Britain’s Imperial Airship programme is the topic of this full room immersive installation, revealing the human desire for progress, adventure and the unknown. Created in Unreal Engine, Escaping Gravity interrogates the tension between the pioneering optimism of airship construction in the 1920s and the consequences of hubris, as a reflection on our contemporary political and cultural landscape in a post-pandemic world. This is embodied in the wild ambition that went into the making of the R.101 airship and the tragedy that followed. Incorporating archive footage that merges real and imagined worlds of flight and fantasy against a complex symphonic score, this is a multi-layered work that explores birth, death and rebirth.
