murmurations

It was a while back now, but in late November last year I went along to an event in Glasgow celebrating thirty years of the Touch record label. The event showcased the work of three Touch artists: Philip Jeck, BJ Nilsen and Thomas Köner, who just released his first record for the label, ' Novaya Zemlya ', last year (though he's been releasing his work elsewhere for over twenty years now). Köner was actually the artist I had heard the least of before the gig, and I was curious as to what he would be like. The set-up on stage had the three artists' workstations arranged in a row, with Köner at the far left. This worked to his advantage, as he seemed to want to focus our visual attention not on him, sitting in front of a laptop and a mixing board, but on the projections on the wall behind him. These included various photographs of vast, desolate, Arctic-looking landscapes, all seemingly altered to appear faded, with their colour, brightness and contrast then adjusted...