Royal Aircraft Establishment Celebrated at South Hill Park
2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the first manned powered flight in Britain, made by former cowboy Samuel Cody over Farnborough Common. The Common became home to the now defunct Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), a top-secret military complex and what was one of the most important aeronautical research centres in the world.
Goodbye, Vile Earth! is the result of a residency by Simon Hollington & Kypros Kyprianou at Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, set up by ex employees to maintain the RAE’s history. Hollington & Kyprianou's previous collaborative projects have been shown nationally and internationally, including The ICA London and the 51st Venice Biennale.
Hollington & Kyprianou use elements from the RAE archive to create a time line of the working life and scientific projects of the RAE, combined with contemporary interviews exploring the process of archiving and its communication, in effect creating an archive of the archivists.
Amongst The RAE projects were the development of the Spitfire, the bouncing bomb, ejection seats, the jet engine and Concorde. The RAE was also home to the British space programme, which for a time in the 1960’s was one of the leaders in the field of rocket technology.
Intrinsically entwined with this industrial history is a rich social and cultural one, including the mass mobilization of female workforces, the secrecy and myths surrounding the site, and the question of ethics in relation to scientific industrial military research.
A second timeline, a subjective history of modern art, will run alongside, allowing an appraisal of how discoveries and developments in both changed the world.
Goodbye Vile Earth! is a misquote of the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti, whose love of flight led him to see a future where humanity abandons the earth for a life permanently in the skies. He actually wrote "Hoorah! No more contact with the vile earth!" in the Futurist manifesto, published in 1909, the year after Cody's first flight on Farnborough Common.
Goodbye Vile Earth! by Hollington & Kyprianou is at South Hill Park, Ringmead, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 7PA from 2nd February - 16th March 2008.
Goodbye, Vile Earth! is the result of a residency by Simon Hollington & Kypros Kyprianou at Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, set up by ex employees to maintain the RAE’s history. Hollington & Kyprianou's previous collaborative projects have been shown nationally and internationally, including The ICA London and the 51st Venice Biennale.
Hollington & Kyprianou use elements from the RAE archive to create a time line of the working life and scientific projects of the RAE, combined with contemporary interviews exploring the process of archiving and its communication, in effect creating an archive of the archivists.
Amongst The RAE projects were the development of the Spitfire, the bouncing bomb, ejection seats, the jet engine and Concorde. The RAE was also home to the British space programme, which for a time in the 1960’s was one of the leaders in the field of rocket technology.
Intrinsically entwined with this industrial history is a rich social and cultural one, including the mass mobilization of female workforces, the secrecy and myths surrounding the site, and the question of ethics in relation to scientific industrial military research.
A second timeline, a subjective history of modern art, will run alongside, allowing an appraisal of how discoveries and developments in both changed the world.
Goodbye Vile Earth! is a misquote of the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti, whose love of flight led him to see a future where humanity abandons the earth for a life permanently in the skies. He actually wrote "Hoorah! No more contact with the vile earth!" in the Futurist manifesto, published in 1909, the year after Cody's first flight on Farnborough Common.
Goodbye Vile Earth! by Hollington & Kyprianou is at South Hill Park, Ringmead, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 7PA from 2nd February - 16th March 2008.