Skip to main content

Archived exhibition

Gair Dunlop - Atom Town: life after technology

Gair Dunlop

21 - 25 January 2012

Preview: 21 January 2012, 6 - 8pm

John Armitage Talk: 25 January 2012, 11am - 1pm

Atom Town: life after technology a film by Gair Dunlop. Dounreay Atomic Research Establishment is a sprawling monument to solidity, optimism and analogue engineering. The intangible alchemies and sense of romantic science at its heart are trapped like amber in archive film and in its colossal structures. Over the last two years, unprecedented access to the facility and to the UKAEA Archive at Harwell have allowed Gair Dunlop to explore the dream and the consequences of high science in a remote community.

The film explores the stages of discovery, construction, scientific advance and slow fading of optimism.
Archive material from TV broadcasts, educational film, training videos and amateur film-makers are paralleled with contemporary HD video footage.
At the core of this work is the texture of the archive, the tone of memory, and the sharp tang of a slippage from intended meanings to a more revealing picture, of a science too heavy for a culture to bear.

Read more about this on the project website...

Centrespace, Visual Research Centre is part of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and is located on the lower floors of Dundee Contemporary Arts, 152 Nethergate, Dundee.