THE POWER OF SOUND

For one month, Stephanie Gervais, Olivia Hernaïz, Berber Meindertsma, Máté Pacsika and Iris van der Wal will transform Guest Projects into a music and sound studio. Each artist will initiate a project that has been part of their prior research while expanding and elaborating on these projects collaboratively. The artists intend to use the residency as a starting point for a longer collaboration that will unfold over time.

Knowledge and experience in working with sound from the group’s diverse areas and practices - sound engineering, architecture, social activism and participatory practice - will contribute to an environment of experimentation. Unravelling the technicality, production and meaning of sound, the artists will explore how sound can be used as an effective tool in artistic work as well as community engagement and political thought. What are the sounds of displaced communities, language, democracy or dictatorship, and how can artists (re)produce, record or present them?

In response to an ongoing project Memories of Syria and her current exhibition Gulalhi (Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, USA), artist Stephanie Gervais plans to work with the recordings of Syrian revolutionary songs as sung by Syrians in their UK homes and add them to an ongoing archive spanning different languages and locations.   

Artist Olivia Hernaïz will collaborate with Xenia, a Hackney-based discussion group for women focused on the practice of English, on an experimental creative writing project. She will invite the participants to write words, stories, poems, songs that do not necessarily have to make sense to the listeners - from speech sounds to Gibberish language and untranslatable expressions. Together, they will explore the power of writing and communication beyond content, focusing attention on the sonority of words, the rhythm of reading and the waves of voice.

Drawing upon his recent research Circles of Uncertainty, Máté Pacsika will introduce a sound pedagogy to add a layer of critique on artistic collaboration and contextualise the residency within previous collaborative sound work and research.

Architect Iris van der Wal will focus on the movement of sound in space and its manipulation by shapes and materials, in a variety of scales. She will experiment with sound manipulation by creating various objects, from interior elements to wearable pieces.

In the final week, a closing presentation and performance party will be organised as a means of drawing together and presenting the findings of the research and works produced during the residency, to be curated by Berber Meindertsma.