Midwatch

Infrared video to DigiBeta 7min

Installation: wooden box 5m x 2m x 2m with pyrograpic drawing of warship, 29" CRT Monitor, caterers table and military chairs

Midwatch is set aboard a battleship recently returned from operation Mosaic; the 1956 British nuclear bomb test around Montebello in the Indian Ocean. A mutineer from the tests and a time travelling caterer from Nelson's fleet remain onboard. A battle of wills ensues between the two, as Nelson's geographic progress to power is set against the nuclear bomb tests of the 1950's; a collision between a barely remembered Imperial omnipotence and a barely understood technology of nuclear manipulation. The film was shot in total darkness using infrared equipment. Neither the actors, nor Waller on camera, could see one another. The filming itself was thrown into the realm of nightmare, as any sense of ego is removed, alowing a more profoundly intense personality to seep out.

Press:Guardian, 04.08.2001 'New England', LUX gallery

Included in the line-up is the wonderful work Midwatch by Mark Aerial Waller, an intensely claustrophobic scenario shot in infrared that depicts the plight of two individuals trapped in the galley of a ship returning from the first British nuclear test. The confined conditions reference such purgatorial works as Sartre's play In Camera or the bleak German masterpiece Das Boot. But here the characters, played by Steve Evets and Mark E. Smith of the band The Fall, act out their frustrations with each other in a comic rambling exchange.

More on Midwatch in 2011 exhibition at outpost: HERE

More on the nuclear veterans: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17364359