Intermediary Spaces (2nd edition)

Going Out explores the relationship between walking, listening, and soundmaking in the arts – from the first soundwalks and itinerant performances in the 1960s to today’s manifold ambulatory projects. The book consists of an extensive essay by Elena Biserna followed by an anthology of 51 historical and contemporary contributions in the form of documentation, essays, interviews, manifestos, scores, narratives and reflections.

Essay by Elena Biserna.

Contributions by Max Neuhaus, Willem de Ridder, William Levy, Collective Actions Group, David Helbich, Janet Cardiff, Jacek Smolicki, Carolyn Chen, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Hildegard Westerkamp, Albert Mayr, Tim Ingold, Akio Suzuki, katrinem, Beatrice Ferrara & Leandro Pisano, Catherine Clover, AM Kanngieser, Gascia Ouzounian & Sarah Lappin, Ultra-red, Vivian Caccuri, Stefan Szczelkun, LIGNA, Edyta Jarząb, Oupa Sibeko, Brian Hioe, Brandon LaBelle, Adrian Piper, Andra McCartney & Sandra Gabriele, Amanda Gutiérrez, Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Stephanie Springgay, Carmen Papalia, Christine Sun Kim, Charles Eppley, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Viv Corringham, BNA-BBOT, Ella Parry-Davies & Ann, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Gwenola Wagon & Stéphane Degoutin, Eleni Ikoniadou, Justin Bennett, Christina Kubisch & Christoph Cox, RYBN, Alisa Oleva, Naomi Waltham-Smith, Anna Raimondo, Libby Harward.

‘I am concerned with the power of sound! and what it can do to the body and the mind,’ wrote composer Pauline Oliveros. In the body, histories and politics come together with sound and listening, memory and feeling. Bodies of Sound offers a resonant exploration of feminist sonic cultures and radical listening in over fifty contributions. In this book of echoes, a variety of forms – from essays to text scores to art, fiction and memoir – speak across gender, ways of knowing, witnessing, sounding and voicing, translation, displacement, violence and peace.

With contributions from: 

Sara Ahmed, Ximena Alarcón, Svetlana Alexievich, Ain Bailey & Frances Morgan, Anna Barham, Xenia Benivolski, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson & Kite, Elena Biserna, Karen Barad & Black Quantum Futurism, Anne Bourne, Daniela Cascella, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maria Chávez, Don Mee Choi, Carson Cole Arthur, Petero Kalulé & AM Kanngieser, Lindsay Cooper, Julia Eckhardt, Lucia Farinati & Claudia Firth, Ella Finer, Annie Goh, Louise Gray, Christina Hazboun, Johanna Hedva, Sarah Hennies, Tomoko Hojo, IONE, Lee Ingleton, Hannah Catherine Jones, Christine Sun Kim, Nat Lall, Cathy Lane, Jeanne Lee & Lona Foote, Marysia Lewandowska, Annea Lockwood & Jennifer Lucy Allan, Cannach MacBride, Elaine Mitchener & Hannah Kendall, Alison O'Daniel, Naomi Okabe, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Gascia Ouzounian, Holly Pester, Roy Claire Potter, Anna Raimondo, Tara Rodgers, Aura Satz & Barbara London, Shortwave Collective, Sisters of the Order of Celestial Nephology, Sop, Syma Tariq, Marie Thompson, Trinh T. Minh-ha & Stoffel Debuysere, Salomé Voegelin

The point of departure for the book «Black Ark» with Lee “Scratch” Perry (1936–2021), a Jamaican musical and visual artist who was based in Switzerland, is a detailed inventory of photographs and writings (Spring 2021) from the Black Ark Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, where Lee produced his music from 1973 on. He was a seminal pioneer of dub, an electronic subgenre of reggae that uses sampling, looping, remixing, reverb and echoes to create new songs as well as rework  and appropriate pre-recorded songs and tracks.

Black Ark Studios was one of the cradles of dub. It’s also where Lee “Scratch” Perry’s musical approach found an enduring visual counterpart in the form of continuously evolving mural paintings and drawings  as well as shape-shifting assemblages of records, instruments, found objects, posters, newspaper and magazine clippings, and appropriated books. The artworks form actual layers upon layers that are rhizomatically intertwined with the studio building itself  as well as with the furniture inside—and with Perry’s biography and persona.

Perry created his very own, dense and eclectic world—a world that is documented in «Black Ark», before it disappears for good: the premises have recently been sold. The photographic documentation of the studio was supplemented by efforts to secure and preserve Perry’s cultural objects as part of a joint project with various cultural institutions.

