Laroche (aka Luce Choules) is an artist and writer working from field centres in the French Pyrenees, southern Spain and London UK. They produce art works using performance, installation, sound, moving image and live event to explore a range of metaphysical, sensorial and poetic thematics: ideas on geoecologies and human behaviour; the slippage of perception, distance and materiality in digital technologies; the viewpoints and monuments of collapsing environments. They are currently collaborating with AADK performance platform in Spain, and are a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. They founded and coordinate the itinerant artist network TSOEG.org, and co-founded the sonic arts collective SEL__NOIR.

Their recent work, the concept album ‘REGOLITHIC’ – a collaboration with Roisner, a performance artist, music producer and DJ – has been presented in numerous iterations during 2022, including POLLEN (Political Ecology Network) online exhibition and symposium events, PRAKSIS Oslo PDF sessions, Arts Catalyst Radio (as part of Nastassja Simensky’s ‘Leaky Transmissions’), and Guru Dance Club Murcia.

Laroche has been awarded significant grants from Arts Council England, British Council, Arts Council Ireland, Acción Cultural Española, Ministère de la Culture, and National Endowment for the Arts USA. They have been supported through numerous commissions and undertaken many research and process-led residencies including Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Hablarenarte Madrid, Aqtushetii Georgia, and Rabbit Island USA. Their work has been performed, presented, screened and exhibited internationally with institutions and organisations including Archaeology-Heritage-Arts (AHA) Research Network UCL, Arts Catalyst, MIMA, Baltic 39, GroundWork Gallery, Royal Geographical Society, Hangar Barcelona, AADK Spain and DeVos Art Museum USA.

Their work is in collections across the UK, Europe and US, and their practice has been written about and featured in Critical Distance in Documentary Media (Palgrave Macmillan), Topografías de lo Invisible: Estrategias Críticas entre Arte y Geografía (Universitat de Barcelona), and Form, Art and the Environment: Engaging in Sustainability (Routledge).

lucechoules.com | @luce_choules

–

FIELDWORK Q&A – May 2015

How is fieldwork part of your practice?
Fieldwork is an embedded part of my practice. I have an unfixed idea of what fieldwork is – it is multi-dimensional, has many roles, and is a variable framework within which I make work. My fieldwork involves research, performance, survey, mapping, charting, documentation, and more – it is an itinerant mode of working that is experiential, experimental, changeable and ephemeral. Fieldwork is central to my praxis as an artist – not a separate or parallel activity – it is physical and involved, rather than academic theory or exercise. As an artist I have been shaped by my experiences in the material and immaterial fields of landscape and natural environment, and through my work and activities have developed fieldwork as method and form.

How would you describe your fieldwork activity?
My activities deal with an exploration of the Earth’s surface – unfixed topographical features and fluent spatial dynamics, envisioned as the activated spaces of landscape to be surveyed and mapped. Travelling between object and situation, field trips and expeditions form a framework for an itinerant practice of fieldworking. I have developed an evolving framework for exploring different geographical environments and situations, using artist-led expeditions to encounter and enter landscape. Through performance surveys, I look at the underlying structures of the physical environment – I am interested in the form of the earth, how I negotiate the idea of form, and how I navigate place.

How are you currently sharing your fieldwork?
My fieldwork activities trace through performance and sculptural concepts, and involve documents made through still and moving image. My extensive range of fieldwork documents for projects Guide74 and Estudio de Campo, are used to take an audience on metaphysical journeys to the Alpine regions of France and mainland Spain through a series of performance lectures involving spoken word, books, maps, objects, and photographic images. Other fieldwork documents are made into a large range of publications including maps, books and folios – these are distributed through exhibitions, presentations and live events.

FIELDWORK
Encura #3
Guide74
In Search of Flora
Mountain Festival
Terreno

GROUP FIELDWORK
We Are the Weathers – TSOEG team with ALTER- 2023 edition, Switzerland