photo:
Rana Dasgupta

A site-specific installation at the Rådhusteateret, Sandnes, near Stavanger (the oil capital of Europe!) in south-western Norway.

Within the cinema-hall is a fabricated lighthouse (using wood, metal, light beam), and ambient light using LEDs. From the top of the lighthouse a soundscape is played into the city, loudly, twice a day. The soundscape also plays inside the town's malls, City Hall, Culture House and the Library.

A cinema invites us to see in the dark.

A lighthouse helps a sailor see where he is.

Both work with beams of light.  

Both cause observers to question their own coordinates.

Unusually Adrift From the Shoreline is an artwork by Raqs Media Collective from New Delhi.   It consists of a live sculpture installed in the Rådhusteateret in Sandnes, and recorded sound broadcast throughout the city.

Visitors to the old cinema of Sandnes stumble upon the uncanny sight of a great lighthouse, unusually adrift from its shoreline.   The abandoned cinema, with its wave-like stepped floor, has become an echo of the sea, and the lighthouse has apparently erupted there, as if from the depths, to scan the aquamarine darkness with a solitary, roving beam.

The cries of whales ring out in Sandnes' solid streets and shopping malls, as if the buried world of water has reclaimed the city, and great submarine creatures summon people to revisit its submerged places.

Unusually Adrift From the Shoreline is a work about darkness, light, navigation and memory.   Centred on a cinema lost to time, it is intended to prompt unfamiliar thoughts in the city.   Thoughts and feelings about the pleasures – and hidden perils – of losing oneself: in movies, at sea, and in the oceanic expanse of time.

Part of Neighbourhood Secrets Project (www.neighbourhoodsecrets.no)
1st of May, 2008 - 31st of May 2008