Unusually Adrift from the Shoreline
Shown at: Neighbourhood Secrets Project, Stavanger, Norway (2008) | Rådhusteateret, Sandnes, Norway (2008) | ‘Twilight Language’, The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Manchester (2017)
Wood, MDF, light fitting, acrylic sheet, vinyl, silver print
4 x 1.3m
A cinema invites us to see in the dark. A lighthouse helps a sailor see where he is. Both work with beams of light. Both cause observers to question their own coordinates. Visitors to the old cinema of Sandnes stumble upon the uncanny sight of a great lighthouse, unusually adrift from its shoreline.
The abandoned cinema, with its wave-like stepped floor, has become an echo of the sea, and the lighthouse has apparently erupted there, as if from the depths, to scan the aquamarine darkness with a solitary, roving beam. The cries of whales ring out in Sandnes’ solid streets and shopping malls, as if the buried world of water has reclaimed the city, and great submarine creatures summon people to revisit its submerged places.
Unusually Adrift From the Shoreline is a work about darkness, light, navigation and memory. Centred on a cinema lost to time, it is intended to prompt unfamiliar thoughts in the city. Thoughts and feelings about the pleasures and the hidden perils of losing oneself: in movies, at sea, and in the oceanic expanse of time.