Avant-garde art, be it musically, visually or performance based often appears as somewhat elitist, with a defined hierarchy between those who create the work (the artists) and those experience it (the audience). To people who have not had the fortune of being taught all the codes of the artform, the pieces and the settings in which these are shown can be uncomfortable and alienating.

The Material Studies project seeks to open these experimental artforms to anyone who wishes to participate in the collective, improvised sonic exploration of various materials and objects, whether by actively working with the objects, passively absorbing the interactions of others or by expressing a response to the sonic exploration through visual or written acts.

The use of traditional instruments, terminology and tools of manipulation will be avoided. Participants will together develop an improvisational language based solely on the sounds that can be teased out of various everyday objects, with each session being themed around a particular material or object.

No expertise or previous experience is required, instead the sessions focus on the communicative potential of collective improvisation, where every participant needs to listen and react to everything that is happening around, where every gesture has an influence on everything else.

The underlying principle of the project is to promote a corrosion of the space between the artist-performer and the contemplator-audience and to promote the idea that we are all valuable as artists regardless of education or class.

£5/£4 concs per workshop
Book tickets here

The workshops are happening at Sound//Space, SoundFjord‘s pop-up record store at V22 Summer Club in London.

Brick Lane presents itself as a tapestry of sensations, always in flux, awash with people, colours, sounds, smells. I have for years lived a stone’s throw away and cannot number the countless times I have wandered up and down the Lane.

As the slice cuts right through the lower part of Brick Lane, this has been an opportunity to engage with the place in a different way. I have centred my research on a short stretch, between Fashion Street and Fournier Street. Everything has been recorded there, or at places that people who I have met there have taken me to.

The strategy was simple: To immerse myself in the environment, equipped with microphones and a recorder, and capture whatever happens there and then, guided by an imperative to break down the tapestry into a diversity of social actors, each one guided by their own purpose of being there, each one with their own ambitions, struggles and desires.

What has been recorded has been done so in an almost rudimentary fashion, akin to the conversations and the stories that came about serendipitously. Favouring the spontaneity of the moment over technical perfection has meant that the recordings contain whatever happened, including background noises and abrupt movements.

I have been careful to retain this immediacy throughout the arrangement of the material. Much sound editing is concerned with illusionists’ work – cuts are smoothed over, unwanted noises reduced. The decision made here was to leave the edits just as they are, without crossfades or other embellishments, to emphasise rather than obscure the process of selection, of rearrangement and ultimately reinterpretation that has gone into creating this work.

→Slice Project