A History Of The Receding Horizon

A History Of The Receding Horizon is a digital film installation, exploring different concepts of time within the landscape. Although based upon an actual site and the artists research into the site, this is a fictional film that weaves past, present and future time and histories, within spaces above and below the water level. The work is inspired by Kielder in Northumberland, UK. Kielder has the clearest skies in the UK and houses the Kielder Observatory. It also is home to the largest manmade lake in the UK, which is surrounded by Europe’s largest manmade woodland. The film follows astronomers in their hill top observatory, as they look upwards-measuring light in the vast expanses of space. Further down the hillside below the observatory is Kielder Water a flooded valley a manmade reservoir and an environmental historian looking into the water, searching for the areas drowned past. The film has an ambiguity to it where the viewer is left without explanation. The ambiguity serves as a way of searching for the truth, testing the truth, in the way that the astronomers and the historian are searching for a truth. An anonymous narrator whose script has been developed from research interviews with environmental historians, astronomers at Kielder Observatory and local people from the Kielder area, leads the viewer through the film weaving together past, present and future timelines. Funded by Arts Council England and crowd funding through Ideastap, supported by Kielder Obersvatory, Kielder Water and Forest Park, Northumbrian Water and The Forestry Commission.