Gillian Tan

Deep England is a live performance film by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard — NYX and Gazelle Twin reuniting at Shoreditch Town Hall for the first time in fifteen months, to perform an abridged version of their critically acclaimed electronic-choral album. Rooted in English pagan and sacred music, the record radically expands Gazelle Twin’s 2018 Pastoral, with music arrangements by NYX Music Director Sian O’Gorman alongside settings of Paul Giovanni and William Blake. Its political dimensions had only sharpened by the time of this performance.

The lighting design for a performance film is a different problem to designing for a live audience alone — the camera sees what the eye doesn’t, and vice versa. The Grade II listed hall gives you an architecture already loaded with history; the task is to activate it rather than override it. The choral work demands a different quality of light to electronic performance, and Deep England is both at once.