In the open
15 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago -‘In the open’ is a series of audio works that have been conceived during lockdown conditions and devised for listening during our daily walks and time outdoors. Prompted by the restrictions necessitated by Covid-19, and the way these continue to affect our public and social lives, ‘In the open’ has been created as a way of connecting, at a time when we are separated. Series II presents new works by Ayo Akingbade (London), Rosa Barba (Berlin), Mikhail Karikis (Lisbon), Tarik Kiswanson (Paris), Lawrence Lek (London), and Cally Spooner (Turin), who each provide a distinctive perspective on their particular situation. ‘In the open’ offers a way of connecting with others at a time when we remain separated due to the global impact of the pandemic; a separation perhaps felt all the more keenly in light of Britain’s departure from the European Union. The project was first conceived during the UK national lockdown of March 2020, and now, when our movement to other places continues to be restricted, these new audio works allow us to travel across borders, linking us to others and to divergent networks of history, culture, knowledge and belonging. Designed for headphones, the works are imagined as being listened to outdoors but can of course be listened to anywhere and will exist beyond this particular place and present moment in time.
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Episodes
Mikhail Karikis – Acoustics of Resistance
May 17, 2021 04:00 - 17 minutes - 11.9 MB“Listening is not a passive experience. It doesn't just happen to us. Listening is an action. When I listen, I choose to direct my attention to an other. So, when I listen, the ‘I’ becomes a ‘we’. And I don't only mean listening with my ears, but my entire body receiving, sensing the other. I mean listening as a way of thinking, as an attitude and a way of being.” ‘Acoustics of Resistance’ brings together a range of sound recordings made by Mikhail Karikis made at different times and in var...
Rosa Barba – Faring with Faraway
May 11, 2021 16:00 - 6 minutes - 4.22 MBRosa Barba’s artistic practice typically engages film as both a narrative and a sculptural medium. In ‘Faring with Faraway’ she visualises with sound, using cinematic language, and various elements like a series of images. Together, they produce a hybrid, layered experience in which notions of time are both stretched and compressed. ‘Faring with Faraway’ includes fragments of archival interviews with certain figures whose lives have captivated Barba, selected from the spoken word recording...
Lawrence Lek – 'Rift EP' (2021)
April 20, 2021 13:00 - 21 minutes - 14.9 MBArtist and musician Lawrence Lek composes expansive atmospheric soundtracks to accompany the virtual reality worlds of his computer-generated film-works. In these hybrid, simulated universes, music plays a central role in world-building, creating a powerful sense of place. The sonic expression in Lek’s fictional realities fill spatial experience, driving the narrative through texture and emotional tone. Like Lek’s film soundtracks, the ‘Rift EP’s instrumental synth melodies play on the mus...
Lawrence Lek – Rift EP
April 20, 2021 13:00 - 21 minutes - 14.9 MBArtist and musician Lawrence Lek composes expansive atmospheric soundtracks to accompany the virtual reality worlds of his computer-generated film-works. In these hybrid, simulated universes, music plays a central role in world-building, creating a powerful sense of place. The sonic expression in Lek’s fictional realities fill spatial experience, driving the narrative through texture and emotional tone. Like Lek’s film soundtracks, the ‘Rift EP’s instrumental synth melodies play on the mus...
Tarik Kiswanson – Surging
April 06, 2021 12:00 - 15 minutes - 10.8 MBTarik Kiswanson’s composition ‘Surging’ occupies a weightless space in which a disorienting collage of sounds hangs suspended in a formless silence, shifting in and out of focus. Sounds crash and objects collide, breaking together; glass shatters, perhaps a window; and sirens ring out, immediately recognisable. No sooner do they arise than the sounds are abruptly interrupted before their auditory arc is complete; swallowed up and refracted elsewhere. This aural debris – a combination of reco...
Cally Spooner – DEAD TIME: Narrator’s Script
March 23, 2021 04:00 - 44 minutes - 30.4 MBOpening with silence, or more accurately with the absence of action, Cally Spooner’s ‘DEAD TIME: Narrator’s Script’ (2019-2021) introduces the listener to an altered sense of time in which no major event nor narrative development takes place. The script is one element drawn from Spooner’s 63-page performance score ‘DEAD TIME’ (2018) which she has been incrementally translating through live performance and installation since composing it in Autumn 2018. The ‘DEAD TIME’ score is set in “a sur...
