Saturday 29 June 2019, 11am, Off-site
Desire Lines: a sporadic series of wanderings, exploring sites of interest, curiosity or obscurity, to be found alongside, or deviant from, the well trodden path. All walks are led by Helen Frosi (Founder of SoundFjord / Visible Near Midnight Recordings), often in collaboration with artists, musicians and other enthusiasts. This series, commissioned by Cafe OTO, incites encounters with the more-than-human-world, foregrounding multiply modes of listening within the polyphony of our sounding world.
Location: Abney Park Cemetery
Meeting point: Abney Park Gates | Stoke Newington High Street
Date: Saturday 29 June 2019
Time: 11am start
Duration: 1 hour
A guided sound walk through one of London’s “magnificent seven” garden cemeteries.
Abney Park in Stoke Newington (London Borough of Hackney) is both cemetery and nature reserve and has a rich heritage. Famed for its non-conformist origins and with a non-denominational chapel at its centre, it is home to the last resting places of notables such as Frank Bostock a zoo-keeper, General William and Catherine Booth founders of the Salvation Army, as well as Nelly Power a fames songstress and male impersonators, and many other writers, actors and comedians. Equally, it is home to a rich biodiversity which includes gnarled veteran trees (the oldest being a 170-year-old weeping holly), rare plants, unusual fungi, and animals commonly associated with rural locations.
Inspired by the cemetery’s winding walks and tree-lines arbours that twist back towards an unweighted centre, this sound walk will be guided by Helen Frosi (SoundFjord) and Stephan Barrett (Littoral Transmissions), who will offer provocations, prompts and teasers allowing the participant - the wanderer-listener - to move freely, appreciating the sensory rich surroundings in unexpected and playful ways.
This event is suitable for ages 14-years upwards.
All children under 16 should be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
NB. the route will feature uneven ground, which may be muddy.
Wear suitable shoes and clothing for the weather and location. Bring a bottle of water with you.
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).
Stephan Barrett is a London-based pianist, field recordist, improviser and sound editor. Stephan performs as a duo with Helen Frosi under the moniker Postcards from the Volcano, and with Adam Kinsey as Littoral Transmissions. Both projects focus on the creation of site-sensitive works, the former working with materials gleaned walking London’s peri-urban landscapes, whilst the latter explores the sonic resonance of objects and the aquatic imaginary.
As an improviser, Stephan has performed at Arch 1, A.P.T, Iklectik, Full of Noises Festival, Harts Lane Gallery, Hundred Years Gallery, and New River Studios amongst other locations, and has created transmission works for amongst others: Radiophrenia, SonicaFM, Threads and Wandsworth radio. He has released albums with Colliding Lines, International Ephemera, Minimal Resource Manipulation, Steep Gloss, Visible Near Midnight Recordings, and currently produces Lee Navigations, a monthly radio show for Resonance Extra.
https://extra.resonance.fm/series/lea-navigations
