A psychological and spiritual withdrawal from the toxic workplace culture founded on white supremacy.
Original image by Irene Tønnessen
From the Fugitive Episode. Series 34
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
Executive Producer: Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
A memoryscape of fatherhood woven between three generations.
From the Fatherhood Episode. Series 33.
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced and mixed by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
Ilya Kaminsky, I See a Silence
Ukrainian/American poet Ilya Kaminsky’s work Deaf Republic was heralded as one of the most original books of 2019.
I See a Silence, his new lyric work for Artangel, combined poetry and prose to form the centrepiece of a soundscape for walking the Ness, produced by acclaimed audio designer Axel Kacoutié with the voices of Neil Brennan, Ilya Kaminsky and Zakia Sewell.
Drawn to the singular ecology of the landscape and the flora and fauna that both preceded and survived decades of weapons research, Kaminsky’s ‘poetry of place’ uncannily evoked a landscape of the imagination. The journey began at the Bomb Ballistics building, where a panoramic viewing platform looks out across the vast shingle stretching towards the sea.
Visitors were able to experience I See a Silence whilst wearing headphones and walking between the different buildings on Orford Ness.
We are wrong to look for uniformity and objectivity. We have all mapped associations to what our subjective experience is like.
My experience of the colour red is different from yours. Our brains light up the same way when hearing water but our relationship to its sounds will never be the same.
Because of this, I wanted to illustrate how I’ve mapped mine using abstract terms like solitude, sunbathing, patricide etc. All as an attempt to say, “you don’t have to understand, I just want to connect and have you see (listen) how I relate to the world.”
Designed to listen to audio from around the world and explore ideas of intimacy and distance, the Soundhouse ‘listening rooms’ was curated by audio artists, Ariana Martinez, Axel Kacoutié and Arlie Adlington.
Soundhouse: Intimacy and Distance took place from 28 October 2020 until 28 February 2021
Room One – “Art isn’t made to experience only once…this curation is an invitation to pause.”
Soundhouse is a platform for creative radio and podcasting, and a space for reflections on audio culture.
In 2018 it took the form of a pop-up venue at the Barbican, with a focus on communal listening and experimental events in a sensory environment for sound. This year, Soundhouse exists here online, and we explore ideas of Intimacy and Distance through three ‘listening rooms’, and four specially commissioned pieces of writing.
Co-creators Eleanor McDowall and Nina Garthwaite write here about why this theme felt apt for the ‘socially distanced world’ many of us are living in, and how ideas of intimacy and distance have always been intertwined with the way we experience radio.