UFOs over DESERT TOWNS
2018 - 2020 / Book of imagined sightings & UFO hoax photographs made with kind contribution from young people living in UK ‘culture deserts’ / Supported by Gloucester Culture Trust
In December, I read that The Arts Council sees my home Gloucester as a 'culture cold spot' - the only English city on a list of towns. The same day I learnt that The National UFO Reporting Centre had recently documented an all-time low in sightings. But imagine if UFOs did come visit, imagine if they chose Gloucester? Or Blackpool, or Wigan, or Doncaster, or any of the places to make that list. I travelled to England’s so-called culture deserts, at times working with local young people, to fake UFO sightings across these places and reviving the dying and overlooked folk art of1970s UFO hoaxes. With just tinfoil, empty film reels and disposable cameras, we created signals in the sky proving if not that there's life out there, that there's life right here on Earth: here in the desert towns.
This book of fictional UFO sighting accounts is illustrated by the very hoaxes that were made. From goths dyeing their hair in the Gloucester Kings Square toilets to girls dreaming over scratch cards at the old football stadium in Doncaster, the imagined encounters tell a true and connected story of undervalued human culture in written-off places.
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