DisplacementActivities

Everything is undergoing some form of displacement: we know this. The unending procession of human displacement through war and/or ecocide shades our understanding. Our own mortal journey edging towards darkness or light might be ignored, by chance or design. Our social, personal, physical and spiritual fabrics echo one another and mirror material displacements, rising and falling, growing and disintegrating in water or flame. Decisions must be made with little or no time to measure consequences. A case of improvisation with positive intent. This might not work, but…

My main modes of practice have always oscillated between sound/music, text/image and performance. These modes are usually combined, glued together by various notions or symbols. Beneath these, walking has become a constant and productive inspiration. Around 1999, I began to focus on location-based ambulant sound as a form of memory, and this shaped much of my subsequent activity.

The latest ongoing experiment along these lines, is literally along lines: Magnet Opus, which traces global and local geomagnetic intensities, using measurement data to configure sound in relation to the declination of magnetic north and the Sun’s cyclic output of heliospheric plasma. Magnet Opus developed from The Barrow Alignment, a collaboration with Jonathan Lindh, sponsored by Full of Noises(FoN). The initial work resulted in an Arts Council England DYCP grant that enabled me to explore geomagnetism and ambisonics here.

Sound penetrates deeply while remaining fleeting. Periodic ritual walking heightens our awareness of Deep Time as an infinitesimal process experienced constantly, yet largely unnoticed. Ultimately, an openness to small variations within a vast ongoing improvisation is all we have.