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Swarm

2016

Nine carousel slide projectors on custom-built plinths (various heights: 104cm, 115cm and 130cm, painted dark grey) in a 6m x 4m room (dark grey painted walls, dark grey carpet, subdued lighting). Each projector is loaded with a different single slide featuring a text or still photograph from the 1957 sci-fi movie, The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. All projector beams are focused at approximately 70cm and face the entrance to the space confronting and challenging the visitor.

A lone projector/plinth faces away from the group – an interval timer triggers the rotation of a carousel of 81 35mm slides casting a flickering circle of light on the wall. An active PA speaker and media player plays the amplified recorded sound of the continuous operation of the projector.

A huddled crowd projects its paranoia, insecurities and neuroses. Do all governments and regimes, democratic or otherwise, need to kindle a fear of the other in their populace to justify their retention of power?

​Cinema fragmented, the apparatus of illusion and the conventional dominance of the screen is subverted. Investigation, play or chance encounter reveals the projected images as the visitor becomes the screen.

© 2025 John Steed.

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