Room 40

Room 40 is a video-mapped installation that reconstructs GCHQ through fragments of second-hand information. Rather than presenting the building as a stable or authoritative image, the work treats it as something pieced together through reports, public references, and mediated accounts. The result is an installation in which projection and sound turn a highly protected site into a partial and unstable model, bringing questions of surveillance and secrecy into physical space.

That indirectness is crucial. The work never claims access to the building it depicts; instead it shows how state power circulates through partial images, rumours, and technical systems of looking. In May’s wider practice, reconstruction is rarely about completion, and Room 40 makes that clear by turning secrecy itself into the material condition of the image.

Additional notes

• Soundtrack by Martin A. Smith.
• Commissioned by Irini Papadimitriou for Networked Bodies at Watermans, London.
• Exhibited 7 to 9 November 2014.
• The title refers to the Admiralty code-breaking section known as Room 40 during the First World War.
• Video documentation: YouTube