Atlas Europe Square

Explorations of the audio essay as medium and method.

With contributors including Justin Barton, Angus Carlyle, Kodwo Eshun, Steve Goodman, Robin Mackay, Paul Nataraj, and Iain Sinclair, Sonic Faction presents extended lines of thought prompted by two Urbanomic events which explored the ways in which sound and voice can produce new sensory terrains and provoke speculative thought.

Three recent pieces provide the catalyst for a discussion of the potential of the "audio essay" as medium and method, a machine for intensifying listening and unsettling the boundaries between existing forms: documentary, music, ambient sound, audiobook, field recording, radio play….

Kode9's Astro-Darien (2022) is a sonic fiction about simulation, presenting an alternative history of the Scottish Space Programme, haunted by the ghosts of the British Empire. Justin Barton and Mark Fisher's On Vanishing Land (2006) is a dreamlike account of a coastal walk that expands into questions of modernity, capitalism, fiction, and the micropolitics of escape. Robin Mackay's By the North Sea (2021) is a meditation on time, disappearance, and loss as heard through the fictions of Lovecraft, Ccru, and the spectre of Dunwich, the city that vanished beneath the waves.

Alongside photographic documentation of the events and edited transcripts of the artists' discussions, Sonic Faction brings together contributors with diverse perspectives to address the question of the audio essay and to imagine its future.

Contributors
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lendl Barcelos, Justin Barton, Ben Borthwick, Angus Carlyle, Matt Colquhoun, Jessica Edwards, Kodwo Eshun, Steve Goodman, Ayesha Hameed, Eleni Ikoniadou, Lawrence Lek, Robin Mackay, Paul Nataraj, Emily Pethick, Iain Sinclair, Shelley Trower

This publication brings together two original screenplays for yet-realized video works by Robinson along with a collection of research material presented as a retrograde calendar. The screenplays, / Imagine Prompt: Catfish Monogamy and The Jealousy of Sagittarius A*, both deal with contemporary life and creative labor as they intersect with digital culture and current anxieties regarding AI. In addition, the screenplays are followed by A Faggot is a Unit (Homage to Hanne Darboven), a collection of archival photographs, scanned objects and ephemera, as well as stock imagery and graphics from the internet collected by Robinson over the course of seven years (2015–2021). The imagery further splits the disorienting narratives presented in the two screenplays to offer a kaleidoscopic and unpredictable way of reading stories while functioning simultaneously as visual companion and counterpoint to the scripts.

Writing and editing is central to Robinson’s published and film work, inquiring into queer histories and the contemporary economy of the image, not as novelty subjects in themselves, but as forms of knowledge integral to questioning histories of perceived liberation. We are committed to representing diverse voices and perspectives that challenge and build upon our vision of bringing material from the fast-paced digital experience to the book form.

Padraig Robinson is a Berlin-based artist, filmmaker and writer. 

How to live together in cramped quarters? How to create a microcosm against hostile surroundings? In Barge Life, Florian Deroo tackles these questions by looking at a mythical classic of French cinema: Jean Vigo’s 1934 film L’Atalante. A work brimming with the energies of surrealism and anarchism, L’Atalante follows a young couple, two shipmates, and a clowder of cats who dwell in the belly of a river barge. Deroo offers a wide-ranging essay on the film, revealing how it lovingly delineates a small group that withdraws from the rhythms of modern life to establish a different kind of existence elsewhere. In L’Atalante’s most riveting moments, the river barge becomes a vehicle for a powerful fantasy: a supple and mobile collective life, lived in sensuous interdependence.

Combining film criticism, philosophy, and biography, Deroo’s Barge Life reconsiders an important forerunner to the French New Wave and the early death of its director. Drawing readers into the intimately cramped living spaces of L’Atalante, Deroo explores the allure of retreating into a self-sufficient shelter, along with its intractable problems.

Kamil Bouzoubaa-Grivel réalise au printemps 2020 la série de dessins Hack’n’slash.

Ces collages sont faits à partir d’aplats de couleur autocollants Letrafilm Color/Tint Overlay, que l’on pourrait traduire par Couleur/Teinte Superposition, permettant ainsi de nommer l’importance des jeux de profondeur qui s’y trouvent. 

L’artiste se calque là-dessus et joue alors avec la confrontation entre le hack: détournement et réemploi d’outils techniques (trames numériques, encres d’imprimante, dessin manuel) – et le slash: le fait de trancher/juxtaposer les formes venant de différentes dimensions pour composer ses dessins.

Chaque édition a une couverture unique sérigraphiée sur du papier Pantone Letraset par l’Atelier PPP et un texte critique-fiction de Mia Brion.

Goswell Road presents Fous Moi La Paix a book of drawings by multidisciplinary artist Vava Dudu. Vava made 37 exclusive drawings for the publication, which launched at Paris Ass Book Fair 2024 at Palais de Tokyo. The drawings are offset with her texts, poems and several images of her iconic clothing and accessories.

"The multidisciplinary artist Vava Dudu refuses to follow convention: she draws and writes poetry, makes clothes and accessories, and builds furniture and guitars. She asserts her position as an outsider in contemporary art by stating that she “prefers extremes to the middle ground.” Her work as an independent stylist goes hand in hand with her activity as a singer in La Chatte, an electro-zouk punk new wave band founded in 2013 with Stéphane Argillet and Nicolas Jorio, aka “Nikolu.” Her underground artistic world, which joyously combines text and image, is expressed through various media.

Vava Dudu was born in 1970 in Paris, where she lives and works."

Text from Lafayette Anticipations website