To hear on Sunday 3, 10 and 17 June 2018, 2pm - 9pm:
by Cathy Lane
Curator, loudspeaker installation: Knut Remond
Cathy Lane on 'Am I Here?':
We hear sound from all around us and are always at the centre of what we hear, however within field recording the dominant way of portraying that listening is as if the world is outside and separated from the field recordist. This arguably romantic hearing of the world separates out and ignores people, and in particular the recordist – as if they are not part of this sounding world that we hear and study through recording.
‘Am I Here?’ questions this absence and the nature of a recording and the various degrees of embodied or disembodied presence in a recorded artefact. It challenges the commonly held belief that field recordings are an ‘objective document’ and reasserts the inability of the recordist to escape their own physical and subjective presence as well as their effect on the world that they record.
Cathy Lane’s sound work ‘Am I Here?’ is a playful exploration of how the concept of ‘Be Here Now’ translates to recorded sound. The work takes the listener on a journey through time and space – from sounds of the stone carvers of Mamallapuram, the Bangalore laundry ghats and the temple of Madurai in South India through the glacial lagoons of Iceland to birdsong in a domestic garden in inner London stopping off in Chile, Italy, Norway and Scotland along the way. These field recordings have been made at different times over the last decade and often feature the composer’s voice commentating on what she can see or hear.
Thanks to Maya Lane, Chloé Locatelli and Salomé Voegelin for translating my words and lending their voices to mine.
Cathy Lane is a composer, sound artist and academic. Her work uses spoken word, field recordings and archive material to explore aspects of our listening relationship with each other and the multiverse. She is currently focused on how sound relates to the past, our histories, environment and our collective and individual memories from a feminist perspective.
Cathy is Professor of Sound Arts at University of the Arts London and co-director of CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice), University of the Arts London.
Audio Field Report no. 16 (August 2014): Interview with Cathy Lane by Knut Remond. Limited Edition Audio cassette, 8 copies numbered. Available at 'ohrenhoch - the Noise Shop'. All 'Audio Field Reports' can be heard on headphone in the ohrenhoch archive space.
Website Cathy Lane