[UNIT] Reach The Moon

Artist collective [UNIT] first debuted their work at St Mary's Works in Norwich in September 2016. Since then they have performed at Colchester Arts Centre, at the Middlesborough Art Weekend, and at Norwich Arts Centre.
 
This week they returned to Norwich Arts Centre for two days, performing a brand new site-specific piece specially commissioned for this year's Norwich Science Festival. Six sensory performances enabled audiences to step inside a 360 degree circle of video screens, complete with surround-sound audio and live band performance, and experience [Reach The Moon], a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
 
Conceived and performed by composer Bill Vine, together with Anthony Bailey on clarinets and with visuals by Henry Driver, [Reach The Moon] managed to achieve what many others have tried and failed to do – to recreate the excitement and overwhelming sense of achievement that emerged from that historic moment on July 20th, 1969.
 
I was a twelve year old boy at the time. We sat in front of our black and white television set in awe and anticipation as the lunar module approached the moon's surface, The pictures were poor quality, and subject to interference and sporadic break-up, but the voices of the astronauts and of NASA control crackled through our TV speaker, ramping up the tension and excitement. The lunar module completed its approach, and touched down on the moon's surface just before 8.30pm (UK time). We then remained in our sitting room, glued to the broadcasts, for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually six and a half hours, until a very blurred image of Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar soil with those legendary words '...one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind'. It was almost three o'clock on a Monday morning – I cannot remember whether or not we had school that day, but I will never forget that moment as long as I live.
 
Full credit and respect, therefore, to [UNIT] for recreating the atmosphere (no pun intended) of that night for me with such breathtaking and heart-stopping accuracy. What [UNIT] achieve with their three dimensional fusion of archive audio soundtrack and film imagery, together with electronic music, percussion, vocals and clarinet, is a distillation of all the emotions I felt that night – excitement, anticipation, fear, relief, and of course pride. [UNIT] have distilled and encapsulated all the lo-tech magnificence of that mission, delivering it to a 21stcentury audience, many of whom have grown up with mobile telephones, computers and high definition television, and who take them all completely for granted. But for that twelve year old boy back in 1969, struggling to make out the shape of an astronaut's boot touching the surface of the moon, no amount of digital technology could have generated more drama than I felt that night. That is why this show is so remarkable.
 
As Bill Vine commented at the end of the performance, we live today in troubled times, and in a divided society. Back in 1969 something very special happened – the whole world came together to celebrate the moon landing as an achievement for the whole of mankind. All differences were put aside, just for a moment, in a spirit of mutual achievement and pride. Perhaps we now need even more reminders like this, a demonstration of just what we are capable of when we set our minds to it, and inspiring and re-igniting that vital spark of collective humanity.
 
The moon landings were not just about science – they transcended into something way more spiritual than that, and [UNIT] recaptured the moment with absolute beauty and clarity.