Antje Vowinckel by Mark Vernon and Barry Burns
Listen in the dark to a 40-minute sound portrait focused on the musicality of language and urban noises.
The beauty of this collage inspires optimism. Echos from sound archives unfold their full diversity in times of crisis and deceleration. The work is a collaboration by
Mark Vernon and
Barry Burns – experimental musicians, sound artists, radio producers and co-managers of Glasgow’s art radio station Radiophrenia – and the Berlin-based sound and radio artist
Antje Vowinckel.
The 2020 sound portrait was created as part of the Counterflows Festival and in the midst of the global pandemic, and was only available online. We are therefore delighted to be able to present the portrait in our Outhouse as part of our anniversary celebrations, with the atmospheric setting enhancing the fabulous audio art.
The project began with a series of questions and actions devised by Vernon and Burns for Vowinckel to respond to remotely from her home in Berlin. These consisted of queries about her practice and relationship with sound and music, requests for descriptions and recordings of her immediate sound environment, domestic chores, singing, lists, sound memories and an analysis of the qualities of her own voice. The resultant material was combined with extracts of Vowinckel’s work and excerpts from field recordings and other compositions by all three artists. The eccentric approach in the resultant audio collage is not intended as an accurate portrait of Vowinckel, more as an impressionistic overview with interventions and twists on the conventional form: thoughts and meditations on the act of purposeful listening and sound creation.
The raw material provided by Vowinckel was cut up, processed, manipulated and recontextualised by Vernon and Burns. The piece, with its playful approach to assemblage and composition, combines the personalities and working methods of all three artists. As such, it functions as an introduction and a short trailer for what this new collaboration might produce next year.
The sound portrait will start on the hour and beginning at 1pm on 28.10.
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