Natural science

experimental film | 9′

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Cracking concrete walls of an abandoned film theatre become the canvas for audiovisual exploration of Christopher Fox’s and Ian Duhig’s “Natural Science”. On one hand, it is a conceptual piece, where the only source of light is a projector stacked on the camera. This device both captures and projects the image. On the other hand, it is a sensual and intuitive reflection of music and poetry.

As the camera-projector scans the space, the performer emerges in it. The musician, along with the walls, floor, and ceiling, becomes part of the canvas too. The eery bunker-like concrete interior becomes a field of blooming flowers or a busy alley in the city, once the images of the camera-projector take over. Contemporary artist Lora Kmieliauskaitė plays the violin and sings mesmerizing yet brilliantly simple poems by Ian Duhig. The words, the images, and the music merge into one expressive yet subtle musical film.

Creators' Biographies

Lora Kmieliauskaitė

Kristijonas Dirsė

Christopher Fox

Ian Duhig

Contemporary artist Lora Kmieliauskaitė delightfully mixes her work as a violinist, actress, and interdisciplinary performer. 

Through her performance projects, she tells emotional stories that resonate her personal experiences and feelings. Lora’s creative work influences embrace many different genres, including classical and contemporary music. She’s eager to spread the sounds of contemporary Lithuanian music by giving voice/sound to creative ideas of talented contemporary composers. Among the many highlights of Lora’s performative career, the one closest to her heart is a contemporary ensemble “Twenty Fingers Duo”, in which Lora and her brother, the cellist Arnas Kmieliauskas share their musical similarities and differences. Their debut album “Performa” was released at the end of 2020.

Born in Vilnius (Lithuania) in 1992, Kristijonas is an audiovisual artist, filmmaker and photographer. In his work he combines music and sonic art with the visual expression in narrative and non-narrative films, photography and audiovisual installations.

While studying Film and Music BA at Brunel University, he worked on interdisciplinary art projects and festivals with students and lecturers from the School of Arts (Jennifer Walshe, Christopher Fox, Colin Riley, Bob Gilmore). 

Music plays a major role in his storytelling. It is particularly present in his collaborations with a Lithuanian composer Dominykas Digimas. Psychogeographic approach to street videography, exploring the city as a character was the basis of imagery for “From Another Point of View” or “This Order Goes Wrong”. Their recent work “Why Does This Appear” explores the question of the subjectivity in memories, as well as the docu-fiction storytelling in a silent music film form.

 

Christopher Fox is a composer, teacher and writer on new music. Between 1984 and 1994 he was a member of the composition staff of the Darmstadt New Music Summer School. During 1987 he lived in West Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berlin Artists Programme. From 1994 until 2006 he was a member of the Music Department at the University of Huddersfield, eventually becoming Professor of Composition. He joined Brunel University London as Professor of Music in 2006 and left his full-time teaching role in 2021 to become Emeritus Professor. In November 2021 he was elected as a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Ian Duhig (b. 1954) was the eighth of eleven children born to Irish parents with a liking for poetry. He has won the National Poetry Competition twice, and also the Forward Prize for Best Poem; his collection, The Lammas Hireling, was the Poetry Book Society’s Choice for Summer 2003, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize for Best Collection. Chosen as a New Generation Poet in 1994, he has received Arts Council and Cholmondeley Awards, and has held various Royal Literary Fund fellowships at universities including Lancaster, Durham, Newcastle and his own alma mater, Leeds.