Fraser Morton, a mixed-media journalist, filmmaker & founder of Far Features, an independent media production company, talks about using times of disruption as a springboard for creative experimentation.
Fraser Morton, a mixed-media journalist, filmmaker & founder of Far Features, an independent media production company, talks about using times of disruption as a springboard for creative experimentation.
Now is the time
Now is the time
There has never been a better time to invest in independent, experimental, creative, socially-oriented work. If you have a project you have always wanted to get done — now is the time.
The interconnectedness of people and global economies, our broken relationship with the natural world, racial injustice, health inequality — the list of realisations is endless. This is a time of radical awakenings for many, what professor Otto Scharmer describes as “A New Superpower in the Making: Awareness-Based Collective Action”. Maybe this will emerge as a pivotal moment of change, or maybe this is a mere preamble to more future pandemics and climate-related issues.
This pandemic is a time of deep disruption and we all feel the shifting landscape. This is a time of adaptation, and I think that applies to creative industries, where it can produce interesting results for artists and audiences alike as we look to the future.
Tough times call for creativity. You don’t have to take my word for it. There are numerous examples of rapid and ingenious adaptation that emerged from previous pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu (H1N1 virus), as well as contemporary op-eds such as “Never Waste A Crisis” or scientific papers exploring “Meaning-Making Through Creativity During COVID-19”.
One thing I think is important during this time is to keep the sense of urgency front and centre. Don’t wait until tomorrow to work on passion projects, especially ones that explore personal, social or climate issues. Now is the time for an explosion of creative voices from all sides of the world.
There has never been a better time to invest in independent, experimental, creative, socially-oriented work. If you have a project you have always wanted to get done — now is the time.
The interconnectedness of people and global economies, our broken relationship with the natural world, racial injustice, health inequality — the list of realisations is endless. This is a time of radical awakenings for many, what professor Otto Scharmer describes as “A New Superpower in the Making: Awareness-Based Collective Action”. Maybe this will emerge as a pivotal moment of change, or maybe this is a mere preamble to more future pandemics and climate-related issues.
This pandemic is a time of deep disruption and we all feel the shifting landscape. This is a time of adaptation, and I think that applies to creative industries, where it can produce interesting results for artists and audiences alike as we look to the future.
Tough times call for creativity. You don’t have to take my word for it. There are numerous examples of rapid and ingenious adaptation that emerged from previous pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu (H1N1 virus), as well as contemporary op-eds such as “Never Waste A Crisis” or scientific papers exploring “Meaning-Making Through Creativity During COVID-19”.
One thing I think is important during this time is to keep the sense of urgency front and centre. Don’t wait until tomorrow to work on passion projects, especially ones that explore personal, social or climate issues. Now is the time for an explosion of creative voices from all sides of the world.
How we have adapted
How we have adapted
At Far Features, our independent work focuses on documenting environmental and human health issues.
Shortly after the pandemic began, our “paid” work all but stopped. Previously, we spent most of our time travelling, producing and shooting.
While we are just one of many small creative companies working internationally that saw projects halted, postponed or cancelled over the past year — doing nothing was not an option.
Each member of our small team felt a powerful need to respond to the pandemic, and so transformative times became a springboard for new projects. We kept busy with new “remote” multimedia projects thanks to the innovative response of the creative industries internationally, which have evolved into a new normal with new methods of working. We embraced collaboration over competition and tied it to the trend of producing remote, virtual, mixed-media documentaries.
Our photographer Eszter Papp created Our Social Distance, a webcam portrait series of everyday life during lockdown.
Our editor Sadiq Mansor deep-dove into self-learning animation, developing a unique style that has become a meditative representation of the times.
Our designer Ali Kelly and I have been working closely to create Project Reset, a user-generated time capsule documentary project that is still ongoing in 2021. When the pandemic began, I journalled each day, writing down thoughts about the confusing new times we found ourselves in. Soon, I had a collection of dated letters, and I wrote one to the future. At the time, my reading list was also filled with books about the future, space travel and the human genome project, such as Superbugs, How Innovation Works, or The Uninhabitable Earth or Spillover, Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic — so this was the mindset I was in at the time.
This idea is for users to “Write The Future”. Anyone can visit the time capsule project and write short, 1,000-character letters that document pandemic experiences or set intentions for the future.