Thor McIntyre-Burnie, Artistic Director of Aswarm

Aswarm's Artistic Director Thor Mcintyre-Burnie spent most of his artistic career working in site specific/public space scenarios, rather than galleries, using sound, sculptural materials and digital technology to transform how a place functions. Aswarms work is immersive, it invites us to look again at a place and find a new sense of agency within it.



Audiences are more like 'user's or players, encouraged to explore, discover and 'play with a place & the artistic intervention. In this sense an Aswarm work acts as a political & functional catalyst to change & reimagine how we can use a place.



An early pioneer of sound as a form of public art, Thor is fascinated by how sound in combination with other mediums can augment our reality, in the way a soundtrack can transform a film. Whilst an AR-statue may appear as a visual construct, the use of a mobile phone to view it means we can introduce sound as well. The AR-statue, of civil rights campaigner Marcia Rigg, positioned outside Brixton police station, was conceived as statues toppled around the globe to the reverberation of George Floyd's voice exclaiming "I can't breath". As the statue appears via the users phone, so does the sound of Marcia's breath emanating from our phone into this space, for she is alive today, standing tall & resilient: "I'm not going anywhere" she states.



This little square in Brixton now has its own statue conceived not only of the issues of its time, but also marking 40 years since the Brixton Uprisings. It asks us to think about who we are & who we should be celebrating in our public spaces. Marcia says she "never saw a Statue of a black woman growing up". Her statue addresses the police station - the place of her brothers controversial death, and also Marcia's place in her own city. In so doing she provides us with some agency to consider how this city speaks to and for us.



"As the father of a Black teenage boy growing up in Brixton it feels important to re-invent how his city relates to him" -Thor McB