Flight Paths (Leo Mercer)
Artwork Description
How do you feel about flying? Do you dream of soaring with birds, do you feel the weight of guilt as you board a plane? Do you marvel at the technology that makes flight possible, does it feel like a luxury that feeds global inequalities? Do you cherish the moments of serene flight over clouds, do you worry about how air travel contributes to habitat loss and pollution.
Artist Statement
Flight Paths is a new work commissioned by Lancaster Arts in partnership with Art Beats international festival. Through an open process, we invited artists to submit projects exploring different aspects of Lancaster Arts’ annual theme for 2024, Flight. In developing his work, Leo has talked to a wide range of people to gather their perspectives on our complex and sometimes conflicting relationships with flight.
Leo Mercer
Leo Mercer is a writer and composer, exploring themes of technology using multi-disciplinary art forms. He creates music theatre, outdoor projections, VR experiences and sound installations, with a leaning to themes of pop culture (The Marriage of Kim K; Pop Art), modern love (GUY; Double Life VR) and life with modern technology (The VR Diary of Attica Lehane; The Coffee Shop Musical). Other installations include ‘the wind as it rushes through the turbine’ (Lancaster Arts, 2020) and ‘they were people first’ (Light Up Lancaster, 2023). He also runs the music theatre company leo&hyde
Leo studied at the University of Manchester and University of Oxford. Since then, his work has been performed nationwide, including commissions from the National Theatre and The Lowry. Outside of musical theatre, he works as a freelancer in VR. He was creative producer for the 2121 Museum of Plastic for COP26, which was nominated for a Social Innovation award at the International VR Awards 2022.