Nowhere Else is an interactive double screen projection involving the viewer directly in the navigation of hundreds of images, depicting detritus and the incidental found within the infrastructure of city life. Employing an apparatus for imaging, mapping and naming, the work engaged chance and the imposition of various rules as a key method of production in order to question place in relation to occupation, and social control. The images gathered, from places throughout the city, were determined by overlaying a map of the sky on top of a map of London to produce coordinates with the names of these streets, parks, rivers, squares alongside the stars and planets they correspond to, forming another key element for the control and activation of the work.
Nowhere Else was initially intended for distribution on DVD for two unrealised commissions from The Government Art Collection and The Imperial War Museum respectively who provided initial R&D funding. However when adapted and developed for the gallery at IMMA, an element of collective play was consciously explored through the staging of the double screen. This was financially supported through commission by The Irish Museum of Modern Art. The aim of this work was to investigate notions of autonomy through action that would raise questions relating to the relationship between subjectivity and systems of governance evidenced in a subject’s navigation of systems of mapping and naming. Nowhere Else builds upon works such as Dimora (2008) and Trailer with John Seth (1994) that both employ methods of chance to investigate the hidden and overlooked within the context of urban life and the everyday. However, the beholder’s encounter with the artwork is active and central to the work’s realisation and meaning.
