Aerial I, from the series Shadow Sites
112 x 150 cm, 2011
photography ADRIAN WARREN

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Aerial IV, from the series Shadow Sites
112 x 150 cm, 2011
photography ADRIAN WARREN

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Aerial III, from the series Shadow Sites
112 x 150 cm, 2011
photography ADRIAN WARREN

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Aerial II, from the series Shadow Sites
112 x 150 cm, 2011
photography ADRIAN WARREN

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this dispatch consists of the soundtrack to the film and was created by the artist in collaboration with the sound designer ROSS ADAMS

all works courtesy of the artist, Rose Issa Projects and Abraaj Capital Art Prize 2011

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Shadow Sites II is a film by JANANNE AL-ANI that takes the form of an aerial journey. The image pans towards abstract panoramas – oddly-shaped and human-less patterns, quadrangles and grids criss-crossing the surface of the land: the markers of habitation contemporary and ancient; traces of activity.

In response to the military’s use of digital technology and satellite navigation, AL-ANI produces a film that recreates the aerial vantage point of such missions while taking an altogether different viewpoint of the land it surveys. The film burrows into the landscape as one image slowly dissolves into another, like a mineshaft tunneling deep into a substrate of memories preserved over time.

JANANNE AL-ANI was born in Kirkuk, Iraq in 1966. She studied Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Art, and graduated with an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 1997. Working with photography, film and video, AL-ANI has a longstanding interest in the power of testimony and the documentary tradition, be it through intimate recollections of absence and loss or the exploration of more official accounts of historic events. She lives in London and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the London College of Communication.

Stay tuned: I’m managing to post the entire Shadow Sites II video here on WFW, meanwhile if you are in Venice for the Biennale, you can watch it at The Future of a Promise (contemporary art  from the Arab world) until 20th November 2011.

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