SOUNDING OUT was a series of workshops in sound and music production I facilitated for Made in Roath. The programme of sessions were open to 16 - 25 year old women and non-binary people who wanted to come together to develop their practices in sound production within a supportive group which encouraged experimentation, collaboration and expanded ways of thinking about sound and broadcasting.
Over 10 weeks, we came together over Zoom for a range of online workshops around sampling, mixing, listening and broadcasting with invited artists and collaborators: including Lumin Press, Radio Platfform, Equalize Music Productions / LNA and Phoebe Davies.
The group continue to meet and this summer are working collaboratively on SOLSTICE RADIO: a 24 hour broadcast celebrating the summer solstice commissioned by Made in Roath. This was also an opportunity to each develop an hour-long show/ soundscape from the workshops, which they will premiere during the broadcast. Myself and my collaborator Cinzia Mutigli have been developing that extended project with them, more info here.
WRITING PROJECT IN COLLABORATION WITH SAM HASLER
Ongoing/ not-quite-finished project originating from the Library Residency at g39, Cardiff in July 2019
We’ve been talking about writing a ‘novel’ together- or more accurately, a novelisation. Novelisations are films translated into novels. The book of the film, not the film of the book. They tend to be pulpy, hurriedly written and cheaply printed. There’s a lot of collectable novelisations of cult films. But there’s also one of ‘The Cable Guy’. Anything can be novelised if there's a demand for it.
We used the G39 Library to start- turning the space into a kind of writing studio, to write in a way that feels fast, intense and unnatural: in company, in conversation, editing and being edited. We are attempting to translate film into text, intentionally picking awkward material that does not translate simply. We’re currently working on a hybrid, fictionalised novelisation of Pere Portabella’s film ‘Cuadecuc, Vampir’ and the Lady Gaga documentary ‘5ft 2’ on Netflix.
On the 12th July we performed a reading-out-loud of these freshly written writes. A publication of sorts will be printed in the coming months.
www.yellowbackbooks.org / @yellowbackbooks
Upcoming:
July 2020, date TBC
A radio broadcast commissioned by Montez Press Radio x Mostyn. Yellow Back Books brings together short soundworks, texts and conversations from artists in Wales who write.
——
Yellow Back Books is a project platforming artists books, experimental publishing and artists who write. The project is a collaboration between Clare Charles, Freya Dooley, Louise Hobson, George Manson and Becca Thomas and comprises pop-up and decentralised events as well as having a permanent home at Arcade/Campfa in Cardiff, Wales.
Yellow Back Books began in 2015 with the intention to connect with a network of artists, publishers, readers and distributors and explore a collective conversation around artist books in Wales. Alongside our permanent artist bookshop, Yellow Back Books is an intermittent, itinerant project and we’ve hosted exhibitions, publication launches, reading events and workshops and we travel to book fairs whenever we can.
The name ‘Yellow Back Books’ is a reference to ‘Yellow-Backs’, an early example of cheap paperback books printed for the mass market and distributed throughout train station shops. ‘Yellow-Backs’ included sensational fiction and adventure stories, educational manuals and biographies, and they played a critical role in democratising the publishing world. Yellow Back Books began with the proposition that artists books can provide a similar role in democratising the otherwise seemingly elite world of ‘art objects’; they’re more affordable and also portable and intimate too, meaning they’re mobile – to be distributed, or brought home.
Recent projects:
FUTURE POSSIBLE
Residency at Campfa, Cardiff
1 - 24 November 2018
Approaching the residency as a piece of speculative fiction, the group will return to initial intentions and collectively explore ways of pre-enacting future possible forms, narratives and scenarios for Yellow Back Books. This will run parallel to an open collaborative dialogue with artists Cinzia Mutigli and Melissa Appleton.
Following a period of making experimental video works that reference ideas from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Cinzia Mutigli will present Singing up front, an exhibition of works in development including posters and text that have emerged from her recent residency at Hospitalfield, Arbroath.
Melissa Appleton’s collaboration with Yellow Back Books will draw on her recent project Quite Suddenly Your Smile is an Architecture (2016/17), an exhibition of the poetry and publishing projects of Jeff Nuttall staged at Broadleaf Books, Abergavenny and developed during Melissa’s recent Henry Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowship.
Curator at Spit and Sawdust, Cardiff
The Spit & Sawdust Billboard Commission provides a large-scale, site-specific platform for artists to develop new work. I curated the first two commissions, by Chris Alton and Jasleen Kaur.
