COP26FILM was shot in Fowler’s home city of Glasgow during the period that the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) took place there in from October 31 – November 12, 2021. Denied entry to the main “blue zone“ the artist instead made daily walks around the periphery of the site recording the temporary infrastructure of the conference, security systems, police cordons and the omnipresence of Police helicopters. These combine to form a subjective image of state-power at a highly monitored and politically expedient event.

Fowler offsets these displays of power with a "patchwork" of alternative interventions that took place; mass protests, temporary squats, and the significance the Minga Indígena, a collective of over 100 indigenous leaders who travelled to Glasgow to claim representation and space in the decision making process around issues of the climate crisis and potential solutions. COP26FILM features a soundtrack composed from recordings made on location and also synthesized sound by Richard McMaster and Luke Fowler.

—Luke Fowler

Fowler’s supple lyricism braids together a wide array of activity around the conference—protestors from across Africa, Europe, and the Americas; a woman advancing an anarchist line on housing these far-flung individuals; various men and women in suits and lanyards, local professionals and career politicians equal in aloofness—to create a collective portrait, a history film, of the current state of climate justice. As one activist speaks about the interconnectedness of the world, what sound like gunshots appear on the soundtrack. Art, here, is not allowed to stray from life.
—Phil Coldiron

A being from the beyond returns to Chile in 2019, embodied in a worker who dreams of social upheaval. Viral videos intertwine with fiction to narrate the experiences of a polarized country that wanders between drama and absurdity, illusion and failure. —Carlos Araya Diaz