Luke Fowler, “On Incidental Music & Contingent Works”

In this talk the Glasgow based Artist, Musician and Filmmaker will discuss the intersection between sound and moving image in his work. Over the past 20 years Fowler has built a practice that straddles between these two poles and includes 16mm films, archival documentary, sound installations and performance. In this talk he will take the Irish author John McGahern’s observation that ‘Everything interesting begins with one person and one place’ as a potential methodology for
making work. He will describe the genesis of his film and sound works – including how the initial encounter with a person, place or archive can become a singular factor in determining the artworks’ final form. Scottish artist, filmmaker and musician Luke Fowler (1978) has developed a practice that is, at the same time, singular and collaborative, poetic and political, structural and documentary, archival and deeply human. With an emphasis on communities of people, outward thinkers and the history of the left, his 16mm films tell the stories of alternative movements, from psychiatry to photography to music to education. Whilst some of his early films dealt with music and musicians as subjects, in his later works sound itself becomes a key concern.

CONFÉRENCES 2021-2022