Ayo Akingbade – Love Letters to E9
March 03, 2021 17:00 - 16 minutes - 11.1 MBRecorded in the winter of 2020, ‘Love Letters to E9’ (2021) continues Ayo Akingbade’s poetic meditation on urbanism and the ways in which the built environment shapes and influences individual character. “The geography and architecture of Hackney are reflections of my sense of identity,” says Akingbade, whose work looks back on community histories and personal legacies deeply connected to the metropolis, specifically inner London. ‘Love Letters to E9’ accompanies childhood friends - Akingba...
Luke Fowler – A walk through a different city
September 11, 2020 00:00 - 35 minutes - 24.7 MBLuke Fowler’s second acoustic work for ‘In the open’ is a sound portrait of Glasgow’s urban core, emptied out of human presence during the months of lockdown earlier this year. Edited from over 500 hours of audio recordings, ‘A walk through a different city’ traces a sonic journey that begins at the top of Sauchiehall Street, winds through alleyways and lanes, past hotels and empty car parks before taking in Buchanan Street – the heart of Glasgow’s commercial shopping district – heading so...
Sulaïman Majali – strange winds
September 04, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MB‘strange winds’ (2020) is part of a constellation of works that centre on a recurrent ghostly figure described by Majali as an ‘impossible protagonist’, who is both individual and multitude, and moves through the landscapes of a diasporic imaginary, colliding with reflections in the colonial. In this sound work, we’ve climbed a hill to see a sun rise. The spectre inhabits a glitching, distorted phone recording, crawling up through the throat of the device; a cry, a groan, a tired scream, a ...
Sulaïman Majali – strange winds
September 04, 2020 00:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MB‘strange winds’ (2020) is part of a constellation of works that centre on a recurrent ghostly figure described by Majali as an ‘impossible protagonist’, who is both individual and multitude, and moves through the landscapes of a diasporic imaginary, colliding with reflections in the colonial.In this sound work, we’ve climbed a hill to see a sun rise. The spectre inhabits a glitching, distorted phone recording, crawling up through the throat of the device; a cry, a groan, a tired scream, a gas...
Ashanti Harris – History Haunts the Body
August 28, 2020 00:00 - 23 minutes - 16.2 MBAshanti Harris’ ‘History Haunts the Body’ (2020) is a continuation of the artist’s research into the historical relationship between Guyana, where the artist was born, and Scotland, the artist’s home, taking in the ignored and forgotten legacies of a historical, female diaspora. Guyana was subject to British colonial rule for over two centuries, during which time the country’s sugar plantations in Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice were worked by enslaved African people and governed predominant...
Margaret Salmon – Clouded
August 21, 2020 00:00 - 13 minutes - 9.06 MBBirthed in sadness, a teardrop falls from a feeling eye into The River Kelvin, descending to its littered riverbed. Hitting the bottom, the teardrop is transformed into fresh water. It lingers atop a murky soil for a time, then follows a current up through the Kelvin’s aquatic soup to its surface. There, warmed by sun and summer heat, our teardrop evaporates. It ascends in a hot thermal push up through the air and joins a cumulus cloud. Margaret Salmon’s ‘Clouded’ (2020) is a listener's med...
Duncan Marquiss – Contact Call
August 14, 2020 00:00 - 30 minutes - 21.2 MBDuncan Marquiss’ ‘Contact Call’ (2020) is a series of improvised instrumentals played on electric guitar; the result of the artist’s close study of birdcalls heard during spring and summer 2020 when Scotland was experiencing lockdown. Birds’ vocalisations can transmit over long distances and cut through loud urban environments, but the lack of activity and traffic noise over this period allowed their interactions to be picked out more readily by the human ear. Contact calls, as distinct fr...
Lauren Gault – Méduse
August 07, 2020 00:00 - 23 minutes - 16.2 MB‘Méduse’ (2020) explores geological time, myth and geographical space with reference to the Fossil Grove, an ancient petrified forest preserved in Glasgow’s Victoria Park. Weaving together experimental sound and spoken journey, ‘Méduse’ witnesses these trees’ slow evolution from the swampy tropical forests of the Carboniferous period to their present geographical position and material form. Through sibilant sounds and hissing clay, the imperceptible activity and micromovements of dissolution...
Luke Fowler – The Pitches
July 31, 2020 00:00 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MBLuke Fowler’s ‘The Pitches’ (2020) is the first of two sound portraits by the artist that explore two contrasting acoustic environments in Glasgow’s urban geography. The sites chosen – North Kelvin Meadow / The Children’s Wood and the city’s commercial centre – document in different ways how lockdown has altered the sonic and psychological experience of the city’s inhabitants. Recorded at different times of day and night using both handheld and unattended microphones, the resulting edited fi...