High Wire
2008
7’32”16mm film and hd cam transferred to digital media
Two versions; four screens and one screen
Commissioned by Artangel and Glasgow International

High Wire shows a man walking the tightrope between two tower blocks on Red Road housing estate, Glasgow. Now regarded as a failure, Red Road was once seen as the solution to poor housing which would, literally, lift people out of poverty.The aspiration to build ‘streets in the air’ paralleled Didier Pasquette’s own dream of walking in the air. In both cases the dream did not work out as planned: the social problems remained and Didier backtracked because of vibrations on the wire. The dream floundered in the attempt to realise it, but something of it remains and the question is how do we hold on to those aspirations, both personal and as a social body? What can we take from them that is valuable? How might the notion of failure be re-evaluated? The Red Road tower blocks have since been demolished, leaving an empty flat expanse in memory of the six slabs that stood alone in full view, as much like a Modernist landscape sculpture as a place to live.