Frank Heath
2021War Pigeon
Frank Heath
War Pigeon invokes the use of trained pigeons as aerial photographers during World War II. In this phone call to the customer service department of a bank, the speaker describes an unnerving encounter with a suspicious bird, which has led him to question his trust in the bank’s very existence.
War Pigeon
Asymptomatic Carrier
Frank Heath
Asymptomatic Carrier, created for 2003's Frieze Arts Fair NYC, flies over the abandoned North Brother Island in the East River. Wikipedia says "now a bird sanctuary, the island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public… …from the 1980s through the early 2000s it supported one of the area’s largest nesting colonies of Black-crowned Night Heron. However as of 2011 this species has abandoned the island for unknown reasons."
Asymptomatic Carrier
Path of Totality
Frank Heath
"Path of Totality" documents the events leading up to the August 21st 2017 total solar eclipse in St. Joseph, MO (one of the prime locations within the path of the shadow as well as the hometown of the artist). Featuring a colorful array of eclipse-chasers, middle-Americans, and commercial opportunists who descended upon the small town in anticipation for a moment of impending darkness, the work captures the peculiar mixture of anxiety, amusement, and reflection summoned by the cosmic event.
Path of Totality
The Hollow Coin
Frank Heath
Frank Heath's "The Hollow Coin" explores roles of authority in public space and the intersection of personal and historical narratives. The video combines documentary footage of New York City's rapidly disappearing network of payphones with audio of a covertly recorded telephone exchange between an actor and an unknowing bystander. In the surreptitiously captured conversation an attempted "information leak" is infused with an absurd story and a historical anecdote. The work's title refers to a Soviet spy who was apprehended in 1953 after mistakenly paying his newspaper delivery boy with a hollow coin that contained a microfilm of an encrypted message. Throughout the video a parallel sequence of events reveals that images from the video itself have been stored on an SD card concealed within a hollow coin and inserted into the payphone from which the call was made.
The Hollow Coin
There is Nothing Underneath the West Virginia Wing
Frank Heath
"There is Nothing Underneath the West Virginia Wing" (2018) revolves around Project Greek Island bunker, a vast and elaborate underground bomb shelter that was designed to house members of Congress in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Now declassified and open for public tours, the bunker was covertly maintained for 30 years in a state of readiness beneath the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Heath's video focuses on the eerie spaces of the vacant shelter and its remarkable blast doors which were engineered by the Mosler Vault Company whose bank vaults famously survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima.
There is Nothing Underneath the West Virginia Wing
