Installations & Performances

On the 27th March 2020 the fourth annual organ reframed returns to Union Chapel with a programme packed full of innovative music. Alongside headline performances, the two-day international festival will also feature talks, masterclasses, an interactive soundscape and family-friendly workshops.

organ reframed launches with three new works composed and performed by artists known for redefining their fields: Anna von Hausswolff renowned for her gothic organ creations, enigma Abul Mogard a synth visionary, and Ipek Gorgun a composer of energetic, textural masterpieces. All three works for organ, electronics and the London Contemporary Orchestra will push Union Chapel’s sonic possibilities to the extreme.

The Saturday afternoon will see the chapel transformed by sounds and rhythms echoing the seasonal shift of the Highland year. This free installation by Chris Watson and Claire M Singer will feature the wind, weather and animals of Scotland. These sounds will interact with the organ played by James McVinnie, Katherine Tinker and Jacob Lekkerkerker.

The festival concludes on Saturday evening with the world premiere of Voci del Vento by Chris Watson and Claire M Singer. This collaborative work will combine organ, field recordings, modular synths, the London Contemporary Orchestra and Choir to transport audiences on an epic journey from pole to pole.

Chris Watson, is a founding member of the influential experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire. He is famously known for his recording of wildlife sound for David Attenborough’s documentaries and his ground-breaking work on Grammy nominated Chernobyl, with Hildur Gudnadottir. His 2003 release Weather Report was voted as one of the 100 best albums to hear before you die by The Guardian.

Speaking about the festival Chris Watson said, “I’m thrilled by the prospect of bringing the natural world into the musically inspiring environment of Union Chapel and collaborating with Claire M Singer for the next Organ Reframed”. Claire M Singer is known for her experimental approach to the organ and for her critically acclaimed releases on the prolific label Touch.

organ reframed is brought to you by Union Chapel Project, in partnership with the London Contemporary Orchestra and Spitfire Audio with generous support from Arts Council England and the Institute of Physics.

Tickets and full line up information are now available from Union Chapel

Caught by the River at Port Eliot Festival 2019

Venture south and explore large-scale public art in Tasmania’s Huon Valley. Project X will present a series of major artworks in the Huon, with the aim of bringing visitors back to the south in the wake of the bushfires that recently ravaged the island.

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants: A Festival on Plant Intelligence
EartH Hackney
11-17 Stoke Newington Road London N16 8BH
Sunday 19th May 1-11pm

Chris Watson, Salmo salar – The Three Realms, on location Croquet Head, commissioned by Serpentine Galleries and L-Acoustics on the occasion of The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, 2019.

“Most people who bother to think about plants at all tend to regard them as the mute, immobile furniture of our world—useful enough, and generally attractive, but obviously second-class citizens in the republic of life on Earth.” (Stefano Mancuso)

The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants is a multidisciplinary festival that brings together artists, scientists, writers, anthropologists and musicians for talks, performances, screenings and listening sessions that raise and address some of the most urgent questions facing all of us.

www.serpentinegalleries.org/files/press-releases/gen_eco_-_press_release_final.pdf

After a devastating earthquake, Nga, an old elephant and probably the last of his kind, and Sanra, his mahout, embark on a journey to find the mythical elephant’s graveyard. A story of discovery and mourning in which the spectator becomes the protagonist, the film follows the duo as they are stalked closely by a group of poachers, who begin to die one after another under mysterious circumstances.

Carlos Casas’s Sanctuary offers a mesmerizing sonic and visual cinematic environment that immerses the audience in the sounds, textures, and hues of the jungle. Projected on the mega-screen in EMPAC’s Concert Hall, and featuring live Ambisonics, Wavefield Synthesis, and infrasound to induce a deep sense of physical closeness with the elephant, Sanctuary presents a unique sensorial experience that collapses the boundaries between art, nature documentary, and adventure film.

Chris Watson collaborated with the bioacoustician and elephant communication expert Joyce Poole to record the acoustic sphere of elephants. Tony Myatt developed the infrasound speaker and implemented the spatial audio. Both will perform live on the speaker systems installed throughout the hall. This is the US premiere of the project, which was previously presented at the Fondation Cartier, Paris; the Tate Modern, London; and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels.

empac.rpi.edu/events/2019/sanctuary

Okeanos takes the audience on an auditory underwater journey around the globe. Years of recordings from pole to pole will be performed with three audio systems in the Concert Hall: a dome of 64 loudspeakers used to project sounds around the audience in an Ambisonic environment, a Wave Field Synthesis array, consisting of hundreds of small speakers placed above the audience, and a custom-built infrasound speaker used to create the lowest frequencies, which can be more felt than heard. The composition will include songs, signals, and vibrations from the smallest crustaceans to the loudest and largest animals ever to have existed.

