ARTISTS TALKING

With the British Council's help we were invited, in 2000, to film the Russian cosmonaut training centre in Star City just north of Moscow. Built at the height of the Cold War during the 1950s, and for many years a 'hidden city', it represented the very essence of the Russian aim to dominate the space race. After filming there we made a four-screen video installation, Star City 2000, shot originally on 16mm and then transferred to DVD.

Following on from this work we returned to Moscow, this time travelling to Kazakstan and the Russian Cosmodrome in Baikonur. This visit led to a second four-screen installation Proton, Unity, Energy, Blizzard 2000. The work was intended to be a pure exploration of the architecture of the three main launch sites: Proton which follows a Proton rocket to its launch site at dawn; Unity (Soyuz) the launch site for all manned space missions and the site from which Yuri Gagarin was launched in 1961, and finally the site abandoned for over ten years, Energy (Energia) which was designed to carry the Russian space shuttle Blizzard (Buran).

Both installations act as counterpoints to the film Dream Time 2001, which will be shown in July for the opening of Baltic in Gateshead. The film represents the culmination of both of the previous works in that it documents a real event – the launch of the first manned space mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from Baikonur Cosmodrom. It is a single screen installation edited so that the narrative collapses moving between single and multiple views of the preparations and rituals surrounding the launch, and culminating in the launch itself.

We are at present working on a new commission for Baltic in 2003. It will be a work specifically about the north east of England, looking in particular at sites in Spennymoor, Gateshead, Newcastle and Peterlee.