Gestures of Listening

Gestures of Listening 16mm colour film, stills, 2021

Selected frames from footage shot at Glasgow Theatre and Arts Collective, Govan, Glasgow, 31 October 2021 during an Improvisational vocal workshop led by Nichola Scrutton, organised in support of research towards the making of rough cut botanical (2022).

Reflection by Alex Hetherington, 2022.

In a room that looks like an inverted ship’s hull, while COP 26 was whirling around our heads. Improvisational vocal workshop led by Nichola Scrutton and for me acting as DP on images of its listening, waiting, the gradual emergence of something, collaborative energies, voices occupying spaces, voices as volumes, and this shared dynamic female space; a technical act too of capturing the performed/moments and my twin eye notion when filming, of two eyes behind the lens, and the discussions that took place with Wendy on making these images. I think about that role of artist/technician/DP and what that means to my practice moving forward. I am deeply proud of this project and my work within, especially these images. They reminded me of Lovely Young People (2012) by Rosalind Nashashibi, much rawer than the resolutions of her camera on seeing, presence, bodies and looking and private/public. Shared/individual, chain reactions, sound, breath and bodies making images, following eyes following sound, and also something about an economy of image-making and paring back which makes something else incredibly vivid.