Alchemy Film & Arts: The Teviot, the Flag and the Rich, Rich Soil + Q&A

Join us for a screening of Alchemy Film & Arts’ touring moving image programme, The Teviot, the Flag and the Rich, Rich Soil, followed by a Q&A with artists Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn, hosted by Dan Brown, Head of Exhibitions at DCA.

Engaging with global Scottish histories across industrial, social and colonial contexts, the programme brings together three acclaimed films made by artists Luke Fowler, Corin Sworn, Julia Parks and Maybelle Peters during residencies in Hawick between 2022and 2025.

Shot on 16mm, each of the films is a tactile response to a specific aspect of Scotland’s identity in a global context. Taken together, the programme spans an ambitious range of themes including architecture and industry, conservation and erasure, and the tension between the archival and the anecdotal. 

In On Weaving, Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn respond to High Sunderland, the 1950s Scottish Borders modernist home of Serbian-born textile designer Bernat Klein, linking the history of its ownership with the current rhythms of the region’s textile mills.

In The Wool Aliens,  Julia Parks tells a centuries-old story of migration as she investigates the relationship between sheep’s wool, invasive plant seeds and the Scottish Borders textiles industry along the River Tweed. 

And in We Deh Here, Maybelle Peters explores her mother’s maiden name (Scotland) to trace the residues of colonialism between Scotland and Guyana.

This touring programme brings these three films together for the first time, following individual screenings at renowned festivals and institutions such as the Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, e-flux and National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.