Consumed by Sound: Open Frame by Room40
This March we celebrated forty years since the release of Music For Airports, Brian Eno’s seminal album which formalised the concept of ambient music. Looking back on this release and the many paths that ambient music has taken over the preceding four decades, Lawrence English, founder of Brisbane record label Room40 and artist and performer himself, noted that Music for Airports “proposed a new way of approaching music, not as something to whistle or sing along to, but to be gently consumed by.” Continuing in this tradition, but also questioning the very precepts that have emerged to define it, English has curated the mini festival Open Frame, which will consume and be consumed by Carriageworks on June 28 and 29.
Avoiding the term ‘ambient’ which, English describes, has been over used but under-theorised, English describes the festival as a much more sensory experience, “for me something like Open Frame is this very extreme focus on listening. The priority is on the potential of the sonic affect of the work.”
This approach sees the return of New York-based artist William Basinski, best known for his work The Disintegration Loops which is constructed from decaying tape loops set to the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Pan Daijing, who draws upon include 1980s industrial music and field recordings in temples, also exemplifies this approach of composing music with a focus on its sensory affect, something that English has curatorially coalesced in this year’s theme of intensity.
“I've had this idea of intensity and by that I mean when we think about intensity it's not a singular expression by any means — you have intense pleasure, intense pain, intense excitement, intense boredom — but it's this articulation point. For me all of the artists in various ways have this intense relationship with the kinds of sonic affect that an audience experiences during their performance.”
Part of this sonic affect comes from the specific nature of the site where Open Frame will occur. Taking place within Carriageworks contributes certain resonances that influence both the performers and the audience.
The work that artists such as Drew McDowall, whose music is characterised by low frequency electronic pulses, and pianist Charlemagne Palestine will perform is as much a product of the instruments they work with as the venue in which the music is performed. As English notes, “the way that the sound works in the space is kind of central to the possibility of what's available to them as performers.”
The positionality of the audience within this interaction then comes into play. What many of the pieces that will be performed by these artists will do is attempt to aurally and viscerally communicate the feeling of listening, which in turn requires the audience to become part of the music itself.
English summarises this relationship as “this sort of triangulation almost of the artist and the producer of the sound, the space in which that exists and the audience that is receiving it.”
Part of the purpose of Open Frame this year is to combine the works of emerging and senior artists into one forum. On June 28 Cat Hope will perform the world premiere of Eliane Radigue’s piece Occam XXIV. Radigue, who is now 86, is one of a generation of early pioneers of electronic music but who has continued and deepened her practice, still producing new work. Commissioned by Carriageworks, Occam XXIV developed from a conversation that English was personally able to have with Radigue.
“I realised these artists are only here for a very short time and I'm very interested in engaging with them particularly because they're from a time that doesn't really exist anymore.”
Part of this engagement comes with an acknowledgement of the tyranny of distance and the effort that it takes to bring musicians to Australia, however, as English describes, this also opens new possibilities:
“Even though we think New York and London or these big cities have a lot going on, the kind of possibility here is just as rich, it just doesn't happen in the same way. The rules of engagement are slightly different but that can be a huge advantage because rather than dropping in for a day and disappearing people will come here and spend two weeks. That kind of possibility to kind of becoming embedded and the exchange that can happen between artists here is really special.”
To book tickets and see the full link up, click here: http://carriageworks.com.au/events/open-frame-room40-2/
