Wishes for a Better Future (2002/03)

Somewhere in the corridors of a half-forgotten office, two lonely people are practising their pitch. Wishes for a Better Future is a story of nostalgic tourism and contemporary rural life – and the private moments and secret interiors of the people that dream of them. Incorporating research from video interviews with tourists and locals in South Devon, Wishes for a Better Future investigates the preservation, packaging and sale of our landscapes and the people who live in them. Lost experiences of childhood holidays become a marketable commodity and the picturesque is presented as a consumable rural dream. Collisions of text and sound objects, live feed video and super-8 footage transform the set into a suburban sitting room, green hillsides, or a windswept Dartmoor crag. In this dislocated and mediated world populated with tourists, second home-owners, a corporate healer, salesmen and a beloved dog, we witness the unfolding relationship of two people who fear where old age will find them.