Supported by Arts Council Wales
Billboard Commission #2: Jasleen Kaur, Women Hold Up Half The Sky
14 Mar 2019 - 31 Jan 2020
In Women Hold Up Half The Sky, artist Jasleen Kaur explores postcolonial gender roles, using collage to doctor an archival image of a military gymnastics display by members of the 2nd Royal Battalion (Ludhiana Sikhs) in Waziristan. Tamed men precariously balance on each others necks, propped up by Kaur’s mother’s hand: a gesture towards her research into the invisibility of women’s voices and discovering non-masculine forms of resistance.
Jasleen has selected a reading list of key books and reference texts which have informed her project and will be available to read at Spit & Sawdust for the duration of her commission. Ahead of the public launch, Jasleen hosted an intimate and informal reading group around a text from her list.
Press release/ more info in English / Cymraeg
—
Billboard Commission #1: Chris Alton, Crudely Plucking the Strings
11 May - 12 November 2018
For Spit & Sawdust's first Billboard Commission, Chris Alton reimagines the story of the 1607 flood of the Bristol Channel, which some hypothesise to have been caused by a tsunami. 2,000 or more people drowned, houses and villages were swept away. The local economy along the coasts of the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary was wrecked by the destruction of 200 square miles of farmland it’s livestock. It is believed that Cardiff was the most badly effected town. A woodcut print is one of the only surviving visual representations of the disastrous event.
Alton has created a speculative reworking of this woodcut, re-telling the 1607 flood with a new cast. St. Mary's Church, the image's original focal point, has been replaced by Hinkley Point C; the yet to be completed nuclear power station that sits on the southern bank of the channel. When it is finally completed, Hinkley Point C will be the most expensive power station in the world. It will perch on the edge of a precipice, vulnerable to the increasingly prevalent instances of extreme weather that are being experienced globally.
By mimicking the style of the original woodcut print, Crudely Plucking the Strings prefigures that which is yet to pass, training a sceptical eye on nuclear power as an answer to climate change. In many ways, this science fiction inspired image operates as an “early warning system”* and a call to action.
*JG Ballard to Travis Elborough. ‘Reality is a Stage Set’, interview with J.G. Ballard, appendix in The Drowned World, London: Harper Perennial, 1962 (7th edition, 2008)
Chris Alton more info/ press release : English / Cymraeg
Feature: Crudely Plucking the Strings, CCQ Magazine, Issue 15, 08/2018
See a PDF of the spread here.
—
Images:
(1 - 3) Jasleen Kaur, Women Hold Up Half the Sky, 2019, (photo Freya Dooley)
(3- 6) Chris Alton, Crudely Plucking the Strings, 2018, (photo Freya Dooley)
The Listening Sessions are semi-regular events for collective listening. They are run by a small group of artists interested in crossovers between visual art, sound and music- currently hosted by Clare Charles, Freya Dooley and Cinzia Mutigli.
You’re invited to bring along a track to share (mp3 format, on a USB stick or from your phone) in response to the session’s theme. We welcome music of all genres and you may respond in any way you like. It could also be a track you’ve produced yourself, but doesn’t have to be. The sessions are intimate and informal and there is no pressure to play a track, you are welcome to just come and listen. The event is open to women, non-binary people and all other trans people.
We wanted to use the first session, in the first month of the decade, to collect ourselves with the theme of ‘Gather’. ‘Gather’ is the most general term for bringing together from a spread-out or scattered state. The next session will be scheduled soon (post coronavirus…)
More info/ background:
The Listening Sessions are borrowed from the model originally devised by Synaptic Island, who are a collective of women and non-binary DJs that host bi-monthly listening sessions, and regular open deck sessions at Corsica Studios in London. Synaptic Island hosted a session as part of my exhibition at Chapter Gallery in 2019 and some of us who took part realised that there was a desire in Cardiff to make gatherings like this a regular fixture, so, with SI’s blessing, we adopted the idea.
The theme for that one was ‘Earworms’ and you can listen to the mix here.
Guidelines:
Each person can play up to 6 mins of a track, to ensure everyone is able to play their contributions.
Please be on time and prepared to stay until the end of the session- we will try our best to make sure that it finishes on time!
Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated.
I'm a member of Syllabus III, a UK based alternative peer-led learning programme, jointly delivered by Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; New Contemporaries, national; S1 Artspace, Sheffield; Spike Island, Bristol; Studio Voltaire, London and Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), London. The lead artists are Jesse Darling and Harold Offeh.
Now in its third year, Syllabus III provides a programme for artists over a nine-month period and is supported using public funding from Arts Council England, with additional support from The Fenton Arts Trust. It is developed collaboratively with the participating artists, partner institutions and lead artists.
The members of Syllabus III are: Frederica Agbah, Chris Alton, Conor Baird, Ilker Cinarel, Phoebe Davies, Freya Dooley, Rose Gibbs, Jill McKnight, Ben Sanderson and Karis Upton.
My participation in the programme is supported by the Arts Council of Wales.
