This York Mediale art installation People We Love at York Minster shows people looking at their loved ones

People We Love, one of six new commissions by International new media arts organisation York Mediale, creates a new temporary ‘congregation’ at the Minster made up of a collection of five large high definition screens.

As part of the work by creative collective KMA, the screens will show a series of video portraits, focused on people that have been filmed looking at a photograph of someone they love.

The viewer won’t know who is being looked at but will experience the emotion on the face projected on screen before them, interpreting each unspoken story.

Visitors will also be able to add their story to the installation as a pop-up booth will be on-site, ready to capture the love stories of the city without the need for words.

York Mediale is returning to the city for the second time with six new commissions, including five world premieres and one UK premiere.

The programme of events will take place in local neighbourhoods, online and at major cultural landmarks York Minster and York Art Gallery.

The first Mediale in 2018 was the largest media arts festival in the UK, attracting an audience of 65,000 to cutting-edge events over a period of ten days, celebrating York as the

UK’s first and only UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts.

Themes of love, nature and community will run through artists’ installations and interactive performance, engaging audiences in person and digitally.

Creative Director for York Mediale, Tom Higham, commented: “York Mediale is a place where, through digital arts, we can explore, challenge and reflect on our lives. Plans for this year’s Mediale were well underway as the pandemic took hold.

"That we’re able to work with artists and producers to create an event at all is something we’re really proud of; we’ve planned as best we could for what we knew would be a different type of event.

"We looked closely at the works already submitted and worked to develop the pieces that would most closely examine these extraordinary times.

“We wanted to explore how we connect with loved ones, with our community, with nature and with our culture.

"We have been developing projects around those themes, and we’re excited to now present a series of works. All of these projects resonated with us at the start of 2020 but we could never have imagined how they could develop to so beautifully reflect our worries, hopes and relationships to our communities.”