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Listening as a practice: Asocial Telepathic Ensemble launch

Sensory Art, Storytelling and Art Making / June 24, 2022

This week I had the pleasure of giving an artist’s talk at the The Asocial Telepathic Ensemble launch party, released by the amazing Corvo Records label at the sound art space, Errant Sound (where I was a member for many years).

black and white photography, black and white portrait, artist portrait, art photography, female photographer, music photographer, Berlin

Being part of the event gave me the opportunity to reflect back on the Asocial Telepathic recording session which took place over a year ago — when we were in the depths of another lockdown. In doing so I realised, once again, how much listening is at the core of pretty much everything I do as an artist and practitioner, no matter which medium I choose to use.

Listening with all my senses and simultaneously translating what I perceive are at the heart of my practice… be it in creating river perfumes, encountering horses, or capturing portraits of women.

For the talk, I put together a selection of images that focus on the act of listening itself: depicting visually what can only be evoked in this silent medium.

The first image is a voice portrait of Francis Bebey, a wonderful musician and musicologist, I had the honour of encountering and listening to in 1996 at the multi-disciplinary Sura Za Africa festival in Austria – my first ever photography commission! Bebey lost his voice shortly after, making this image even more precious in later years.

street photography, artist portrait, art photography, female photographer, music photographer, ParisThe second is from the 2001 Langue des Signes series, a photographic research project on the visibility of sign language in Paris’ public spaces.

The third is a portrait of a deaf girl born into a hearing family. I had the honour of following her first steps into spoken language through a technique called Codali (CODage Audition Langage Intégration). The resulting project, Franchir un Seuil (To Cross A Threshold) is part of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg.

black and white photography, black and white portrait, artist portrait, art photography, female photographer, Berlin The Asocial Telepathic Ensemble was initiated and curated by Alessandra Eramo (sound artist, composer, and vocalist) and Brandon LaBelle (artist, writer, and theorist) during the Covid-19 lockdown of last Spring. It’s an international, collaborative work of sound culture that brings together 11 composers, sound artists, curators, writers, and performers (see below for full credits) who simultaneously switched on their recording devices on the 21st March 2021 for 15 minutes. The result was a globe-spanning, telepathic recording session, documenting thoughts, habits, and surroundings — an attempt to connect with each other. No editing was done.

black and white photography, black and white portrait, artist portrait, art photography, female photographer, music photographer, Berlin The recording documents a historic moment in the 21st century, a very intimate glimpse into the reality of self isolation which has been experienced globally. Each recording offers a poetic approach to daily routine and deals with relatable themes such as: communicating with artificial voices, loneliness, yearning to travel, or being bored. 

But, ultimately, these artistic statements also talk about hope, transforming tragedy into irony, and accepting bodily and mental fragility — during the pandemic and beyond.

You can order the tape or listen online.

The Asocial Telepathic Ensemble are: Alessandra Eramo (voice, electronics); Ambra Pittoni (field recordings); Brandon LaBelle (field recordings); Florence Cats (field recordings, electronics); Ines Lechleitner (field recordings); Israel Martinez (field recordings, voice); James Webb (field recordings); Korhan Erel (field recordings, melodica); Lucia Udvardyova (field recordings, electronics); Ricarda Denzer (field recordings, voice); and Thea Farhadian (field recordings, violin, electronics).

ink connections

Storytelling and Art Making / September 17, 2021

Late summer greetings!

The two workshops by Lucila Kenny at WirWir Berlin on natural dyes from food waste and ink making from the plants that grow around us lead me on a wonderful journey.

I acquired new skills to experiment with in my creativity workshops and have met many interesting and skillful people here in Berlin.

It also traced a colorful paths to three women I had the chance to be and work with in past Septembers in the forest of Kent and at Mount of Oaks in Portugal in the context of the nomadic residencies by fourthland. Here are two portraits of Maya and Gail from Portugal.

While making the inks here in Berlin, images of M. writing for hours an anger script in Catalan and later reading it out aloud and burning it in the fire kept flashing up in my mind.

Following my invitation, M. has made blackberry ink near Bristol and is preparing a script yet to be traced on whereas Gail has kindly sent me one of her drawings with Walnut ink.

 

September weavings of friendship, ink and living colours

Secret Colors Hidden Within

Food & conservation, Sensory Art / September 3, 2021

Hello there,

When I first read about the practice of Lucila Kenny and her approach to natural dyes my heart skipped a beat. The way she connects the political and ethical questions with the care for the plants we find around us and the joy of creating just makes so much sense.

Yesterday I finally had the honor of participating in one of her “Making Colors with Food Waste” workshops at the amazing new project space in Neuköln WirWir run by April Gertler and Adrian Schiesser.

Here is the outcome of three recipes: red currents, yellow onion skins and red beet skins with four different fabrics:

As I work in my creativity workshops with colors, food, drawing, scent and processes of transformation, Lucila’s perspective on colors hidden within the plants in often unexpected parts is deeply moving. It shifts our perception in yet another direction and opens a new world of relations and fields of experimentation that I want to integrate more into my own workshops in the future.

For example it is the greens of the carrot that can produce a bright yellow color whereas the carrots  – staining orange on the touch while handling them – contain close to no transferable colors. A whole new field has opened and I am so looking forward to explore it with you!

I also want to share with you a related work I produced a year ago for a solo show with Hans-Jörg Mayer at after the butcher in Berlin. It was a show and a site-specific video work connecting the art works to the space and to different recipes for fermented vegetables. The plants were then fermenting in the exhibition space along side the art works and were shared with the visitors at the closing of the show.