Artist in Residence: Rory Pilgrim

Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, 1988) works in a wide range of media including songwriting, composing music, film, music video, text, drawing and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through a different methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops. In an age of increasing technological interaction, Rory's work creates connections between activism, spirituality, music and how we form community locally and globally from both beyond and behind our screens.

www.rorypilgrim.com

Rory Pilgrim at the Old Carpet Factory portrait by Ekaterina Juskowski

CATEGORY
Sound Art

YEAR
2023

GRANT
Vleeshal Vleeshal Centre for Contemporary Art in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
During their Art Residency at the Old Carpet factory in June 2023, artist and composer Rory Pilgrim worked on the soundtrack of his first up coming feature film. With the film taking place itself on The Isle of Portland in the English Channel, the film explores how we make tangible the emotional impact in both our lives and in times of climate emergency.

Over the time of the residency, Pilgrim worked with long term collaborator singer Robyn Haddon , known for incredible timbre and range. Together Pilgrim and Haddon created a library of material and songs that will provide the basis of the films wider soundtrack, creating connections with field recordings and sounds from the island of Hydra that provide a portal of a far away locality outside of the island where the larger film will take place.

For the wider score, these songs, material and field recordings made on Hydra will be used for the soundtrack in way that not only captures the atmosphere of an island, but also as a narrative device between the visual and sonic to reveal the relationship of what is ‘seen’ and not ‘heard’ or vice versa. With the sound of wind being one of the most prominent sounds of the island, Pilgrim heightened this by composing accompaniments for the songs and wider soundtrack working with a recorder ensemble. Juxtaposing with the traditional sound of the recorders, a final component will be also creating a layer of electronic sounds and beats of dance music that capture the industrial feel and energy of the spaces the soundtrack has been made, and in the contemporary predicament we urgently find ourselves.

Learn more about Art Residency at the Old Carpet Factory and Apply here

Robyn Huddon at the Old Carpet Factory Art Residency

Photography by Ekaterina Juskowski @juskowski