Geo Barcan (1997) creates moving-image works, installations and texts. The common thread in her work is the link between technologies, politics, histories and cultures. She is interested in how these intertwining narratives are experienced by peripheral subjects, be they humans, plants or animals.
The video installation she presents at Prospects transports the viewer to Unst, the northernmost inhabited island of the United Kingdom, home to some six hundred people. In recent years, work has been underway on the construction of a new spaceport on the island. Together with visual artist and long-term collaborator Edwin Mingard, Barcan spent over two years researching and tracing the impact of this spaceport on Unst.
At the core of the work is the entanglement between a fishing and farming community, the island they live on, the wider cosmos, and a new era of private, venture capital-funded low-Earth-orbit space travel. In the three-channel video, elements of science fiction, magical realism and cinéma vérité link the distant and recent past with the near future, converging in a critical moment unfolding before our eyes. Will this newly arrived megastructure care for life on the island? How will the community and its ancient ecosystem adapt?
At the heart of the installation lies a dark pool of water, reflecting an animation of the night sky. The water recalls the natural pools found across the island. In the dark, they appear as portals to the cosmos; points of connection between earth and sky.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen