In Spring 2025 I participated in a round table discussion with Tako Taal, Mason Leaver-Yapp and Marcus Jack. Our discussion was transcribed and we each edited our responses before publication by Transit Art. The conversation addresses the conditions and means of production of artists moving image in Scotland.

Dispersing the unenviable task of speculation, DOWSER Issue 10 (Autumn 2024) convenes a roundtable of trusted thinkers in artist-filmmakers Margaret Salmon, Tako Taal and producer Mason Leaver-Yap. Based in Scotland yet working internationally, they share a political commitment to the moving image as a means to commune.

Borrowed from Salmon for the title of this discussion, Working Nearby hopes to conjure a sense of the proximity and interdependence that underwrites it all: the making, showing, seeing and thinking of moving image work. Bringing collaborators not limited to peers, friends, subjects and audiences together through socialised approaches to production and exhibition, Salmon, Taal and Leaver-Yap offer a counter-ask in how we might model collectivity, for just one evening in a darkened room, or an entire lifetime.

Working Nearby is illustrated with stills and production photography from Taal, Salmon, and Bassem Saad.