Air

The film is a loop, an endless cycle. As viewers, we rise upwards, travelling above sites that are key to the flow of power and resources: we see the churning liquid of a waste treatment plant; buzzing electrical infrastructure; the repeating geometry of greenhouses; the skeletal beams and cell-like remains of munitions factories; and the circular imprints of defunct oil tanks and long-dilapidated stone fortifications. The film’s audio track hums with the tension of interconnectivity: we hear the rotor blades of a helicopter; the cry of a bird; the crackle of a radio; the intense buzz of substation electricity. All these systems connect us, feed us, turn the lights on, fuel our society. Some are the lifeblood of power, others artefacts of past technologies. Locations featured in Black Powder Peninsula are all in the artist’s present home, the United Kingdom. These are sites of military, economic or industrial power, including the remains of the Curtis’s and Harvey Explosives Factory at Cliffe; the ghostly footprint of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company refinery on the Isle of Grain; and the ruins of nineteenth-century Palmerston Forts in the Medway estuary, Kent. Jananne Al-Ani is deeply aware of the legacies of British and subsequently American military and economic powers that have shaped her life and those of countless others around the globe. Her works draw our attention to historical layers within the landscape. Black Powder Peninsula documents the flow of power and natural resources linking us all, through history and in the contemporary world. GB ‘Our viewpoint rises as if we are being lifted out of the landscape. The sensation is akin to an out-of-body experience, or lucid dream.’ Jananne Al-Ani / Black Powder Peninsula (stills, details) 2016 127 126 Burn Burn