Matthew Arthur Williams
Two-channel film, sound installation, 20 mins, 2022
Sound engineering by Richy Carey
The film and sound installation, split across two opposing screens, offers up a kaleidoscopic sequence of landscapes, architectures, bodies and voices that bring these two far-flung places together. Images of landscapes touched in some way by human presence or industry are overlaid with different voices describing the movement of families and communities across vast distances. A sense of constant flux and movement permeates the work, and this is further amplified by the soundscape within the installation, built up with echoes, repetition and refrains, also using woodwind instruments to literally inject further breath into the atmosphere around these images and voices. Before looping back to the beginning, the film closes with a sunset and a song, People Make the World Go Round, performed by the Jamaican reggae band The Chosen Few.
I had previously collaborated with Matthew in compoing the score for Alberta Whittle’s Lagareh, and his diverse practice has inspired my own in direct and indirect ways since. Matthew came to the studio to experiment with recording new sounds, and working up some of the music he had already made for his two channel film work. My own contribution to the project was small, helping engineer Matthew’s recording session and providing another ear through which to consider the sounds he had already collated and been designing, before he took the stems from the session away and folded these into his beautiful composition for the work.
Soon Come, Dec 2022 - Mar 2023, Dundee Contemporary Arts.