In 2020 I began a conversation with the composer Jack MacNeill of the propellor ensemble. He was interested in the work I had been doing in the field of acoustic ecology and the sound arts, particularly my community engaged approach, my focus on excluded voices, and the way I created outputs from performances, to installations and publications, in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. These conversations struck a real chord, as they allowed me to begin to explore the personal impact the research had on my everyday life. Sometimes to explore difficult topics you step a little outside yourself, perhaps as a coping mechanism. To have such a long and deep conversation allowed for a form of self reflection, and over the course of the past two years, I have placed these thoughts into the performances that Jack and the Propeller Ensemble have created and for which I have been invited to perform alongside with the absolutely amazing ecologist and ornithologist Mark Cocker. So in July this year I performed alongside Mark, Jack and two additional performers from the Ensemble at the Hebden Bridge Festival Open Space 70.We performed together last year at Lancaster Arts, but this felt like an evolution and refinement of how we collaborate on stage. All of this stems from the podcast series Jack created as a result of conversations with a variety of arts, ecologists and theorists, and they are a staggering creation that can be accessed here.
Below is a series of snapshots from that performance, listen through or skip through, but its a lovely piece to watch or listen to.
On the 24th of October the performance Women in Space took place in the Edinburgh Sculpture Court at Edinburgh University. This piece co-designed by myself, Sophia Lycouris and Isabel Nogueira involved bringing a selection of women together, artists, performers and theorists, to occupy a space shaped by patriarchy and colonialism. Our performance was inspired by an ideal to bring only the voices, sounds, bodies and text of women into the space. It was part planned, using text to inspire action and activity, and interpretive, to allow these actions to encourage others. Our performance also focused on the gaze, instead of being observed as performers, we reached out to our audience, spoke to them, encouraged them to participate, and we looked at and spoke to each other.
This performance followed from a visit and talk given by Prof Isabel Nogueira at the School of Art, Edinburgh University. She discussed the role of gender within Brazil in shaping women’s relationship to performance, music and technology. She also spoke of the exclusion of women of colour and ethnic groups of Latin America and the work she has done on gender and performance. I have worked with Isabel on a number of projects in Brazil and was incredibly excited to create this performance in Brazil. Women participatring included other lecturers from the university, PhD and postgrad students from the school of art and the school of art history. To watch a section of the performance take a look at the vimeo link.
In the evening we performed a new work generated by text performed by the attendees of the sound camp and collected objects.
After a brief introduction to acoustic ecology and listening methods each participant was given a listening meditation (meditation and composition). They brought this on their walks through the reserve. Later, we recorded their texts and a series of sound performances they created with materials they collected as part of the listening meditation and object collection. These were incorporated into a live coded and 3d graphic score performance, see image above.
This performance was broadcast online and performed at the London sound camp. We will have sound and images of the evenings performance to follow.
The HIDDEN immersive theatre performance launches this evening at The Horsefall in Manchester. The play written by Tom Bowtell and directed by Annette Mees explores the world of young carers.
I was hired as the sound designer for this production and found the whole process incredibly exciting. I worked with Tony Doyle to create a spatial audio mix for this performance.
You move through three floors of interactive engagement with sound, lighting and characters, experiencing worlds within worlds as you debate the potential of machines to replace carers in the future. This play asks a lot of questions about the ethics of caring and whose job it is to be responsible for disabled or mentally ill family members. A really exciting project.
Another interesting addition to this production is the use of the LiveShout application to broadcast one world of this play, the world of the carers as they monitor the journey of the audience. In this performance, it is their responsibility to ask what choices you made that concern their experience and commitment to caring. I spent several weeks working with the young carers exploring sound design and the use of applications for performance, an element of this is located online through LiveShout.
To listen in to this go to the Locus Sonus website and find the HIDDEN project at 7pm each evening in Manchester. The play runs from the 1st of February to the 11th, except Sundays. There you can earwitness this space with the teens.
Reef (Arrecife) is a series of concerts, a monthly meeting which invites various groups or researchers of Madrid to present their careers within the field of experimental sound in their different facets: contemporary music, experimental electronics, alternative music and sound art. Each of these researchers, in turn, creates a concert by selecting a person who supports their practice and research. Arrecife lays the foundations for a broad, and heterodoxical process of research to germinate through critical listening experiences.
On the 11th of January 2017 the artist and performer Linda O Keeffe was selected by the artist and researcher Maria Andueza to develop and perform a new body of work which would be performed at CentroCentro Cibeles de Cultura y Ciudadanía Plaza de Cibeles in Madrid. Select link for info.
This was the beautiful interior and exterior space of the concert hall.
Info translation
Linda O’Keeffe presents Score for her and My voice is still lost. Currently residing in Lancaster (UK), she is an artist and teacher of sound art. Performs installations, performances and studies on the sound landscape. Founder of Women in Sound Women on Sound, publisher of the publication Interference and president of the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association.
María Andueza Olmedo (https://mariaandueza.org) is an artist and researcher. She works at the intersection of public art and sound creation. Olmeda has a PhD from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, she is a university professor and part of the RRS Radio team at the Reina Sofía Museum. Since 2013 he coordinates the Augmented Spatiality project.
I was invited by Prof Mark Joyce, a great teacher from my undergrad of many years ago, to work with a collection of amazing students for the Urban Studies Conference at NUS Yale University Singapore. Over three days we explored listening to the urban, acoustic ecology, class and gender in sound, recording, composing and performing the soundscape of place and creating a combination graphic score and sound map. The workshop culminated in their performing a graphic score, through voice, then bringing their voices into a granular synthesis application on an iPad and improvising together. So chuffed at what they accomplished over such a short period. I have a sample of their performance and images below for listening. If your browser won’t access the Soundcloud file just link directly to Soundcloud from the window below.
