Jordan MacRae

(b. 1996, Paisley). I work primarily in moving image and sound. Sound leads the work for me, often editing my audio recordings before anything visual. My films are inspired by Scotland’s land, people, and history. I am interested in how listening can shape the act of filming, determining when to begin, how images relate and when to stop. I use sound as a guide for the rhythm and structure of a film. My most recent work, For The Islands I Sing (2026), is a film shot across the islands of Orkney following the traces of George Mackay Brown. Reading Brown’s work gave me a feeling I had never felt before: complete determination to go and experience the inspiration for his writing, using his texts as a shot list, operating with a roll of film a day for five days. The outcome is a 7-minute film narrated by his voice, lifted from a radio reading, in which he argues that rural life is more conducive to art-making and the human experience in general. This constitutes the degree show I will open at the end of May, presenting the film with a spatial sound installation, using 5 speakers: one housed in an old radio emitting Brown’s voice, two speakers playing the film’s music I have recorded, and two more speakers for the diegetic sounds recorded on location.