Letter From Sapporo, Morgan Quaintance

About

Letter from Sapporo (2021) is a collage film offering a glimpse of daily life in the Japanese city of Sapporo. Commissioned for S-AIR’s 2020 international residency programme (that became virtual due to the global pandemic), London-based artist and filmmaker Morgan Quaintance responded by inviting city residents to be his eyes and ears, and to shoot footage in his place. The resulting film is the product of approximately 16 participants capturing material with their smartphones. Focusing on moments of stillness, intimacy, labour and humour, disparate material is wedded into a compelling and coherent whole by Quaintance’s subtle editing, original music and vivid sound design.

Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely with presentations in 2020 including: Curtas Vila Do Conje, Portugal at which he received the Best Experimental Film award, and CPH:DOX at which he received the New Vision Award, both for the film South (2020); Oberhausen Film Festival, Germany; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland;  Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Punto de Vista Festival in Pamplona, Spain;  and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami. Over the past ten years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics and their socio-political contexts, have featured in publications including Art Monthly, the Wire, and the Guardian, and helped shape the landscape of discourse and debate in the UK.