Successful AER applicant, Beth Robertson, shares letter of motivation for the NAHR: Narture, Art and Habitat Residency, Italy
- Written byPost-Grad Community
- Published date 25 April 2023
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Beth Robertson, MA Sound Arts student from London College of Communication has been selected for the AER residency at NAHR: Nature, Art and Habitat Residency, an established residency programme based in Bergamo, Italy.
Set up by Professor Lucy Orta UAL Chair of Art for the Environment - Centre for Sustainable Fashion in 2015, The Art for the Environment International Artist Residency Programme (AER) provides UAL graduates with the exceptional opportunity to apply for short residencies at one of our internationally renowned host institutions, to explore concerns that define the 21st century – biodiversity, environmental sustainability, social economy, and human rights.
Read Beth's successful proposal
My practise traverses boundaries of sound, ecology and geography in an interdisciplinary investigation into the testimonies of the more-than-human. By using field recordings and experimenting with playful interactive mediums of listening, my work challenges the way in which we interact with the world in, amongst and around us.
Through my work I consider space as an entangled interrelation of things and beings and as a continuous process of becoming and reconfiguring, constituted by multiple identities. My graduate show at LCC ‘con-crete’ explored the queer identities of Dilston Grove Gallery through the intra-actional testimonies and topographies of building materials, local birds, mushrooms and more. Participants were invited to pick up old telephone receivers and listen to the more-thanhuman assemblages entangled in Dilston Grove Gallery. Each phone had a corresponding chapter in the Re-directory, an accompanying phonebook in which the listener could read about the stories behind each sound. The Re-directory was then self-published as a sound map of the local area.
The aim of my work is to follow the ghosts and unsettle the silences of the Anthropocene. I encourage participants to approach the sounds of the unheard as voices with stories to tell, therefore the medium of listening is an important aspect of my work as it can cultivate an intent to listen. The telephone receivers in con-crete created an anticipation of a conversation or a voice at the other end of the line. For the ‘Earth Quest’ event at the Barbican, I collaborated with another sound artist, Finbar Prior, on an installation called ‘Table at Terrapolis’ where stethoscopes were used as the medium for listening in order to cultivate a sense of care. The multi-media installation invited participants to sit by a table of moss and listen through stethoscopes to the sounds of the microbiomes in their gut and the delicate textured sounds of touching the moss itself. As participants sit around the table, they listen as the living beings both within and around them form a community of inter-species symbiosis. The installation celebrates that humans are hybrids and cannot exist without our more-than-human collaborators, our kin. The table sat at least four people and the sounds were amplified through speakers at either end, this is an intimate example of collective listening as participants performed their bodies as sites of sonic collaboration.
The MA Sound Arts course has inspired me to explore collective listening as a form of activism, learning to tune in and amplify human and more-than-human voices that are silenced by capitalist, colonial and patriarchal ways of beings. ‘Others’ was a project inspired by the her noise archive in which I hosted two workshops designed for people who are often other-ed in the music industry. The workshop invited a group of female-identifying and non-binary people to participate in a sonic meditation, then experiment with an instrument they were unfamiliar with and together create an improvisation. Our western values are built around a singular gender, if we can even attempt to create spaces made for the multiple, the other-ed and the cultivation of difference then I believe it is an act of queer feminist rebellion.
In 2019 the World Health Organisation recognised noise pollution as one of the biggest environmental health risks in Western Europe. This is especially prevalent in large cities. The voices of our companion species are being drowned out by mass industrial noise, causing fertility problems and stress related health issues, this is a violent act against ourselves and our environment. Through site-specific research I can investigate the many voices being silenced by noise pollution, but also look towards sound as a healing device for the stress of the urban sonic and cultivate spaces in which listening is an activist stance against the destruction of our ecosystem.
As sound moves through the air it draws our attention to the spaces in between, moments when one thing becomes another and where place identity folds in on itself. Both noise and silence makes audible the liminal spaces that air occupies and sonifies the slow changes that might otherwise be imperceivable. For NAHR I propose a sonic topography of the slow changing and quieting breath of our more-than-human soundscapes as the air is polluted with noise, a consideration of how climate change is audible in our everyday lives if we explore new ways of listening.
The concept for each sound piece is to begin with intimate soundscapes of the local area, beneath the soil, inside a river, a conversation between birds, and with the use of a slow crossfade introduce the sounds that are drowning them out, traffic, planes, industrial sounds, drilling until the original voices can no longer be heard. Each piece will begin and end with silence. Each changing soundscape will be accompanied by a visual deep listening score that advises participants on how to actively engage in conversation with the more-than-human voices, allows them to read about the changes in our environment and look at photographs of the chosen sites. With support this project can evolve beyond this residency as a local sound map and archivable research documentation of the slow changes in the sonic environment parallel to the changes in air pollution.
This is an inter-disciplinary project that will explore the impact of atmospheric changes and air pollution on biodiversity and the haunting affects this has on the soundscapes of Val Taleggio. I believe my artistic goals are aligned with that of NAHR and that my work would contribute to the residency. I am an activist trained in geographical field work with the ability to conduct high quality field recording whilst occupying awareness of different positionalities and perspectives. In my field I have often had to navigate male dominated environments as a queer female-identifying body, this has given me a passion for re-telling stories from other-ed perspectives. I have cultivated a technique towards encountering sites and would benefit greatly from the opportunity to develop this artistic approach in a site-specific residency that encourages activism through art and post-humanist frameworks.
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