Radio
Softening
Daunt
Ins
Caving
Elliot Buchanan, Benjamin Harrison and Martyn Riley
The Swiss Church London
The Swiss Church London
18.07.23 - 23.07.23
Caving investigates archaeoacoustic histories of resonance and how the relationship between sound and space can allow access to the divine. The sound installation negotiates the acoustic properties of The Swiss Church and its resonant frequencies to create complex harmonies and resonant entanglements. In the aural consciousness of our ancestors, large resonant spaces were imbued with an unknowable yet undeniable meaning; spiritual and divine in its essence. Humans would have encountered these experiences initially at natural sites such as caves or valleys, and this lineage of resonance and spiritual experiences can be traced to sacred spaces such as The Swiss Church. Mirroring the encounters of early humans as they sought to understand the causal meaning of the unknowable, the work elicits transgenerational experiences of resonance through hidden sounds. Drawing on archaeoacoustic research, the installation references the figure of the echea. Historically echea, or acoustic vases, were installed within sacred spaces and amphitheatres to alter the acoustics. The piece posits these vases as material allegory; alluding to this ancient technique. The sonic material of the work is informed by acoustic measurements of the space to locate the unique resonant frequencies, producing a dialogical and mutually affective soundspace.
Vocalists:
John Antony Thadicaran
Lydia Kotsirea
Travis Yu
Katrina Stamatopoulos
Valeria Radchenko
Kristina May
Seraphina Simone
Elliot Buchanan
Exhibition Guide
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Slow Silence: Happisburgh
Benjamin Harrison and Elliot Buchanan
Morley Gallery, London
Morley Gallery, London
24.04.23 - 18.05.23
Slow Silence is a collaborative practice between Benjamin Harrison and Elliot Buchanan investigating forms of slow violence through listening.
The first iteration of this project, Slow Silence: Happisburgh, explores the phantoming of Happisburgh, North Norfolk through the natural forces of coastal erosion. The project seeks to bring people closer to the issues of displacement and disruption caused by erosion through listening. The slow violence of this process is delineated through the testimony of the land itself, rendered accessible through expanded field recordings. These recordings have been carefully composed and transferred onto tape which has been fashioned to reflect the topography of the coastline both now, and its predicted form in one hundred years’ time. Due to the tape’s disintegrative nature this testimony will eventually fall silent; becoming subsumed by the accompanying oceanic soundscape and allegorising the tragic loss of these vulnerable communities, their cultures and their histories.
Presented as part of The Engine Room 2023 at Morley Gallery, London.
Words World Worlds
London College of Communication
20.02.23 - 24.02.23
Words World Worlds investigates worlding and the role of narrative in the proliferation of hegemony. In response to Ursula Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, the rhizomatic assemblage resembles an emptied cultural carrier which reveals a non-linear narrative of gathering and connection to objects, memories, identity, place, and people.
Un-heroic stories of relationships with pets, parents, and buildings weave threads through a chaotic multiplicity of small sounds and field recordings that reveal the dynamic simultaneity of space in which the audience becomes entangled. Through these stories, the objects and photographs in the space become powerful representations of people, emotions, and relationships.
The work challenges hegemony and patriarchal ideologies through highlighting acts of gathering and sharing, promoting community, and appreciating the everyday.
Presented as part of the MA Sound Arts ‘Work in Progress’ show at LCC, London.
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