Portfolio WEEK9 Shenece Oretha #Ins Element1&2

copied from sessions: sharing a text in sound art series

Wislawa symborska fro the tower of BABEL Oh yes, I’m so happy;
all I need is a little bell round my neck
to jingle over you while you’re asleep.”
“Didn’t you hear the storm? The north wind shook
the walls; the tower gate, like a lion’s maw,
yawned on its creaking hinges.” “How could you
forget?

‘Sensory history’,
“Music continually intervenes, uninvited, as the legitimate site and standard of (aurally mediated) art and crowds out all sorts of other sound.”

(From our session)

Shenece Oretha (b. Montserrat) is a multidisciplinary artist currently listening from London. Her practice is invested in the mobilising potential of sound enacted through her sound sculptures, multi-channel installations, poetry, workshops and print. I think she is the best one among all the visiting practitioners I have had this semester (not sure how many are rest of them).

Oretha’s installation at/Tribute is a tribute to M. NourbeSe Philip’s book-length poem Zong! Commissioned for the ICA theatre for the convening Strange Echoes, at/Tribute is a multi-vocal reading of this seminal text. Within this new work, Zong! Is performed across multiple channels of sound and light. Shenece Oretha describes the resulting sound as ‘a polyphonic chorus, chant, song, lament, ritual, wake, memorial, tribute, tribulation and celebration’. I liked this work with experimental voices, it embodied the emotion with stunning lights at the same time. Very cozy.

Dearly Beloved (a four-part recital for deeply loved flesh)

4 speaker bodies, 4 speaker stands, Brass tambourine jingles , Black vinyl string and air.

December 2019, Espace Arlaud for Les Urbaines 2019

A sculptural sound work dedicated to the late Toni Morrison. Within this work Oretha negotiates the question what is it to be moved by what you hear. Starting with a passage from Toni Morrison’s Beloved: “Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.“ Within this work she explores the physicality and affect of sound with the help of speakers conceived both as body and instrument. I found a lot of her work were testing the possibility of putting speakers through a creative challenge. Looking through the sketches and all the way towards the end, it was very inspiring that she had a art and design background and made the ‘dream’ became the real thing.

Her work who can’t hear must feel has a great impact on my element 2. The way she is using 50 voices across 10 speakers is very inspiring and it does not let me feel overcrowded. It is also interesting that she is becoming the voice collector rather than the technician who holds the microphone and record it carefully. She has made the work more accessible in a way and then designed it into 10 speakers was interesting. This project was initiated by finding a lost voice note of a deceased family member that prompted  the idea that recordings act as a memory of voice, place and time. I was initially finding a bit lost in my second piece as I thought it might be a bit too broad (as it didn’t focus on a small group) in drifting cassettes over the world. After looking at her outcome and the process collecting from an array of people from different localities and identities, most known to Shenece but some unknown who sought to also contribute their voices and stories, I thought its ok and I thought the sound would bring the emotion and identity there.

Inspired from her ideas shifting from a painter, sculpture to an artist who digs into multichannel, it inspires my element 1 to keep putting my fine art ideas and thoughts in the work. It’s fine to consider the sonic perspective in the end. And art is a way of being. I found a lot of sound art work was more sorts of cold and scientific, which made me a bit hesitated to think I am in ‘sound art’ this field. I found her work is very inspiring and kind, in a way she had a similar background as me, put her creative drawings and calligraphy in to sonic field with passion and emotion.