Incoming — 2017
52 minutes 10 seconds, HD thermographic video.
Produced in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, 2014-2016
Director / Producer: Richard Mosse
Cinematographer / Editor: Trevor Tweeten
Composer / Sound Designer: Ben Frost
Prod Assistants: Daphne Tolis, Marta Giaccone, John Holten, Marco Buch
Colourist: Jerome Thelia
The major humanitarian and political issue of our time is migration and with his latest video work, Irish artist Richard Mosse, in collaboration with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost, has created a searing, haunting and unique artwork. Projected across three 8 meter wide screens, the film is accompanied by a loud dissonant soundtrack to create an overwhelming, immersive experience. Moving from footage of a live battle inside Syria, in which a US aircraft strafes Daesh positions on the ground, to a scene showing pathologists extracting DNA from the bones of unidentified corpses of refugees drowned off the Aegean island of Leros, the film opens a testimonial space of historical document – bearing witness to significant chapters in recent events – mediated through an advanced weapons-grade camera technology. Narratives of the journeys made by refugees and migrants across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, are captured using an extremely powerful thermal camera not generally available to the public. This super-telephoto military camera can perceive the human body beyond 50km day or night, reading the biological trace of human life. The camera translates the world into a heat signature of apparent temperature difference, producing a dazzling monochrome halo-image which alludes literally and metaphorically to hypothermia, climate change, weapons targeting, border surveillance, xenophobia, and the ‘bare life’ of stateless people.
Co-commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London.
Co-commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London.
