BORIS Johnson’s voice played over the image of a decaying sheep carcass, an elegiac trumpet accompanying shots of the White Cliffs of Dover, a robotic voice reciting God Save the Queen as scenes of urban decay unfold – what will you see when you watch Britain, Take a Bow?
Available to view online, the video artwork uses footage shot around the UK to examine what Brexit means for all of us.
And – soundtracked by a range of news clips, discordant beats and choir loops – the result looks and sounds different on each viewing.
Artist Graeme Crowley used groundbreaking software to combine film, audio and on-screen typography to ensure a “unique experience” every time.
More than 1.8 billion permutations of the soundtrack are available alone, with a host of musicians, an orchestra and even school children contributing versions of God Save the Queen.
The four-minute film is pieced together from clips created by a range of filmmakers and designers invited by Crowley, who had planned to end the process of making the digital artwork on March 29, when the UK was supposed to leave the EU.
But with the original timetable in tatters, Crowley will now continue to add more material indefinitely – with the project’s complexity itself a reflection of Brexit chaos.
The project’s extension will see Crowley, who is based in London, travel to Scotland this summer to collect more footage from north of the Border. The expedition will begin around Edinburgh before taking the Coventry-born creative to Skye.
The current cache includes shots gathered in the Northern Isles and along the country’s rugged coastline. Most of the rest was filmed across England.
Crowley, who previously worked with French dance duo Daft Punk, told The National an extension to filming will create a more representative result. He said: “It’s constantly evolving. We’ll see where it ends.
“I really want it to be a very participatory thing from different viewpoints, from all around.
“I looked online to check out which areas were predominantly pro-Brexit and went there to begin with, then I went to pro-Remain areas.”
While Crowley intended to “reflect the fragmentation and complexity of the situation and expose the anachronistic and sentimental visions of the UK pushed by the architects of Brexit”, he says he is now “more sympathetic” to those who voted to quit the Brussels-based bloc.
He said: “One of the eye-openers is that a lot of the places that voted for Brexit are in real decline. There’s a kind of underlying tension in these places, people are very disheartened with the way life is. I think they picked the wrong battle, I don’t really think it’s to do with the EU, it’s to do with a decade of austerity and the decline of industry.”
Britain, Take a Bow takes its name from the headline published in the Daily Mail on June 25, 2016, following the EU referendum.
While the result always differs, much of the footage it uses – a topless man swaying in the street, an overflowing skip, a ripped soft toy – is less than flattering to the unidentified locales where it was captured.
When asked about the less-than-celebratory tone of the striking, inventive work, Crowley said: “I don’t know if there is a lot to celebrate. It’s meant to be quite contemplative and moving.
“What I’m trying to do is get an even-handed feel for the UK by having lots of multiple perspectives. I’m trying to hold a mirror up to the UK.
“A lot of the footage is very raw, but there’s also a lot of beautiful landscape and seascapes that have a different feel. It’s important to show the reality of these places – I don’t want to shy away from those things.”
On the artistic response to Brexit, Crowley went on: “It takes a while for the artistic community to absorb what’s going on and create a response to that. We’ll be seeing quite a bit more of that work coming through.”
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