Off-Shore
2020 – ongoing

Off-Shore is being developed in the context of Sound Image Culture, Brussels and with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts
Animation: Arif Ashraf

Off-Shore is a film and ongoing research project which revolves around the bizarre history of an abandoned World War 2 gun tower, located in the North Sea, which has been occupied by a British family since the 1960’s. Originally intended to broadcast pirate radio, the family worked with two cyber-libertarians in the early 2000’s to establish the world's first data-haven on the tower. The data-haven, called HavenCo promised the only truly safe place in the world to keep information. Off-Shore considers the tower as at paradoxical site, a space promoting sovereignty and data autonomy, which is controlled by a closed and isolated family unit.

Off-Shore introduces other utopian ventures, such as the libertarian Seasteading project, in order to re-imagine how the sea provides the possibility of encountering extraterritorial places, places that exist beyond the territory of the State, while also remaining critical to the often capitalist and colonial ideologies behind these projects. Off-Shore composes found material and animation to speculate on the image of an autonomous man-made island; a claustrophobic family structure; and the data-haven – a place where information can be kept safe, away from the cloud.