‘On Saturday, December 1st 2018, precisely at 11:03:42, the TERRA satellite will pass over Zagreb and photograph the city from its orbit.’ (from Sobecka’s website) Citizens were invited to take a picture of the sky as the satellite passed over, in doing so reciprocating and returning the surveillance/the gaze of the satellite.
The main documentation of the piece, in the final exhibition, was in the form of one huge photo made up of all the individual photos submitted – ‘one unique picture of the sky parallel to the one made by the satellite’. There was also video documentation of the event taking place:
I can’t seem to find information anywhere on the composite image of the sky so the video is all I have to know the project by at the moment. The focus on the individual stories in the video brings an element to the piece that I imagine wouldn’t otherwise be present in just the images; the way we see each citizen walk, stop in the street, take the photo and then move on with their day grounds the piece in a very knowable/relatable reality. It brings a touch of the individual that is usually completely obliterated in the vast satellite images Sobecka is responding to, and even that is somewhat sidestepped in the presentation of the composite image.
In the context of my rock tracking it is certainly noticeable the impact that returning to the same spot every day, particularly with keeping in line with the tides and the reducing light levels of winter, has on my day-to-day life. However, as opposed to Sobecka’s work I’m not sure this is particularly relevant to the overall aims of my piece; the presence of the individual in Sobecca’s seems a small act of rebellion against the invisible eye in the sky, whereas in terms of emphasising a liveliness of the nonhuman, including the presence of the human does not seem to contribute to this.
It does raise questions on other modes of presentation, however; the pictures with the invisible subject, the implicit presence of the satellite, is something I could perhaps bring to my work by exploring imagery where the rock is not clearly visible but it’s presence is still known. This could be in the sense of a satellite image of the beach, maybe displayed alongside drawings showing the path, or even if I could find some kind of webcam/live footage in some way this could be effective in the same way. Something about not being able to see the subject matter, but nonetheless knowing it’s there, is particularly effective in changing the artwork/concepts from seen to imagined – there becomes something more speculative and ongoing about it.
Anna Harris 