This Is Not A Love Song [Radio] #1 - Tate Modern England
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 first episode starts our programme with an art museum local to Resonance Extra, The Tate Modern in London. It was recorded by us personally in the Rothko Room on the 8th October 2019.
What is special about this recording is that it picks up the quiet, meditative quality of the barely lit, chapel-like chamber dedicated to Rothko at the Tate. It also brings to mind the experience of the invigilator in museum spaces, the effort and attention required to sit or stand vigil quietly, and be occupied in the act of observing, while also occupying the institutional space with the personal body” - Chanelle Collier.
B-Side Notes
“Listening to the field recording I was attracted to the electronic hum underlying the recording, this made me think about the frequencies that surround our environments in an imperceptible way. Frequencies that the human ear would tune out as background noise or may not be able to hear at all. What happens when these frequencies are exaggerated and brought to the foreground? The bass drone that underlies this piece is simply a filtered version of the original field recording with no additional synthesis. The piece begins with the unfiltered recording and slowly transitions to the filtered drone. I then used smaller sections of the recordings to create a journey across the 13 odd minutes of the drone as a reminder that in spite of its otherworldly feel this piece is very much terrestrial." - Jack Prest.
From the Archive: Introduction To The Larger Lovesong Project By Joe Wilson And Chanelle Collier.
This Is Not A Love Song (Sound Archive) is an ongoing project to make a recording in a major art museum in every country of the world, where the entire archive represents 200 countries and 200 museums. The archive is to be presented as a 12” 33rpm vinyl record collection and additionally as an online digital resource. The project is made possible by a growing cohort of contributors.
The first phase of the project gathered recordings from Institutions such as the Tate Modern in London, Louvre in Paris, Guggenheim in Bilboa; additional recordings were made in Berlin and Kiev. Ideally field recordings were and are made in the largest exhibition hall of each space.
This project centres on individuals in an encounter with the institution, using sound as a representation of that relationship. This approach references and is aware of a conditional power balance between individuals and institutions. While expectedly hierarchical, the process and methodology of creating this encounter has revealed a rhizomatic interaction between subjective bodies; as the institution itself is made up of individuals working within a larger structure.
Recordings are made using a small handheld recorder for 15 minute periods that correspond to a single side of a 12” 33RPM vinyl record. To make the recordings, the artists/contributors stands or sits, they are careful to avoid recording the sound of their own bodies, and also to avoid recording the sound of any other exhibiting artist’s work, including kinetic work.
The entire 200+ recordings on vinyl will form the This Is Not A Love Song [Sound Archive] as an individual installation. A listening station with the records on a display shelf; an amplifier, player, and speakers; and seat.
The project collects sounds belonging to specific locations remote from each other and brings them into a local and singular context of the archive artwork. The physical distance between each institution is significant to any one person’s ability to feasibly reach each destination. The distance plays no small part in determining how accessible these spaces are. Each recording is an indexical tether and trace belonging to the site in which it was made. By collecting the recordings into a single installation and archive, the remoteness of each location is brought into a viable access point within an exhibition opportunity. The archive is made to be reproducible and thus able to travel simultaneously to multiple sites and audiences as an exhibition artwork for a collection or showing.
Australian regional galleries are being considered as exhibition venues for the project as these locations and audiences are geographically distanced from other institutional centres around the world.
This project was officially launched in August 2019 at COMA in Sydney, Australia, with a solo exhibition featuring the first and undisclosed recording of a Museum. As an undisclosed site, the recording acted as a proxy for the future archive, standing in as a universal soundscape of the institution. The recording was displayed via a site-specific visual-audio. The exhibition commenced in concert with the beginning of a residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, running from the beginning of August until the end of October.
During the residency, recordings were made in European institutions; in addition to developing a network of artists, writers and curators who have committed to contribute to the project remotely. Contributors are given a How-To via written instructions and in person dialogue. With 300 studios and more than 50 partnering countries supporting music, theatre, art, literature, architecture and design the Cité des Arts residency was an ideal platform to meet artists of diverse nationalities to facilitate the larger ambition of recording all around the world.
The project will continue in 2022 with a focus on the US and Canada under the Vermont Studio Centre Fellowship program.
Individual vinyls will be made available to the institutions whose spaces were the subject of a recording. Anywhere that contact is made pre-empts an ongoing process of communications that entail permissions, review, and credit.
CONCEPT:
This Is Not A Love Song (Sound Archive) appropriates sound to critically study the ambience of institutional space and individual relationships to the institution by approaching it in the making of an artwork. It was initiated by a curiosity as to whether there is a global audio aesthetic associated with institutions’ scale of architecture and complexity of inter-relational systems. Three key ideas inform the work, Permission, Access and Labour.
The idea of Permission is explored through the administration of contacting museums and managing the relationship with all the contributors to the project. The idea of Access is highlighted by the geographical distance between museums. The idea of Labour is embodied by the individuals that work with museums and this includes visitors.
The initial conceptualisation of this work was to bring the large institutional scale into the smaller commercial gallery, at COMA. At a basic level, the aim was to have a museum scaled show in a domestic scaled commercial gallery space; borrowing the grandeur of the Museum’s acoustic prestige.
The process of the project is informed by a series of written Anticipations that critically approach the relationship between artist, viewer, and institution, to examine ideas of access, permission, and labour. Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier focus their interest in labour types by bringing together the large scale of institutional architecture and the personal labour of the invigilator (gallery attendant/guard).
A key inspiration to the project came from visiting the MMK Frankfurt, in 2018, featuring a Cady Noland solo exhibition. In each of the rooms of this prestigious space, minimal small and large-scale artworks were displayed, and every room was guarded by a gallery attendant. Because the gallery was vast and almost empty, the resulting effect presented a single installation object/s coupled with a person (the attendant) and their chair. Object and invigilator made up the visual field together. This highlighted the presence of the viewing body, and the relationship between a human scaled body and the architecture of the institutional body that framed the works of art.
"Broadly the work examines the relationship between subjective bodies. Between the Museum and artists, visitors, and staff." - Joe Wilson
Tracklist
A SIDE
Tate Modern London Field Recording - recorded by Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier
Credit: Tate Modern.
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Intermission - Recording of Tate Modern Phone Message - Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier
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B SIDE
Tate Modern London Field Recording (Temporal Adjustment) - Jack Prest