James Lingwood, Artangel’s Co-Director, invited me to think about making a project on Orford Ness in 2019, then the pandemic arrived, the possibility of travel stopped and consequently, I didn’t have the opportunity to go to Orford Ness before the installation of my works in June 2021. I have never worked under such conditions before. When I first looked at photos or videos of Lab 1, I was struck by the familiarity of the place, its connection to some of my drawings. And because the audience couldn’t get inside the Lab for safety reasons, the idea was for the installation to be viewed like a drawing. The history of the site plays, of course, an important role: the military presence with its activities and its secrets, mingling with a nature that never stopped struggling to recover. The Residents is an installation taking up again this technical, natural and cultural history, with human, mineral and vegetal worlds, their many temporalities intertwining one with the other. The inhabitants of Lab 1, The Residents, are in the midst of plants, water, sculptures, suitcases and a totem that seems to be floating on water, but they are also taking place in history. Perhaps they are remnants of a society that has resided in Orford Ness.