Duncan Whitley is a visual artist and filmmaker who works predominantly with sound and the moving-image.
He has presented site-specific projects, audiovisual works, installations and live multi-channel sound works in the UK, Europe and South America. His audiovisual works have been exhibited at Aesthetica Film Festival, Cafe OTO, Whitechapel Gallery, The Whitworth, Centro de Arte Experimental de UNSAM (Buenos Aires), Monte (Buenos Aires), Museo de Bellas Artes Salta (Argentina), EMASESA (Seville), Serralves Museum (Porto), b-side Festival (Dorset) and more. In 2021 he was commissioned by Coventry Biennial to produce a film Phoenix City 2021 for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, in collaboration with composer Abul Mogard and featuring Jaguar Land Rover Band.
Duncan was a commissioned artist for b-side’s 2014 Festival producing the popular Writing of Stones, an immersive site-specific sound installation at St George’s Church Reforne.
kimberlin (n.) 1. Portland dialect for a person living on the Isle of Portland who does not descend from a lineage of at least two generations of Portlanders. 2. Portland dialect for a person from Weymouth, or by extension, a stranger, outsider or foreigner. [Middle English cǒmeling n. From Old Germanic comling & (early) komeling, kimeling. Non-native, foreigner] / k’ɪmbəlɪn /
For b-side festival 2022
Kimberlin is a short film about the discovery of an underground cinema cavern on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. The uncanny discovery and subsequent breaking news begin to generate speculation amongst islanders as to who created the cavern and the cannisters of super-8mm film found within it. Kimberlin was filmed exclusively on Portland and features a specially commissioned soundtrack by acclaimed composer Abul Mogard. The film has screened at Aesthetica Film Festival, Whitworth Gallery and Cafe OTO, and now will premiere on Portland as a new version of the film which Duncan has edited specially for b-side Festival 2022.
It appears we are under siege! On Portland the sea encroaches, landslips erode the island’s cliffs slowly but surely. Inland, the quarries that scar the landscape eventually grow over, interring dialect and song. The super-8mm films found in canisters inside the cinema cavern also bear scars: scratches and burns in the emulsion surface, in which are recorded images of Portland’s landscape and fauna.
Field recordings of fog horns and the trilling of songbirds pass through the filters of Abul’s synthesiser, emerging as faint memories of place: echoes of in the digital future of an England now difficult to grasp. Where “quarry bells no longer ring, except in old men’s dreams”.
Quotation from Cecil “Skylark” Durston
Kimberlin Trailer
Duncan Whitley's Event Archive
Projects Involving Duncan Whitley
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