New England 2021

The composer Matthew Whiteside was keen to get visuals for new releases of his remixes.

Here’s what I made New England #1 and with a very different approach to the same material New England #2.

Process

I have a studio in New England House in Brighton, and I had access to an empty office space, I began to photograph the space and myself in it. The images were strong but not quite right.

I had read The Peregrine by J. A. Baker. The book is an account of his obsessive observation over 10 years of the Essex landscape and the Peregrine falcon. I wondered what it might be like to apply the same kind of attention to the office space.

I spent time up in the space listening and watching, filming sunrise at 4.30am. becoming sensitised to the landscape inside the room, waiting for birds to fly past the window, freaking myself out late one night under the emergency lights. A narrative began to emerge about relationships through time between the city, the building, body and sky.

. I invited the dance artist Jacob Bray to work with me, I had an idea that I wanted to make a film about an office worker left behind in the pandemic, Jacob thought he might be a cleaner. We also spoke about our experiences of 2020. I wrote some scores for Jacob who is a fantastic improvisor to interpret. We filmed over a day and a night.

I used the material to make different films for real world and online spaces for Matthew across scales, from phone screens to building sides. The project is called New England 21