Issue 7: Summer 2011
Atom Town: Life After Technology
“Dounreay Atomic Research Establishment is a sprawling monument to solidity, optimism and analogue engineering. The intangible alchemies and sense of romantic science at its heart are trapped like amber in archive film and in its colossal structures. Over the last two years, unprecedented access to the facility and to the UKAEA Archive at Harwell have allowed Gair Dunlop to explore the dream and the consequences of high science in a remote community.” - Press Release
Gair Dunlop's presentation of the Dounreay story unfolds over the past and the present, with two images simultaneously projected alongside each other. On the left screen, he shows archive footage on colour or black and white 16mm film stock and crude early video framed in the square 4:3 aspect ratio. it is imperfect, displaying anything from the odd nick and blemish to severe deterioration. On the right is entirely colour footage shot specifically for this project on crystal clear HD digital in the 16:9 aspect ratio. These two image tracks drift in and out of synch with each other: locations – of the research establishment itself, the surrounding countryside, the nearby shop fronts and housing estates – are presented then and now; former employees view and comment on footage of themselves or of their relatives as it plays on the opposite screen. The soundtrack crosses back and forth between the original audio of the 'found' footage (often a presenter doing a piece to camera or in voiceover) and the newly-commissioned interviews and atmospheric musical score by Mark Vernon.
The experimental approach to the material may prove frustrating for those not familiar with the history of Dounreay. Within its 22 minute running time Atom Town: Life After Technology (2011) covers the essential details relating to the history of the town and the research establishment, but does so in a disjointed and evasive manner. While the archive segments offer chunks of information in isolated elements, there is no modern voiceover bridging the gaps. The images from each screen remain disconnected not only through contrasting technical quality and formatting but also through age and the element of retrospection. Dunlop is more interested in capturing the hope and naivety then and the nostalgia and hindsight now than in creating a conventional narrative. There are some touching human elements to be found. For instance, on the left screen there is black and white footage of “young people from the North” being trained to work in a laboratory, the camera eventually focusing on one young man with bad acne and a white coat who does a piece to camera. Simultaneously, on the right hand screen, that man, now in his sixties, studies this footage on a television screen. But mostly the imagery is of landscapes and technology. The camera roams around the interior and exterior of the research establishment. The large Fast Reactor dome is framed prominently against the surrounding countryside. Dunlop's films bulky, oversized and sometimes rusting analogue equipment in the facility becomes the focus of a fetishistic fascination with this obsolete technology of the 20th century.
For more information on Atom Town: Life After Technology, please visit http://www.atomtown.org.uk/
-Christopher O'Neill