Chris Watson and Tony Myatt will perform a version of the work specifically developed for EMPAC’s Concert Hall and its audio systems. This new version will also integrate sound materials recorded on the Northeastern coast of the US and humpback whale recordings from the Silver Banks (Dominican Republic).

empac.rpi.edu/events/2019/okeanos

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival presents the premiere of Enceindre, a new commission and first collaboration between artist filmmaker Luke Fowler and acclaimed sound recordist Chris Watson. Enceindre is a study in film and sound of two 16th century fortified cities: Berwick in the North-East of England and Pamplona in the Navarre region of the North of Spain.

If fortifications are considered ‘the body of the place’, what does it means to live in a body that is outside of time and without purpose? Could these fortress towns be considered hetrotopias? Or are they, as the writer WG Sebald vividly describes, alien structures denuded from human history? Enceindre adopts an infra-sensitive approach to place, drawing on unheard acoustic perspectives and lucid camerawork to propose a new framework in which to consider these anachronistic landscapes.

The film’s world premiere at BFMAF 2018 will be immediately followed by a ‘dark cinema’ version of the film with an alternative soundtrack diffused live by Chris Watson.

Commission supported by LUMA Foundation, Outset Scotland and Berwick-upon-Tweed Town Council

www.bfmaf.org/programme/specialevents/enceindre

Ephemera now presents Foris, an immersive installation created by acclaimed field recordist Chris Watson, Schoen and visual artist MFO – also involved in Ephemera from the start. Centered around the idea of preserving endangered ecosystems in the era of the anthropocene, a multichannel installation of field recordings of selected habitats from across the planet interconnects with the olfactory concept of a forest created by Geza Schoen. Like the initial phase of this unique project, Foris will connect to the next series of Ephemera perfume, to be launched in 2019.

www.unsound.pl/articles/news/unsound-krakow-announces-second-wave-of-artists-including-special-projects-and-premieres-tickets-on-sale-mid-august

17 carefully selected artists have been invited to perform on the new d&b Soundscape stage.

http://womad.co.uk/tickets/

Shirley Collins, Richard Dawson, British Sea Power, Bas Jan and Chris Watson will all be appearing at an event in Newcastle this November to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. 100 Years takes place at the historic Boiler Shop venue on Armistice weekend.The centrepiece of the events will be a special work by Chris Watson called A Nightingale On The Western Front, a sound composition based on recordings made on the the WWI battlefields in Flanders. The piece will be presented from 5am to 7:30am on Armistice Day, and will be followed by a Q&A with Watson by The Quietus’ Luke Turner, co-curator of the event. This will be followed by a special early morning set from Richard Dawson. Shirley Collins will play on the evening of the 11th – her recent memoir All In The Downs deals poignantly with the impact that the war had on her immediate family, and the people of her rural Sussex childhood. The Armistice Day events follow a gig on the Saturday night by Bas Jan and British Sea Power. There are more events to be announced, but for now you can find tickets here. Newcastle’s Boiler Shop is a listed building where the Stephenson family built the first steam locomotives, and during WWI was used in the production of military aircraft.

Photo: Chris Watson at Allt an t-Sionnaich

www.alecfinlay.com

The world premiere of an original, multi-channel sound installation from internationally acclaimed and BAFTA award-winning sound artist Chris Watson. Chris has deep ties to the North of England and has travelled the world collecting sounds. One of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena, Chris’ work puts “a microphone where you can’t put your ears”.

A collaboration between Hull 2017 and the University of Hull, this three dimensional sound sculpture follows the ebbing tide, from the confluence of the rivers Trent and Ouse. An enthralling journey along the Humber estuary and out into rich melodies of the North Sea, experienced at the Gulbenkian Centre using sound, space and light as evocation.

This is a durational installation piece. This installation is approx. 30 mins in length but runs as a continuous loop. Audiences can experience a single cycle or stay longer if they wish.

www.hull2017.co.uk/whatson/events/trent-falls-to-spurn-point/

Chris Watson
William Basinski & James Elaine
Alvin Lucier
Keith Fullerton Whitman
Tim Hecker
Aleksi Perala
Catherine Christer Hennix
Kara-Lis Coverdale

www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?939757

Experience immersive live cinema in the Tanks

On the fifth night of the BMW Tate Live Exhibition Carlos Casas presents Sanctuary 2017, a site-specific infrasound environment open to the public during the day which will transition to an immersive live cinema experience. Inspired by the myth of an elephant graveyard in Sri Lanka, Sanctuary grows out of Casas’ wider research for Cemetery, an expansive film project initiated in 2007 which brings together footage he has been shooting in locations across the globe with field recordings by renowned sound artist and musician Chris Watson.

Featuring a film and light design by Carlos Casas, live sound by Chris Watson, and infrasound engineering by Tony Myatt, the live cinema performance Sanctuary segues from a projection to a spatial sound experience. Part nature documentary, part experimental fiction, the narrative follows the journey of an elephant, his mahout, and a group of poachers following their trace into the darkness of the night. By enabling visitors to tune their senses to infrasound communication throughout the day, the live completes a unique sensory testing ground for encounters with other species.

www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/performance/ten-days-six-nights/night-five