BIO

Christopher Spencer-Lowe (CSL) is an award-winning filmmaker, media artist and performer of unusual works in public. He has projected film loops at raves, played in various bands, performed in media, movement and art performances, designed sound for films, worked as a freelance media consultant and program coordinator, created media installations, advocated for arts locally and nationally, taught filmmaking to over a two thousand people while drawing awards and recognition for his short films. His short TRANSFER (2014), created from found Super 8 home movies and semi-autobiographical scripted sequences, garnered significant attention and awards at multiple festivals.

NOSTALGIACHOLIA, LIVE FROM THE PAST (Halifax, Nocturne Art at Night, 2015), an installation where passers-by were literally projected inside of the home movies of strangers was experienced by over 1,400 participants in one night. Coming full circle, CSL’s third work in the ‘Nostalgiacholia’ trilogy was appropriately co-created by his daughter and inspiration, Harley, from age two to age four. TWO (2016), commissioned by AFCOOP, screened at various festivals and galleries internationally. The short uses fragmented Super 8 photography and treated recordings of Harley and CSL’s two years at home together to re-create the experience of memory in the cinema. CSL‘s short film commission, ALETORIA (2017), established a new cinematic interest for CSL in the use of chance and aleatoric practices to create work in a cinematic context.

Parallel to this direction, CSL formed the performance collective HUMAN DESIRE MACHINE with Czech-Canadian artist Misha Horacek in 2015. The duo combine performance action, movement, live sound creation and expanded cinema elements to create interdisciplinary live performances. The core explorations of HDM lie in the relationships between living bodies and inanimate machines, ritual actions as a force for change and the re-purposing of objects and outmoded technology as dramatic instruments.

Like so many others during the Covid-19 Pandemic, CSL sought ways to continue aspects of his practice online. He successfully developed and raised funding for two large scale projects through the Digital Now initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts. The first was to create a digital media archive for the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative and raise awareness of this archive through the establishment of a web-based streaming service for AFCOOP archival works. That project will wrap up December of 2022. The second project, developed or the Upstream Music Association, was to create an aleatoric (semi-randomized) feature length musical performance documentary. This web based experience will be unique for every new viewer and feature six new compositions by up and coming and established Nova Scotian composers.

During this period CSL also led the development of a new 5k film scanning lab in a cooperation with AFCOOP and the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. The Atlantic Media Preservation Lab, the first of its kind in the history of Atlantic Canada, will begin scanning vulnerable archival film and new works created by celluloid film artist in the Fall of 2022.

Throughout all of this, CSL remains an active member of the Halifax filmmaking and arts community, teaching film and media art, serving on various boards and committees and mentoring film artists.