Subversive Sightseeing (2006)

As tourists we are hyper receptive to the city landscape. There is a cinematic sense of scale and permanence that comes from looking at tall, vastly built cities. We dream, fantasise and wonder. Subversive Sightseeing is a coin-operated, tourist telescope but through it you see a film of an unravelling sequence of epic catastrophes. In the distance a crane collapses, a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon, and a capsule on the London Eye dangles precariously over the Thames.

As a public, sight-specific installation, in June 2006 the telescope was placed upon Hungerford Bridge in London on the exact location the film was shot. By exploiting our trust in the built architectural landscape, the device is intended to recognise the cinematic ingenuity of our fantasies, and the ramifications events such as 9/11 have on our collective imaginations.

Thanks to Henry Hobson, Chris Hand and Sarah van Gameren

[Watch Subversive Sightseeing London film] / [Download]

[Watch Installation, June 2006, Hungerford Bridge, London]