John Gerrard: Western Flag
Channel 4 have announced an important new commission with John Gerrard to be broadcast in April 2016 and appear in large-scale public projections simultaneously at several international locations to be announced. This new project will be a virtual flag made out of perpetually-renewing black smoke that Gerrard will place in a perfect CGI replica of Spindletop, Texas - the birthplace of the modern oil industry. The work will run in cyberspace for a year – exactly parallelling the sunrises, sunsets, lengthening shadows and changing seasons of the real Spindletop – and for one day next spring will break into the Channel 4 schedule in the junctions between programmes - an icon of climate change and modern society’s dependence on oil.