Grey line [twilight]

'Grey Line' is a multi-site interventional performance work for public radio. The project was developed and realised across a public art commission supported and produced by Consonni, Bilbao, for presentation in Donostia /San Sebastian [Spain], as part of the city’s European Cultural Capital year. The work intervened into a 15 hour live international radio-symposium exploring the impact and contribution of contemporary art within the public sphere, titled LaPublika, and hosted by the developing new international cultural centre Tabakalara. The LaPublika symposium was broadcast by radio stations across Spain and Portugal – including Casares Irratia (Donostia / San Sebastian), TEA FM (Zaragoza), Radio Manobras (Porto), 97FM (Bilbao), Cuac FM (A Coruña), Radio Vallekas (Madrid), amongst others – and was streamed live and internationally via the symposium’s dedicated website. The work being realised within Brookes’ ongoing artistic collaboration with Spanish artist and performer Rosa Casado.

Through an engagement of the global telecommunications network provided by current mobile telephone technology, 'Grey Line' tracked the twilight edge of the shifting shadow of night, as it slowly moved across the surface of the planet – throughout the duration of the LaPublika event on October 28th 2016. The work attempted to follow the progress of one day’s sunset, and its passage, over a scattering of disparate and diverse locations across the earth, towards and over the event site in Donostia / San Sabastian. The work opened a series of short audio connections to people stood out on the earth’s surface. By giving temporary access to the microphones of their mobile phones, these individuals allowed listeners to eavesdrop onto whatever may or may not be audible around them, as daytime passed into night within their personal location and environment. Across the daylong broadcast of the LaPublika symposium, 'Grey Line' periodically interrupted the broadcast schedule to connect live to these people – as they stepped out into their own landscape to watch the shadow’s edge reach them. These provisional audio connections opened moments of access out onto the relentless journey of one day’s perpetual sunset, and onto one of the planet’s inevitable rotations.
 
Research questions included:
How might the structures of open access and interconnection provided by new digital broadcast and communication technologies, across increasing distances and scales, themselves be constituted as sites of intervention, reflection and encounter - at both local and global scales?
In what ways can approaches to located and context-specific live art practices be further expanded through the engagement and employment of such network technologies?
How might live connections and interaction between a globally dispersed collective of participants be both performed and revealed solely through the engagement of daily and familiar technologies already available to those participants?
What might be revealed or become possible through the artistic activation and performance of such a global network of personal connection, as a propositional public art work, and as an expanded and reflective social situation?