Michael Hanna

Compuders!

Presented in Microsoft Word’s default font Calibri, Compuders! from Hanna’s 2019 Looking Backwards exhibition at PS2 evokes disrupted utopian fictions, the anticipation of promised/promising futures and technologies, deliberate mistakes and language degradation. Neon signs, like the live broadcasts made in Havelock House, were once at the Ulster Television cutting edge of technological possibility and have steadily been replaced by increasingly ubiquitous digital technologies, the beginning of which is seen in This is Ulster Television from 1980. The exclamation point on Compuders! we hope, will send you on your way with the sense of possibility that came in the early years of these media, and enough curiosity to wonder what may come in the future.

Text adapted from the essay Welcome to Havelock House by P.E.A. Blair. 

Michael Hanna is an artist based in Northern Ireland. His work currently involves experimenting on himself. Recent exhibitions include Saturation at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork and the Chennai Photo Biennale. This neon artwork was made by AM Light.

Watch the cutting edge technology of the past from the UTV archive. This was shown on an Amstrad computer monitor during the exhibition.