Wednesday 12 March 2014

Listening Seminar 4 - Sound Works by Women Artists



The MA in Aural and Visual Cultures Presents:
Listening Seminar 4 - Sound Works by Women Artists 

Curated by Diana Policarpo

This seminar will present new audio pieces by a selection of women artists. It features the work of Adrianna Palazzolo, Cara Tolmie, Diana Policarpo, Hannah Catherine Jones, Jenna Bliss, Jenna Collins, Marina Elderton and Nicola Woodham. 

Each of these artists investigate different aspects of sound, in relation to space, atmosphere and the presence or absence of the image. Through a variety of approaches, these works explore notions of multi-vocality, using rhythm, time, formal and informal speech, narrative and noise, both as material and inspiration.

The works have been compiled back-to-back on a playlist, to prioritise collective listening, over discussion. I hope this event, which is married to space and corporeality, will allow us to question the various ways we experience the sonic world. 

Diana Policarpo, 
March, 2014

Adrianna Palazzolo (b. Toronto, Canada) lives and works in London. She graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths in 2012. Recent group exhibitions include: Emergency6, Aspex, Portsmouth, UK; Adrianna Palazzolo and Ella McCartney, Peter Von Kant, London; .gif, online exhibition, MMOCA (Main Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art); Perspectivism, Slakthusateljéernas, Stockholm, Sweden and Pavilion, Open File, Grand Union Gallery, Birmingham, UK.

Adrianna's practice is largely based on experimentation, focusing in video and installation works. The soundtrack of each of her works are sculptural, where the sound takes precedence over the image in the editing process. This mode of working can be seen as a way to question the patriarchal relationship of sound and image in film making ideologies in direct comparison to feminist politics.


Cara Tolmie is an artist, born in Glasgow currently based in London, who works with moving image, performance, sound and installation. She made two new projects in 2013; Pley, commissioned and produced by Picture This and exhibited at Spike Island, Bristol and Artissima, Turin; and Otiumfold commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Tower Hamlets. Both used the format of the ‘exercise’ to scrutinise interpersonal relations between groups of performers each navigating their own investigations into play, improvisation and language. She is currently working on new collaborative performances with Patrick Staff for Open File at Outpost, Norwich and Paul Abbott for the Counterflows festival in Glasgow this April. 


Diana Policarpo (b. Lisbon, Portugal), is an artist based in London and recently completed an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College. Her work can mainly be described as a spatial practice: various media such as drawing, performance, sound, writing and spoken word open up different ways for her to delineate and activate objects and space.

She composes and improvises time-based components for polyrhythmic sound sculptures and performative installations, which deal with the performative role that language and power play, both reflecting on reality and on the trandisciplinary field of cultural production. She is currently working on projects with the female collective Cabiria and her first solo show in Germany will be at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in July 2014.


Jenna Bliss recently completed an MA at Slade School of Fine Art in London and is now based in New York, NY.  Her current project revolves around the radical political action and drug-free detox at Lincoln Hospital Detoxification Clinic in the South Bronx during the 1970s. 

The audio piece for this listening seminar explores the historical moment and location whilst attempting to utilize the detoxifying capabilities of deep breathing and body heat. The culmination of this project will be a video and series of performances. 


Jenna Collins works across sound, video and text to make visible the ways and means by which the body is continuous with the environment, seeking to reveal the pressures, feedback and aspirations that clutter moments of enunciation. www.jennacollins.com


Hannah Catherine Jones (b. Doncaster 1987) investigates the documentation modes of performance art. Using her (live) operatic voice, she often gives (recorded) vocal presence to documenting devices in the moment of performance. Jones’ investigations into language, specifically her punning titles, have recently enriched her practice. Jones has a BFA and MA from Oxford University, an MFA from Goldsmiths and begins a practice-based PhD at Goldsmiths in September 2014.


Marina Elderton is a self-taught musician based in London. She plays guitar and sings in the two-piece KULL (www.kullmusic.com), and improvises live experimental soundscapes alongside Diana Policarpo and Hannah Jones as part of the female collective Cabiria. 
Drawn to the immersive nature of sound as a mind altering tool, she experiments with raw musical elements, embracing atmospheric minimalism and ritualised cycles to access purer conscious states. She will be playing a song from a new independent piano project C'est Celestial. She is currently studying an MA in Composing for Film at the National Film and Television School. 


Nicola Woodham is a sound, performance and video artist. She creates fictions with the voice as a means to explore forms of surveillance and the notion of the female voice as ‘monstrous’. She recently took part in the Totemic Festival, Freud Museum and FLOWS, Vibe Gallery, London. She is part of a collaborative project Zeros + Ones with artists from Stockholm and London. She also contributes regularly to Electric Sheep film magazine.  www.nicolawoodham.com


The Listening Seminar will take place from 8-10pm on March 25th  at Goldsmiths College in NAB LG01 and it is located in the New Academic building  which is to be found at the rear of the College, behind the quad.