BREAN SANDS POINT #2 (2014) single colour screen . stereo sound . DSLR & RAW Stills . DUR. 00:12:55:00.

This essay video is released free online on 05.11.2015 in support and celebration of the Million Mask March.

Huge thanks to >> Stuttgarter Filmwinter 2015, Flatpack Film Festival 2015 and Exeter Phoenix's Crossing the Line Season 2015 who have supported this project by including it in their programmes.

Brean Sands Point #2 is drawn from Richard’s ongoing project, Scribbling Between Photons, conceived as 26 video works one made at each of the sites that international submarine fibre optic cables make landfall around the coast of the mainland UK.

Brean Sands Point #2 is an exploration of the patterns of fibre optic ownership, the interrelation of corporate and national power and how an individual can gain more autonomy by understanding the forces around them, the politics of light. DSLR recordings capture the shifting natural light and ceaseless waters in the estuary of the River Severn where old copper and fibre cables lie both buried and submerged. Appropriated audio and voice over explore trade battles fought over future cables and the hypocrisies at the heart of these surveillance states. Although hidden from casual view this data infrastructure is inscribed in the landscape, Empires fight to control it and through it attempt to control their populations. The project is modular and will run from 2013-2018 - each work capable of standing alone, sifting each landscape’s shifting relations to the politics of light inscribed in the physical network layer. No algorithm exists to predict what the 26 works will become when complete, just a human journey through land, sea and light.