Serpentine Cinema presented the UK première of Lance Wakeling’s film Field Visits for Chelsea Manning. In partnership with Rhizome.
Field Visits for Chelsea Manning is a first-person travelogue based on the places where Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst, was detained. The one-hour video takes place in Kuwait, Virginia, Kansas and Maryland. Using the concept of mosaic theory — an American intelligence-gathering technique that employs the collection of disparate pieces of information to craft a larger picture or narrative — the video compiles a personal and imagined geography of the areas surrounding Manning’s geo-detention sites.
Instead of directly addressing the fate of Manning after the release of classified documents to Wikileaks, the narrative visits a series of serendipitous collisions between the filmmaker and current events, such as a Civil War reenactment, a barbershop quartet dressed as prisoners and drinking coffee in a business park for national security contractors.
Presented in partnership with Rhizome
Since 2011, Lance Wakeling has been filming a series of video essays that explore the physical and social landscapes of the internet. The series began with the travelogue A Tour of the AC-1 Transatlantic Submarine Cable, screened as part of the Serpentine’s study evening An Evening on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on Thursday 19 March. Recent works have been exhibited at BAM, New York; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Klaus von Nichtssagend, New York; Supplement Gallery, London; NiMK, Amsterdam; The Woodmill, London; Import Projects, Berlin; Capricious Gallery, New York, and Future Gallery, Berlin