«Black Ark» which reflects the rhythm and layering effects of collage both in its content and the materials used to craft the book. Perry was involved in the conception of the book in its early stages. It also interweaves various media and chronologies. The new photographs of the Black Ark Studios will be juxtaposed with stills from old documentaries and archival photos.

The idea of a “house” serves as both a working hypothesis and a metaphor. It will be the starting point and endpoint of various thematic strands, both visual and textual: for example, the book will explore the Black Ark as a “spiritual yard” in the context of African diaspora, as well as looking into archeomusicological aspects. Furthermore, extended captions by Perry’s biographer will provide the backdrop for a kaleidoscopic panorama of Perry’s eclectic and ingenious work.

STW, your favourite station! functioneert als een radioprogramma. Een boek dat lyrisch proza uitzendt van We make stuff up for a living (een CV medley) tot COMPUTER_SONG, een ceremoniële quiz met Adult Hood & Young als protagonisten, een grillige anekdote van iemand die zich ergert aan een Call Service, en meer! Thanks for tuning in!

Though his years in the New York free-jazz scene of the sixties cemented his reputation as "one of the most forceful and convincing composers and soloists in his field," saxophonist Sonny Simmons (1933–2021) was nearly forgotten by the '80s, which found him broke, heavily dependent on drugs and alcohol, and separated from his wife and kids. "I played on the streets from 1980 to 1994, 365 days a year," Simmons tells jazz historian and biographer Marc Chaloin. "I would go to North Beach, and I'd sleep in the park. The word got around town that Sonny is a junkie, really strung out."

The resurrection of Simmons' career―upon the release of his critically acclaimed Ancient Ritual (Qwest Records) in 1994―has become a modern legend of the genre. In the last two decades of his musical career, Simmons broke through to a new echelon of recognition, joining the pantheon of great innovators and masters of the music. But to this day he remains an undersung figure. Here, in the first ever book dedicated to his life, Simmons recounts his childhood in the backwoods of Louisiana, his adolescence in the burgeoning Bay Area jazz scene and his star-studded life in New York playing alongside the greats.

Entirely comprised of poems contained in her latest collection, 2016’s Certain Magical Acts, Live in Seattle elucidates why Alice Notley is one of the world’s most revered poets, the recipient of the Los Angeles TimesBook Award, the Griffin Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lenore Marshall Prize, and the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Prize. “I am alive outside written memory” is how one of the speakers of Notley’s poem “Voices” puts it and listening to the poet read her work live, in front of an entranced audience, serves to detail the intangibility of sound vis-à-vis language.

Live in Seattle also includes excerpts of the onstage conversation Notley had with Seattle poets John Marshall, Christine Deavel and Rebecca Hoogs. Among other topics, the talk revolves around concepts of success, what it means to write a female poetry circa 2017, and the importance of always creating from a position of disobedience.

As part of Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Poetry Series, Live in Seattle was recorded at McCaw Hall in Seattle, Washington on Wednesday, April 5th, 2017 and mastered and engineered by Gus Elg at Sky Onion in Portland, Oregon in the Summer of 2017. 

Purchase of Live in Seattle includes a 11×11 insert of Notley’s poem “FOUND WORK (lost lace),” as well as a download card for the entire album. Live in Seattle can also be found digitally on Spotify and Bandcamp. The record itself is not black but clear.

Proposed by Chris Evans, Sudden Wealth is a collaboration with Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Graham Kelly and invited poets and artists who use spoken word as their medium. 

Sudden Wealth looks to how the flux of subjectivity in language can be shaped, agitated and re-imagined through a triangulation between written composition, intonation, and extrinsic sound composition. The latter spans analogue and digital instrumentation, foley recordings and algorithmically derived musical patterns. Divergent methods of composition work on and into a voice, modelling intonation, and affecting its sense and intent. 

This first iteration has been made with Roy Claire Potter, an artist who tells stories from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings. A rapid vocal delivery, a sense of restricted or partial views of space, complex social and group dynamics and the aftermath of violent events are recurrent strands of Potter’s writing, which are often delivered with a dark and sometimes wilful humour. 

Chris Evans was the bassist with the now defunct Life Without Buildings and has previously produced musical compositions with Morten Norbye Halvorsen together with farmers and accountants for his ongoing series ‘Jingle’. Graham Kelly joins Evans and Halvorsen for this present series, Sudden Wealth.

Vocals: Roy Claire Potter.
Electronics: Morten Norbye Halvorsen.
Bass: Chris Evans.
Guitar: Graham Kelly.
Arranged and mixed by Morten Norbye Halvorsen.