SCAN is an experimental and site-specific cine-city  installation.

 

Using the inspired Art Deco futurism of the Mersey Tunnel Air Vent

building as a departure point, SCAN explores the building as a

breathing organism and cinematic space/structure. The ventilation

function of the Air Vent building ­ –  the cleansing of air within a

system –  struck us as a beautiful metaphor for life and the act of

breathing. We draw on links between cinema, architecture, urban

movement, and two cities on the transmitting and receiving ends

of urban migratory history: Liverpool and New York City.

 

SCAN explores the contemporary cultural reverberations of this

vital maritime link: Between 1830 and 1930, more than 9 million

emigrants from Britain, Ireland, and mainland Europe set sail from

the port city of Liverpool to the USA, Canada, and Australia. The

majority of these emigrants from Liverpool to the USA were received

through the ports of New York City.

 

SCAN also visually examines the inside of the Mersey Tunnel Air

Vent and optically inverts the building, revealing it’s interior

both spatially and historically. Through the artists documentary process

of research and urban archeology, and with grateful access to the

building, unique material from the deep vaults result in an experimental

look at the inside.

 

The artists  look to early experimental cine-city films, such as

Manhatta (1921), as a link between their own contemporary urban

cinematic experiments and the early visions of how film,

architecture and the city were explored.

 

Through inventive use of manipulated video, pre-produced

footage, and architectural mappings, SCAN reveals the city as a

living, growing, evolving organism, examines the exchanges of

transit, voyage, and migration, and presents a visual bridging of

these two linked cultural capitals: a choreography of spatiovisual

cinema.

 

NOMO (Peter Norrman/Jeff Morey) and Jacqueline Passmore