The MA in Aural Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London presents: Listening Seminars

The MA in Aural Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London presents: Listening Seminars

The Listening Seminars will be free public events, open to all, presented by the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. The Seminars will be devoted to the practice of collective listening. What will be listened to will vary, but it is likely to include music, sound art, spoken word and other experimental uses of sound and voice. Sometimes, artists and musicians will be present to describe and contextualise their work, but the primary focus will be on listening together rather than on discussion. The seminars aim to provide the opportunity for sustained focus in a world that is otherwise characterised by the dispersal of attention.

It is hoped that the Listening Seminars will happen monthly during term times.

The first Listening Seminar will take place from 7-9pm on November 5th in NAB LG01, no booking required. NAB LG01 is located in the New Academic Building(http://www.gold.ac.uk/newacademicbuilding/), which is to be found at the rear of the College, behind the quad. It will feature works by Mark Fisher, English Heretic, RO/AD (Carey Robinson, Tristam Adams), Mika Hayashi Ebbesen and special presentation from Jonny Mugwump of recordings from his Exotic Pylon label.

The second Seminar will be a Yule Eerie special and will take place in December, on a date to be confirmed shortly. Anyone who would like to present an audio work at a future Seminar, or who has ideas for pieces to which we could collectively listen, should email m.fisher@gold.ac.uk.

Line-up for the first Listening Seminar

1. Unvisited Vastness - Eerie Anglia (Mark Fisher and Andy Sharp)

2. Plan for the Kidnap of Princess Anne - English Heretic featuring Mark Fisher

3. As Sonorous Murmurs Rise - RO/AD (Carey Robinson, Tristam Adams)

4. Evanescent Continents [1] by Mikatsiu - Mika Hayashi Ebbesen

5. Presentation by Jonny Mugwump of material from Exotic Pylon label

Biographies and descriptions of pieces

Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne - English Heretic

Using found recordings, a research group from English Heretic have reconstructed the attempted kidnap of Princess Anne by Ian Ball. On the evening of March 20th 1974 Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were returning from a charity film event in support of The Riding For The Disabled Association, when their limousine was held up along the Mall, by Ball. Eventually tackled by police officers, Ball was arrested. In May 1975, Ball was convicted of attempted murder and kidnap. A diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic, Ball still remains in detention under the Mental Health Act.

http://englishheretic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/plan-for-kidnap-of-princess-anne-lp.html

English Heretic is a creative occult organisation, in operation since 2003. Over 10 years, English Heretic has set out to explore a new approach to ceremonial magic and archetypal psychology inspired by the outre work of Kenneth Grant, James Hillman, situationism and pop culture signifiers. English Heretic attempts to manifest a deliciously troubled soul of our world, through ludic and heuristic engagement with horror film, pulp fiction and the esoteric arts. They have released and reported their findings via numerous books, CDs and events.

Unvisited Vastness - Eerie Anglia

The first piece in the ongoing Eerie Capital series, 'Unvisited Vastness' is also a spin-off from Justin Barton and Mark Fisher's On Vanishing Land audio-essay, which described Felixstowe container port as an 'unvisited vastness'. Using concrete sounds recorded at the port, Eerie Anglia (Mark Fisher and English Heretic's Andy Sharp) have constructed a strange love song to Capital.

Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism (2009) and the forthcoming Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. His writing has appeared in many publications, including The Wire, Frieze, The Guardian and Film Quarterly. He is Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and a lecturer at the University of East London. He has also produced two acclaimed audio-essays in collaboration with Justin Barton:londonunderlondon (2005) and On Vanishing Land (2013).

RO/AD - As Sonorous Murmurs Rise

As Sonorous Murmurs Rise explores the elusive grain of the voice; the parts that hold a libidinal energy, a vo-corp-aural energy traded in service industry, media and music. Taking Jean Francois Lyotard’s visceral prose from the 1993 translation of his Libidinal Economy essay as a starting point, the piece trades upon the aesthetic of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). The ASMR aesthetic is explored and renegotiated to question the preconceptions of such seemingly innocuous sounds. The hope is to conjure an intense vocal undoing; a tangibly sonic and performative deconstruction of voice that may be peculiar, strange or even horrifying. It is in this sense that notions of libidinal vocal capitalism and the traditional apportioning of subordination and domination within service intonations are deconstructed. Framing the narrative will be soundscapes compiled from Carey Robinson’s archive recordings.

RO/AD is a collaborative art practice based in London. It was founded in 2012 by Carey Robinson and Tristam Adams, students of Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths.

Evanescent Continents [1] by Mikatsiu - Mika Hayashi Ebbesen

Evanescent Continents was launched as an experiment in the ephemeral amassing of sounds. Believing that we all continuously contribute to the frequencies that resonate within our daily existences, these human fictions are the true reality, a reality cut away from what is habitually imposed upon us as real. Using material collected from an international call for recorded material, the listener is presented with a momentary evanescent continent, a shared sonic landscape bound to its temporal rather than spatial existence.

Mika Hayashi Ebbesen is a London based artist & writer. She is an editor at Shoppinghour Magazine and is also the founder of the sonically oriented collective Human Fiction Tartini. Ebbesen makes music under the name Mikatsiu, plays cello in the band Shabsi Mann, and recently joined the Chicago based international theater company Mozawa.

Exotic Pylon Records was formed in August 2011 and is a limb of the (undefined) Exotic Pylon project begun over five years ago by Jonny Mugwump. This is a record label informed by the practices Mugwump stumbled upon as a radio producer at Resonance FM and then via a number of live events that he organised. The label does not have a defined sonic or visual aesthetic (although clearly there are stylistic phases and there is a leaning towards the 'electronic') and has released on a variety of formats so far including tape, vinyl, CD, USB and digital (although nothing is off-limits where appropriate and this should become more varied in the future). Releases might be fully hand-made, industrially manufactured or a mixture of both.

www.exoticpylon.com