A derelict and voluminous hangar that once served as the diesel plant for Radio Liberty is the site of The Irrepressible Light of the Terminator. Three concrete window frames, cleaned of debris and painted a clinical white, reveal jagged pieces of thick glass. Set behind the windows is a bank of military green electrical machinery cases, graffitied, stripped of valuable equipment and left abandoned: relics of once state-of-the-art technologies, pre-Internet, pre-AI, used to power the free world’s communications across the former Soviet Bloc. Now there is silence. Asbestos panels litter the ground and hang precariously from a ceiling frame that once concealed ducting and wiring. The only communication here is in the graffiti “tags”: some political, satirical, most macho, a crude marking of territory. Radio Liberty had a purpose: to bring a particular ideology to people living in the former Soviet Union and neighbouring countries. This version of truth was intended to drive participation in free-market capitalism, an embrace of democracy and an escape from both poverty and indoctrination. 

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In this intervention, one of the machinery cases emits an eerie red light. A song starts to play. Is this the ghost of an ideology in the machine of progress or the light in the eye of the smashed-up robot from The Terminator? Just when you think the battle is over, there’s a sequel and the enemy is even more powerful. 

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This work also considers the cost, beyond financial, of this facility: all of the extracted minerals required to make the steel casings, the machinery, the concrete, the glass, the miles of electrical cabling, the multiple 100-metre high steel antennas, etc.; the vast number of computer parts and audio equipment made from newly developed high performance plastics (the versatile, now ubiquitous and near-immortal, bastard child of petroleum-refining processes); and all of that human labour to mine the materials, build the facilities, strategize and run the operations. What was lost and what was gained in the long run? This no-man’s land offers the liberty to make art with a light touch, ephemeral - a reimagining: creative responses to the history of the place, the beliefs, the people who were here, the decay, the natural environment taking over; this feels like true liberty.