KATIE PAINE
Currents
17 Aug 2024—15 Sept 2024

Opening:
Saturday 17th August, 5 - 7 PM

Currents is a collaborative video installation by Katie Paine and Samuel Murnane. The project considers the poetic potential of the politics, technologies and history of submarine fibre optic internet cables. Currents imagines our global network of submarine communications cables as the metaphorical body of a gargantuan kraken, whose monstrous tentacles span the earth. This work stems from a piece fiction written for Art + Australia’s Issue, The Mirror, written to accompany Stanton Cornish-Ward’s video I know a Person When I talk to It. The project is also informed by Murnane’s topographic research; specifically, Lidar scans of the Blairgowrie peninsular on Boon Wurrung/Bunurong country. This project is informed by Paine’s narrative video practices and research into the serpentine trajectories of ideas and information across time. Currents is additionally informed by Murnane’s practice as an artist and architect, investigating the intersection of temporal and spatial elements within urban and scientific infrastructure.

This exhibition is part of an ongoing research project into fibre optic internet cables that Paine is undertaking across 2023-2026 alongside fellow artists such as Samuel Murnane and Oliver Hull.