This Is Not A Love Song [Radio] #5 - M17 Ukraine

This Is Not A Love Song [Radio] builds on an existing field recording project by artists Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier titled This Is Not A Love Song (Sound Archive): 200 field recordings, 200 countries; a collection of the ambient sounds of major art institutions around the world, created through recordings from a global community of contributors. The project appropriates sound to critically study the ambience of institutional space.

Each episode is presented in two halves: the original field recordings from the first half of each episode (A-sides), and the second half of each episode (B-sides) is a sonic response by invited artists, curated by artist and musician Jack Prest.

These responses take the form of deconstructed, remixed or re-recorded versions of the original field recordings and explore ambient electronic, contemporary classical, noise and other musical/sound forms conceptually connected to the practice of field recording.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS: If you would like to contribute a field recording from an art institution to This Is Not A Love Song (Sound Archive), contact Joe and Chanelle at chanelle@chanellecollier.com

The artists would like to thank and acknowledge support from all contributing artists and arts workers who have offered recordings and advice.

The series is made in collaboration with Jack Prest.

A-Side Field Notes:
“This is the first recording in the project of an ‘empty’ museum. That is, a museum with no visitors. The staff kindly offered to make the recording on our behalf, and you can hear their solitary receding footsteps as the recording begins, to reveal an emptiness in which the museum itself becomes more present. The lack of human voices allowing it to breath. The regularity of the electrical, internal life force of the space comes forward and the muffled waves of traffic flows beyond its closed doors, like the deep, slow inhale/exhale of a sleeping giant.” - Chanelle Collier

B-Side Notes:
“Side B is a one take field-recording made in our art studio in Annandale, Sydney. An audio collage made from several museum field recordings layered over the M17 recording with distortions. Running through a basic mixer from a medley of devices: two record players; cassette deck; guitar and vocal effect loop pedals; also with a Bluetooth speaker; and playing through a guitar amp into the studio space; and recorded via digital Zoom Recorder. My direction for this B-side was a process based experimental play and improvisation. Conceptually finding satisfaction in the full circle idea that the museum had been a proxy studio in the making of the original field recordings and now have come home to my actual studio where the sounds can commingle and abandon there far flung site specificity into a trans-continental distortion.

From The Archive:

(THE RECORDING BODY):
The act of making a recording puts the body into a silent position, one that wants to be invisible. We attempt to omit the body breathing and shuffling and avoid interruption or drawing attention to the act. The Museum is the subject, rather than recording body. As one records over the course of fifteen minutes, the sounds of the museum become heightened to the ear which now begins to take in everything democratically, similarly to the way the microphone does. Without judgement. This creative act reframes the museum experience into a sonic experience, mediating the visual priority of such spaces. Listening then, is an act of disappearance.

(THE VIEWER AS LISTENER):
The Listener is an interesting form of the spectator in relation to the Museum and art gallery, it implies an audio reference rather than a visual one. The listener is an acoustically responsive subject. In a visual field the spectator is an intruder, evidenced by their conspicuous absence within the trope of an installation shot. Viewing is, in this context, a vanishing labour by a vanishing body. For a sound-based artwork the conception of the viewing body preferences the disembodied ear over the disembodied eye. Of course, the listener as a participant is also likely to be required to be silent, or at the very least, quiet.

Why must the viewer disappear and the listener be silent? This is an interesting question because it supposes that that an artwork should be understood discreetly, in isolation, separated from the world it occupies and those it shares space with. Certainly though, such an engagement requires participation. The participation is erased by denying the viewer or the listener their presence; in this way an artwork also becomes absent, unseen, unheard. - Joe Wilson

Sound Engineer for this episode: Ollie Brown.

Special thanks to Serhiy Popov for providing introductions and support, and to Eugenia Gavrilenko, Content Manager, M17 Contemporary Art Centre for facilitating and making this A-Side field recording, in addition to support for the larger project.

Tracklist

A SIDE
M17 Contemporary Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine Field Recording – recorded by Eugenia Gavrilenko, Content Manager, M17 Contemporary Art Centre.

Intermission – Field recording of Joe Wilson using beer vending machine artwork by sound artist Emeka Ogbo, in collaboration with BRLO, feat. “Art Beer #3: Things Fall Apart” at Galerie Konig, Berlin, 2019 – recorded by Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier
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B SIDE
Audio collage of museum field recordings and distortions - Joe Wilson