Wild Energies: Live Materials

This three-day online event presents new and existing research and artistic responses to the rich variety of the work of composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood.

Annea Lockwood’s career stretches over seven decades and three continents from her origins in New Zealand to her studies and early artistic career in London in the 1960s and 70s to her current long-term residence in the US. Always ahead of the mainstream, her work is mingled within many histories of sound and musical experimentation: these include early experiences at Darmstadt, the London avant-garde including the Destruction in Art Symposium, Fylkingen’s Text-Sound festivals, presentations at The Kitchen in New York in the 1970s; collaborative friendships with artists that include Hugh Davies, Pauline Oliveros, Alison Knowles, Christina Kubisch, Ruth Anderson, Bob Bielecki, and Liz Phillips. Throughout, her work has always retained a unique autonomy that defies singular contexts.

Although probably best known for the Sound Map works that resulted from her intense engagement with the Hudson (1989), Danube (2005) and the Housatonic (2012) rivers, and her complex associations with pianos (Piano Transplants: Piano Burning [1968], Piano Garden [1970], Piano Drowning [1972], Southern Exposure [1982]) her intimate, detailed, playful and generous relationships with sound can be heard in all her work whether for concert, installation or in collaboration with other artforms. She has worked with students, women’s groups, other artists and composers, instrumentalists, and choreographers yet the variety of output is united by its invitation to listen intently and, through that, to think differently.

For Wild Energies: Live Materials, a peer-reviewed selection of international artists and scholars, who responded to a call for works and papers, will present a mix of video, sound, performance, workshops and scholarly papers grouped together under the overarching themes of Rivers & Tributaries; Ecologies & Entanglements; Voice & Intimacy; Collaboration & Care; and Methods & Materials. CRiSAP researchers will present their individual research, and Annea Lockwood will be in conversation with fellow artist and friend Hildegard Westerkamp.

Schedule

Wednesday 27 April | 18:00 - 21:15 (BST)

Keynote conversation: Annea Lockwood & Hildegard Westerkamp
Presentations from CRiSAP researchers
You Listening With is a River Workshop (10:00-12:00 Register here, limited places)

Thursday 28 April | 11:00 - 17:30 (BST)

Research presentations around the themes of:

Rivers and Tributaries 1
Rivers and Tributaries 2
Collaboration and Care

Friday 29 April | 11:00 - 17:45 (BST)

Research presentations around the themes of:

Ecologies and Entanglements
Voice and Intimacy
Methods and Materials

Online throughout

Further works will be available online for the durations of the event in an online collection.

Read the full schedule and programme here

Kate Carr, Lisa Hall, Cathy Lane, Cannach MacBride, Irene Revell, Louise Gray

Technical support by Michael Spears and Rory Salter

CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) research centre, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Wild Energies: Live Materials is part of Unearthed: A festival of listening and environment, an ongoing series of (2020-ongoing) events inviting both serious and more playful interrogations of current sound and listening practices and how they might help us reconsider our evolving relationships with other species, the built environment, truth and each other.

This event is an offshoot of Sound::Gender::Feminism::Activism (SGFA). SGFA was initiated in 2012 by researchers and artists based at the CRiSAP. It is part of ongoing collaborative research into historic and contemporary feminist discourses in sound and experimental music. This research aims to expand and question the place and performance of activism within the discourses and practices of sound arts, sound-based arts and experimental musics that are engaged with gender, feminist and queer politics and to build a network of researchers and practitioners working in these areas. Different incarnations of SGFA took place in London in 2012, 2014 and 2016, attracting a diverse range of international presenters and attendees. In 2019 SGFA Tokyo, a collaboration between CRiSAP, University of the Arts London and the Graduate School of Global Arts (GA), Tokyo University of the Arts took place in Tokyo.

Aio Frei, Alexis Bhagat, Amy Melissa Reed, Andrea Bohlman, Cannach MacBride, Catherine Clover, Cathy Lane, Claire Kearns, Delphine Dora, Dominic Chennell, Douglas Kahn, Elissa Goodrich, Elizabeth Frickey, Ingrid Plum, Irene Revell, Janine Eisenächer, Jo Hutton, Jodie Saunders, Joseph Chaves, Julia Schauerman, Kate Carr, Kerry O'Brien Lara Geary, Leah Barclay, Louise Gray, Maayan Tsadka, Mattin & Noel Meek, MUD Collective Nate Wooley, OS Collective, Pia van Gelder, Polina Khatsenka, Rachel Devorah Wood Rome, Ron Coulter, Sabrina Fuller and ZONKEY (Melitopoulos/Schroedinger)

Read the programme for full information on all contributions and contributors

Annea Lockwood

Born in New Zealand in 1939 and living in the US since 1973, Annea Lockwood is known for her explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sounds and environments, in works ranging from sound art and installations, through text-sound and performance art to concert music. Her music has been performed in many venues and festivals including: the Possibility of Action exhibition at MACBA Barcelona, De Ijsbreker, the Other Minds Festival-San Francisco, the Walker Art Center, the American Century: 1950 – 2000 exhibition at the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, CNMAT Berkeley, the Asia-Pacific Festival, Donaufest 2006 Ulm, the Donau Festival Krems, the 7th Totally Huge New Music Festival Perth, Ear To The Earth Festival – New York and Sonic Acts XIII.

Her sound installation, A Sound Map of the Danube, has been presented in Germany, Austria, and the US. This is a surround ‘sound map’ of the entire Danube River, incorporating a wide variety of water, animal and underwater insect sounds, rocks from the riverbed, and the voices of those whose lives are intimately connected to the river. Other recent projects include Ceci n’est pas un piano, for piano, video and electronics commissioned by Jennifer Hymer; Jitterbug, commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, a six-channel soundscape with two improvising musicians; and In Our Name, a collaboration with Thomas Buckner based on poems by prisoners in Guantánamo. She was a recipient of the 2007 Henry Cowell Award. Her music has been issued on CD, vinyl and online on the Lovely Music, Ambitus, EM, XI, Rattle, Lorelt, Black Truffle and Pogus labels.

www.annealockwood.com

Hildegard Westerkamp

Composer Hildegard Westerkamp focuses on listening, environmental sound and acoustic ecology. At the beginning of her career she worked with R. Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project and subsequently taught acoustic communication courses at Simon Fraser University with colleague Barry Truax. She is a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and was chief editor of its journal Soundscape between 2000 and 2012. She has conducted soundscape workshops, given concerts and lectures, and has coordinated and led soundwalks locally and internationally. Hildegard’s compositions have been performed and broadcast in many parts of the world.

Westerkamp’s pioneering musical works and writing at the intersections of environmentalism, acoustic communication, radio arts, listening practices and soundwalking activate an awareness, that sound is a decisive dimension of the world, an idea that underpins contemporary thinking across social, political, artistic and scientific practices of environmental respect and concern.

www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca

The event will be hosted online on Zoom:

The Zoom 'Meeting' links will be emailed to all registered attendees 2 days before the event
All times in the programme are listed in UK British Summer Time. (Here is a helpful time zone calculator tool)
We suggest that you enable stereo sound in Zoom's settings, before the event (instructions available in the program)
The event will have live captions and the Q&A will welcome questions via text or verbally.
For guidance on how to access the event using Zoom, please see the programme or contact us on our projects email address: crisap@arts.ac.uk if you have any questions.
Please see UAL’s Virtual Event Privacy Notice which sets out how your personal information will be collected and processed. (NB At CRiSAP we do not store your registration information in Zoom)

Wild Energies: Live Materials