by our selves
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The trailer for By Our Selves features the track Suffer from MacGillivray's fourth album Horse Sweat Chandelier which comprises part of the soundtrack alongside a pared back version of Robert Burns' My Heart is in the Highlands and a piece specially composed by MacGillivray for the film - O John Sing Thy Songs To Me released on Watermarked in Flame (Antigen Records). MacGillivray appears in the film as Mary Joyce - lover of the brilliant and enigmatic English poet John Clare - who burned to death in a house fire. MacGillivray was asked to perform the role of John Clare's dead lover both as voice and presence, acting opposite Toby Jones. By Our Selves has been performed by Iain Sinclair, Jem Finer, MacGillivray, David Aylward and Andrew Kötting at the Whitechapel, Dilston Grove, Battersea Arts Centre and Colchester Arts Centre.
The women in By Our Selves are marginal figures – the haunting Mary (the musician MacGillivray), singing and wafting her black shawl' - BFI Film of the Week
'Engaging, odd and rather disturbing . . .' - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
'Jones Sr. actually played Clare in a 1970s TV drama, from which Kotting lifts fragments of dialogue to drop into his dense audio mix of looped vocal phrases, ghostly sound effects and ragged folk-punk songs by Jem Finer of Anglo-Irish band The Pogues. The Scottish avant-garde musician and performance artist MacGillivray (aka Kirsten Norrie) also features on the soundtrack, and plays Mary Joyce in Clare’s feverish hallucinations.' - The Hollywood Reporter