Overt Research was developed as a method for exploring contemporary sites that have operated within and across the techno-scientific and military-industrial complex.
The approach has three phases. The first stage uses openly available digital information and published materials about sites of interest. This material is supplemented by expertise offered from a wide range of collaborators who may have knowledge of a site or its history. On occasion, unpublished materials are made available for our research, but we only accept information that we can make available to the public that is not illegal. We include information that might be accessible to the public, but not in circulation – including from academic research or activists and urban explorers.
Secondly, we classify sites by counter mapping the corporate and military complex – and to do this, we work in the field documenting these sites in person. Our approach has been supported by legal advice, and adheres to laws in relation to documenting sites of interest. Our field investigations reveal how scientific and related sites appeared or were presented to the public, in plain sight, whilst uncovering gaps between the experimental and the digital realm, our knowledge of a place and the infrastructures of power that go unnoticed in everyday life.
Finally, we published this material, either as documentation, in exhibitions displays or through a process of archiving and making available entire activists archives of site of specific interest.
Office of Experiments co-curated the exhibition Dark Places, using this approach, which we honed during the process. Office of Experiments then developed a public engagement approach, that was also conceptual – a form of spatio-temporal excurion. These Critical Excusrions, otherwise referred to as our bus tours started at this point. Our last tour was in 2012, with Experimental Ruins, which was covered in Art Monthly in the article ‘A Letter from the M25’.
The Overt Research Project was led by Neal White with Steve Rowell and Lisa Haskel, supported by Prof Gail Davies, Nicola Triscott and John Hansard Gallery . The first phase was carried in association with Bournemouth University; A Field Guide to the South West, Project Database covered the first stage of the project (to 2012).
Critical Excursions – 2009-12. Participatory Fieldwork and Bus Tours
Field Guide to Dark Places
Online Database The Field Guide to Dark Places (South Edition) was a key tool used to catalogue our research into sites not normally accessible to the public… Read more
Experimental Ruins
Experimental Ruins Participatory Research for Experimental Ruins The twenty places of our Experimental Workshop were filled immediately. The aim was to introduce to participants questions… Read more
The Secrets of Portland
A One Day Field Guide to the Secrets of Portland (2011) This Bus Tour took in a number of sites around which rumours and conspiracy have… Read more
Secrecy and Technology – Mediated Bus Tour
Secrecy and Technology Bus Tour (2009) On the final day of the exhibition Dark Places, at John Hansard Gallery, the Secrecy and Technology bus tour took place,… Read more
Related Publications
The Redactor
THE REDACTOR, was launched for ‘The Incidental Person’ at Apexart 2010 in New York. Antony Hudek on ‘The Incidental Person’. “The British artist John Latham (1921–2006) coined the expression the “Incidental Person” (IP) to qualify an individual who engages in non-art contexts – industry, politics, education – while avoiding… Read more
The Self-Experimenter
The Self-Experimenter – 2005 This publication was developed for the event ‘The Void’ at The Barbican Gallery, London, part of the ‘Colour After Klein’ exhibition in 2005. The full colour A2 folded sheet publication featured editorial, information on the exhibition ‘Le Vide’ by Yves Klein, data on methylene blue and… Read more