This session connects to the latest print issue of FIELDNOTES, titled ‘high variance’. Sound-pieces by Bear Kenchington and Lauren De Sá Naylor judder us into machining-oneiric states, we want to know: are you feeding the machine or is the machine feeding you?
In our eleventh session we are joined by multidisciplinary artist Trevor Mathison. Trevor was a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective and works across sound, composition and installation. We listen through his new release From Signal to Decay Vol. 5 and Trevor talks us through this iterative and ongoing project.
In our tenth session we are in conversation with the legendary artist filmmaker John Smith. In this interview he discusses some formative experiences and the ideas underpinning his singular body work.
In describing his work John says: ‘Nearly all of my work I tend to set up expectations which are not fulfilled, leading people down the garden path a bit. It’s very deliberate and I like that playfulness, not being sure where something is going, but also not being sure quite what it is you are actually looking at. I try and make work that isn’t immediately classifiable within a particular genre.’
Find John’s work in FIELDNOTES Issue 5.
In our ninth session we bring you a collection of reel to reel tape recordings by the filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait collaged from her archive by the artist Luke Fowler into a single spatial sound composition titled ‘Pomona’.
During her lifetime Margaret produced a pioneering body of work attending to simple commonplace subjects with a sense of inner rhythm and pattern lending the resulting ‘film poems’ a transcendental quality. She once said of her films that they are born ‘of sheer wonder and astonishment at how much can be seen in any place that you choose… if you really look.’
Find Margaret and Luke’s work in FIELDNOTES Issue 5.
In our eight session we bring together sonic experiences and material resonances from interstitial spaces. We travel between an underpass in South London to the 25 de Abril Bridge in Portugal. Including work by artists Rob Shuttleworth and Hannah Walton.
In our seventh session we are joined by the poet and musician Yan Jun presenting a dispatch from the experimental noise scene in Beijing. This movement against categorisation Yan describes as ‘Non Music’. Recordings include musicians Ake, Zhao Cong, Zhu Wenbo, Sun Yizhou, Kevin Corcoran, Zhao Ziyi and Yan Jun himself.
Yan Jun:
‘I always think music is not just music. It is reacted with other things, with our life and also the political or economic environment. So when someone asks me why this music starts, why this music exists, it’s a reflection of reality, it’s a low music for low life. Under certain kinds of oppression of course some people fight, but some people speak less, some people express themselves less. I think this is a kind of radical reaction in the form of Non Music in Beijing. If you asked me what is hardcore, I would say it is being boring’
Find Yan’s recordings and releases from his label Sub Jam on Bandcamp. Yan Jun’s poetry can be found in the second issue of Fieldnotes.
In this month’s broadcast we are in conversation with the poet and multidisciplinary artist Caroline Bergvall whose writings and projects explore material traces, literary documents, historical languages and hidden or forgotten knowledge. Caroline talks us through a few of her recordings including Refugio, Conference of the Birds and Nattsong.
All text and lead voice by Caroline Bergvall.
Refugio: sound design by Jamie Hamilton
Conference of the Birds: sound design by Dan Scott. Speakers include: Shadi Angelina Bazeghi, David Wallace, Geoff Sample, Clyde Ancarno, Cherry Smyth, Adam Chodzko and David Wallace as well as a Nightingale settled for the season at Stodmarsh.
Listen Heare: sound design by Jamie Hamilton, performed live at Turner Gallery Margate & streamed by Rivers Institute New Orleans.
Photo: C Bergvall, Nattsong, film Andy Delaney. Photo credit Issy Oakes.
In the first broadcast of a new season we are partnering with the venue Cafe Oto to bring you a recording from a live performance earlier this month. This listening session presents an open composition titled Blue Monday performed by the poet Zara Joan Miller and the musician Ute Kanngiesser. This dialogue between voice and cello responds to Zara’s poetry collection of the same name which maps four years of Blue Mondays, extracts from this series were published in Issue 1 of FIELDNOTES.
Photos by Sarah White
Recording by Rory Salter
Mix by Billy Steiger
In our fourth session we visit darkness and annihilation with a collection of recordings from contributors to the FIELDNOTES print publication. Including readings by the poet Peter Gizzi from his album Speech Acts For A Dying World; tracks from Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House an album composed by the writer, artist and musician Johanna Hedva; and a recording of CAConrad performing their poem ‘I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead’ from the collection ECODEVIANCE.
This session brings together a collection of works exploring embodied sounds. Including a live improvisation created by Jaka Škapin and Pavel Radu which provides a narrative of ‘compassionate listening’; a piece by Sohyun Han and Alvarx del Fresno titled ‘Saturated Touch’ which evolves around the idea of sound as touch; a recording by Funto Omojola presenting their medical records translated into Yoruba and performed on a Dundun drum; an extract of the project Estou sendo by Maíra Botelho which imagines the body as pre-verbal and indefinable; and ‘a remedy for the blues’, a collaborative work by Ruari Paterson-Achenbach and Sophie Marie Niang exploring an articulation of queer love and the act of being with each other.
In this session we present a collection of field recordings. These include the artist and film maker Frances Young, whose recordings form a soundtrack for a non-existent or imaginary film; the artist David Leal who draws from lived experiences of working in sex-shops, gay saunas and cruising parties to produce works that explore the porous nature of queer masculinities; and an improvised field recording of the song ‘La réalité’ by the musician and artist Thomas Dunoyer de Segonzac, part of a solo project titled ‘La banque de jeu de pharaon’, which Thomas describes as ‘half-way between sound poetry and noise’.
The pilot episode of a new series of radio broadcasts on Resonance 104.4FM. This session presents three artists working between translations and transitions, including the poet and artist Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, whose album REZO focuses on the sound of insect stridulation; a recording from the artist and writer Mónica Rivas Velásquez exploring ways of learning through encounters with Colombian plants belonging to the ecosystem el páramo; and an excerpt from the artist and musician Billy Steiger’s ongoing research into audio compression codecs for the transmission of sound over early internet connections.
In our first broadcast FIELDNOTES editor-at-large Joachim Hamou is in conversation with the artist Hanne Lippard, discussing her work between genres: the third space between text and images; performances and installations; poetry and biography.
Can a voice be legless?
Can a voice be useless?
Can a voice be senseless?
When is it essential to make sense?