9:02 AM, eyes slightly unfocused, your mind on the day ahead with one ear listening to John Humphries sign off from Today, your attention is hijacked by a three minute aural installation. This was Open Air, a project funded by Artangel which worked in conjunction with BBC Radio 4 to stage a week long series of audio interventions from leading artists. Each of the five international artists took a different approach to the commission but all were concerned with how sound can be manipulated without an accompanying visual.
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Interestingly, the most successful soundscapes were the works by artists known for their film oeuvre. Christian Marclay, of The Clock fame – a 24-hour film which spliced together footage of timekeeping devices to correspond exactly with the audience’s own point in time – layered audio snippets taken directly from BBC Radio with an unsettling effect. Beginning with an unidentified voice, “Are you still there? I’ve lost you”, it seems as though there has been a mishap which, although laughable, is also very uncomfortable. Stuttering interviewees, competing points of view, faltering “ums” and “ahs” – Marclay creates a cacophony of voices which, in their persistent disruption, find an edge. It seems at various points that the mistake has been fixed and normal service will resume only to stumble again; Radio 4’s authority feels somehow instantly vulnerable.
Peter Strickland is also celebrated for his film work, his 2012 feature film Berberian Sound Studio was a masterclass in subtle horror which, as the title suggests, focussed on the line between fiction and reality; does that slitting sound come from an actual throat or a rotten cabbage? What passes in his Open Air is a corruption of a voice, of its verbal integrity, as it disintegrates into white noise and then seemingly descends underwater to a suspended calm. By simply multitracking a football commentator’s voice, Strickland shows how one sound can be manipulated to so many ends.
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American-born artist Susan Hiller also toys with how the authority of spoken word that radio reportage relies on can be manipulated, by the subconscious. Hiller’s past work has dealt with the paranormal – UFOs, dreams, near-death experience. She has explained that with this work she wanted to explore how we modify social behaviour through the subconscious. We are guided by a reporter’s voice through a landscape which is recognisable save for glittering red crystals adorning trees. The language is authoritative and informative but becomes gradually apparent it is fictional, the use of imperatives beautifully evoking the inexplicable compulsion of action in dreams. Our realisation is gradually unearthed and would be perfect, if Hiller had decided not to make it explicitly clear that is it designed to resemble a dream scenario. This lack of subtlety translates as a lack of faith in the audience’s imagination and here loses its magic.
Both Mark Wallinger and Ruth Ewan use either the spoken or written voice of children in their commissions. Wallinger creates works of social commentary, especially concerning himself with politics. His soundscape takes Oscar Wilde’s prologue to Dorian Gray as a riposte to the EBac propositions of Michael Gove, Education Secretary, and the sidelining of the arts within Gove’s favoured curriculum. Hearing the voice of a seven-year-old pronounce “all art is quite useless” refutes any political notion that art for art’s sake should be vilified and discouraged, especially in schools. The added context of Wallinger using the narrative of one of this country’s most accomplished and quoted wordsmiths cannot fall on deaf ears.
Ewan’s piece has a much more utopian feel to it composed as it is from the hopes and wishes of school children. Playing with the authority of voice – a common theme throughout the week’s works – the journalist John Tuscher unfurls a picture of a future world through the medium of received pronunciation:
“There is no poverty and no disease… There are no borders…we can all be together. There are no schools but we are all educated…There is no government…no weapons, no violence…Everyone has an equal amount of everything…The world is magic.”
Sometimes words can just speak for themselves.
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OURS IS THE WORLD, ink on paper, 2006, rights of Ruth Ewan
Some playful and some unnerving, but universally thought provoking, this commission is one of the most exciting collaborative funding projects for public art of recent times. By doing away with the monument and the white cube and embracing a truly public platform has transformed the way that art can be accessed and defined.
It would be absurd to say this type of work is vital but such projects deserve a second thought. After all, as said in Marclay’s soundscape:
Art is the only thing that can set you free.
All the snippets are available to listen to on the Artangel website, while BBC iPlayer houses an omnibus version, including artist interviews, which is permanently available.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
