Monitor [2006, 35mm, 5 minutes]
Prior to the production of this short fim, I had made my documentary series of ‘work-station portraits’ in 1997-98, showing at The Photographers’ Gallery in 2004 in a larger show entitled ‘Office’. They address the period when computers and the web began to appear in the workplace en-mass for the first time. The work considers isolation and the invisibility of changes within the modern work-place on the worker where instant communication and information overload, became internalized and according to Paul Virilio refer back to the body as “the last urban frontier”. (1997, Open Sky).
Accompanied by Graeme Miller’s soundtrack, Monitor introduces a lament for the certainties of a more permanent work culture, one that all but disappeared into the dots that make up our computer screens.
Monitor continues to be included within the international touring exhibition, Civilization. The Way we Live Now [ Thames and Hudson, 2019] a response to the heavily critiqued 1955 Family of Man publication and global touring exhibition. The most recent venue was Musei San Domenico, Forlì, Italy, opening on September 17 2022 until January 8 2023.The film will next be on view at The Saatchi Gallery London as part of Civilization from June 2023
Monitor explores the modern enslavement to the machine. Our protagonist’s attention is drawn to a hypnotic and uncertain presence that we cannot see, ‘in an air-conditioned environment with recycled oxygen, deadened by electronic emissions, the characters in Monitor are rendered corpse-like and inert against a cold dark slab of office infinity’
David Chandler. 2003