Thursday 23 May 2019, 7.30pm
A night of readings and performances to mark the publication of two new books published by the Sonic Art Research Unit. Azimuth, the ecology of an ear, by Patrick Farmer, and aspects of the morning, by Helen Frosi.
Azimuth, the ecology of an ear, is a new book by Patrick Farmer in collaboration with twenty one other artists. Azimuth revolves around fifteen attempts to locate and rend the human/non-human ear into fragments, isolating and being with its forms and natures outside of their conventional relations. It asks, what is the ear; where is the ear; who is the ear; what are we to our ears; are we listeners or listening; does the ear hear? It considers the ear as interlocutor, as equivalence, as synergy, as eros (hear us).
Azimuth features work by Thomas Martin Nutt, Susana Gómez Larrañga , Lotti V Closs, Richard Skelton, Carrie Olivia Adams, Helen Frosi, April Van Winden, Florence Sunnen, Lance Austin Olsen, Tomoé Hill, Chloe Proctor, Nisha Ramayya, J.R. Carpenter, Julia Bloch, Michael Pisaro, Clara de Asís, Fay Zmija Nicolson, Tess Denman-Cleaver, Joseph Clayton Mills, Amelia Ishmael, Emily Leon, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe and Mirella Salame.
aspects of the morning is a pillow book to the River Lea (London); a spatial poem beginning at dawn and following the river’s course until noon, portraying, as a splay of seemingly disassociated words on the page, Helen’s deep acoustic and ecological sensibility. Ecological in its writing - multilayered and polyphonic - the open lattice of the text acts as a perfume, encouraging the reader to linger and drift through an alternative time, sound and light.
Patrick Farmer is a co-founder of Compost and Height, co-editor of the new-music journal Wolf Notes, founder of the Sound I’m Particular lecture series and Significant Landscapes Festival, and a curator of the audiograft festival. He lectures in Auditory Knowledge at Oxford Brookes University, has published a few books about sound and dis/embodied listening, and has written compositions for groups such as Apartment House and the Set Ensemble. Festival appearances and residencies include The Wulf (Los Angeles), Ftarri (Tokyo), LMC (London), I & E (Dublin), Geiger (Gothenberg), The Proms (London), Blurred Edges (Hamburg), and Forestry Commission England (Cumbria).
www.patrickfarmer.org
Helen Frosi is a holobiont whose art practice pivots around ecological thought, poetics, and the environmental, creative, social, and political enmeshment of sound, hearing and listening. Her practice embodies epistemic pluralism, is facilitatory, and necessitates collaborative, cross-disciplinary work, communal projects and collective activities.
Helen is co-ordinator and co-curator of auralpluralities, a project that troubles accepted norms in audio technology, sound culture and Western epistemologies, questioning the extent of human perception, our relation in and through the vibratory world, and whether hearing is ever an individual act, and is curator of EnCOUnTERs, an interdisciplinary project that encompasses art, ecology and the sonic imagination.
Other long-term projects include: SoundFjord, a nomadic curatorial platform focused on sound-related research and practice (2010-present); Visible Near Midnight Recordings, for works that fall between the genre gaps (2012-present); Longplayer Day (2017-22). She is a workshop facilitator at the British Library, and Honorary Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London (Dept of Music).
Brigitte Hart is an Australian sound artist working across performance and installation. Currently based in London, her practice explores relationships between voice, objects, histories and ecologies, often engaging text, environmental recordings, remnants and archives. She holds particular interest in exploring the art of small sounds, sounds that can be imagined, and the memory of sound. Brigitte has developed installations, performances, compositions and workshops for Supernormal Festival, CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice), Wysing Polyphonic x Somerset House Festival, Resonance FM, Soundcamp/Reveil, David Roberts Art Foundation, Tate Britain and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020). Her work with sound design has been presented at the Venice Biennale Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. In 2022, Brigitte is developing a series of experiments around the Thames, sound and listening as a recipient of the Develop Your Creative Practice funding (Arts Council England). She is also a member of the London Bulgarian Choir as well as Shortwave Collective, an international, feminist artist group interested in the creative use of radio.
Nisha Ramayya grew up in Glasgow and now lives in London. Her poetry collection States of the Body Produced by Love (2019) is published by Ignota Books. Her second collection will be published by Granta in 2024. Tentatively called Now Let’s Take a Listening Walk, it hazards a musical journey through history, myth, and sci fi. Nisha teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London.
Fourthland was established by artists Isik Sayarer and Eva Knutsdotter in 2008, as a social practice with the aim to merge art and life to make new myths about land and people. Through a process-led research the practice revisits notions of the sacred, the poetics of space and object, and the mysticism of the subconscious, working with these themes to excavate old histories and future imaginaries with people and communities. www.fourthland.com
