Ann Curran

Ireland

On 12 January 2003 I made a journey across nine time zones from Vienna, Austria, to Los Angeles, California. From 7am to 4pm I travelled from live web-camera to web-camera, over mountains and roadways and cities, capturing one image from each camera as I went along, heading west. The web-cameras I visited were put in place for seemingly benign and pleasurable purposes – to show weather conditions or provide views of cities or winter resorts for prospective tourists. Placed on the highest peaks, they invoke the eye of God looking down from above and surveillance on a vast scale. This grid of views is a representation of space and time across a vast physical distance on a particular day. It is a composite portrait of a winter landscape across two continents, and a document of a journey taken and not taken.

My work is an exploration of locations, imagined or real. Ultimately the image becomes a memory or stand-in for the experience of being there, and it is that process of substitution that I am most interested in. People move around these days; relocation is a common thing. Time becomes stretched and condensed to suit our needs. Mapping out a space, a location, or a set of places is a process of mediation. Even when the images supplied by memory are true to life, one can place little confidence in them.

(Text: imagine limerick catalogue, 2004)