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De Magnete is a 16mm film responding to the theories of 16th c. scientist William Gilberd. The piece is a poetic interpretation of Gilberd’s belief that the world possessed a soul. It is his related discovery of electrostatic properties and magnetism through experiments with amber and lodestones which won him the title of the Father of Electricity.

Co-commissioned by the National Trust and Southbank Centre, London. Curated by Clare Cumberlidge & Co and supported by Museums Sheffield

I may be a wage slave on Monday but I am a free man on Sunday is a lyric from a Ewan MacColl folk song, Manchester Rambler, in which he describes the mass trespass on the then private land of Kinder Scout in 1931.

Inspired by this mass trespass¹ in the Peak District, which led to the opening up of the countryside & the creation of National Parks, Kathleen Herbert¹s film explores the idea of contemporary landscape as a politicised space in which it is treated as an object rather than a resource.
The viewer is taken on a journey through different visions of the land, from the urban spaces used to contrive a form of natural landscape to the rural. The raw contrasting soundtrack embellishes the imagery of the land as a lost ancient antiquity.