, and social status. The proportion of people over 65 years of age who voted to leave was 64% (men: 62%, women: 66%). This was almost directly inverse to the proportion of people 18 to 24 years of age, 61% who voted to remain.  Therefore, the decision to leave the EU was made by many people whose working lives were at an end and for whom the potential of free movement and the opportunity to work over-seas was irrelevant.

My approach to this to this set of circumstances was to film young people, addressing an old clockwork 8mm cine camera, and speaking of their response to the decision of the UK to leave the European Union. The rationale for the use of this old and obsolete medium is that it has its origins in the 1950s, the period in which the supra-national state of Europe was first being formed. Furthermore, the media used has its origins in Continental Europe: the cameras were made in Switzerland, the projectors in Austria and the film is from the Czech Republic. This equipment was not intended for professional use. It was made for the domestic market and was used to record the moments and events of middle-class European families. The 1950s is also the decade in which many of the voters over the age of 65 were born.

This large-scale installation staged for FORMAT19 uses eight 8mm cine projectors throwing the images of a selection of young people to cover the surfaces of two old-fashioned polling booths. These images confront viewer as they approach the booths, also appearing on the inside of the booth as the imagined citizen would proceed to cast their vote. This use of media and method incorporates a strategy of privation since in engaging with the work the viewer interrupts the image, casting their own shadow upon the image as they move around the installation. In addition, since this obsolete medium has no soundtrack, the voices of these young people are rendered silent.