The edges of everything, softened by Winter

Seen from the window, in parallax

Archive holdings: photographic material relating to the open day at the Falcon Works, 1986

Box 1: transparencies, plans of the site, construction work, aerial views

Box 2: negatives, interior view of the turbine hall, machine shop, canteen, cranage, weigh bridge, assembly line, demonstration of testing in progress

The edges of everything, softened by Winter

Seen from the window, in parallax

Ex terra opes

Move like a freight train

That motion you make

Covers hundreds of miles

Cover hundreds of miles

There's a simple gesture

And you make it all the time

It inhabits you

It inhabits every single part of you

And you're thinking all the time

Think about where you've been

And where you've gone

Think about distance and depth

And effort and ease

About flight and inertia

And torque and release

Think about those women in the 1950s

Think about them calling to the dead

Hands touching

They spasm back and forth

There's a complicated gesture

And you make it all the time

Always moving forward

Move across invisible lines

It oscillates

Turn yourself around

Through technique and training

Now climb the incline

And you're thinking all the time

About abandon and sobriety

Spontaneity and insularity

Anthropology, building a community

And moving like a freight train

Move like a freight train

Box 3: publications and microfiche, control and instrumentation for synchronous induction motors, harmonic excitation system for high tension generators, installation of the dynamo and turbo machinery

Box 4: machine parts, control gear, panels, vertical motors and casings, salient pole rotor, bearings, pedestals, stators and frames, cooling system, terminal box, flameproof inverter, compressor, alternator

Spiralling into the excavation

Down into the pit that's so vast

To see for ourselves in all directions

The site of the open cast

And now we're lifted inside the drag line

Men head-height to its suspension

And they drive a truck straight into its bucket

To demonstrate the dimensions

Imagine its embrace, now imagine

The motion of its maw, now imagine

The cold steel kiss the machine on the ground

And its force on the earth and the terrible sound

And we're digging down

And there's two different gestures

And you make them all the time

Always moving downwards

Moving through eluviated lines

Through the blown-out concrete

And Iron pyrite

Of prefabricated buildings

Swarming with wasps

Assembled by consortium

In sight of the seam

And the coal is exposed

These are all things you've seen

And you're thinking all the time

About flickering lights

Like sodium lamps, like the television

Like those home movies

Moving slightly too fast

In those saturated colours

The persistence of vision

It scintillates

Turn yourself around

And move like a freight train