Charting the River Great Ouse from King’s Lynn in Norfolk to the River Cam in Cambridge, to views and movements along the Thames Estuary in Essex, artists Chris Mizsak and Tom Scott explore the flow of waterways through their respective landscapes in the East of England. Shot on digital video and analogue film (Super 8 and 16mm), and using found home movie footage, Confluence presents a merging of streams that reveals a multidimensional sense of time, place, and human presence.
The film marks a new point in a decade-long practice-based work, which began at Greyfriars Art Space (2016) in King’s Lynn and developed through the Collusion R&D Challenge (2017). Further explorations resulted in Four Rivers (2020-22), comprising a series of field recording soundscapes and a Super 8 film study of Denver Sluice Complex in Norfolk. Subsequent audio works were broadcast on Radiophrenia (Glasgow, 2020), Ecos Urbanos Festival (Monterrey, Mexico, 2021) and presented as part of Sensing Nature (Babylon Gallery, Ely, 2024).
Confluence seeks to merge these works into a single channel—a cinematic juncture where the River Great Ouse and Thames Estuary become twin referents. This convergence will serve as both a departure and a beginning: a meditation on what these rivers mean to us as artists and to the wider geography of the East of England—Southeast Essex and the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Fens.
The intention was to interweave sound and image using a hybrid palette, including digital and analogue film (Super 8mm, direct scratch and ink manipulations on 16mm, and photography), found footage, field recordings and musical elements—each medium in service of the ideas it helps to express. The result is a river film: open-ended, ever-flowing, and alive with the voices of place and time. With contributions from and incidental interactions with friends and strangers, Confluence sets out to navigate the river theme from respective experiences and perceptions – ebbing and flowing together through streams (rivers) of consciousness.
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