12 August / FRIDAY / 16.00-17.30
Sound installations opening -Galeria Jaga, Sanatorium Brehmer
Stephen Cornford – „Migration” (Galeria Jaga – ul.Główna) / 16.00
Olivia Block – „Open Air” (Brehmer’s Sanatorium – Różana 2) / 17.00
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Stephen Cornford
Migration (2015)
An installation for numerous factory-second cassette dictaphones. The mechanics and audio electronics of these machines have been subtly transformed – their simple motion, voltage and operative noise are combined into a visual and aural display reminiscent of the massed migrations of birds or insects. Obliquely referencing the appropriation of the term ‚Migration’ as a data process the work reflects on the global movement of consumer electronics as they pass from production to pollution in the ever accelerating life cycles between generations of technology.
Installations takes place as part of the A-I-R Sanatorium of Sound Sokołowsko implemented in cooperation with the Artist-in-Residence Programme A-i-R Wro. The A-i-R Wro Programme is a part of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 and is subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.
Stephen Cornford is an audio-visual artist working between installation and performance. His practice is concerned with reconfiguring consumer electronics as expressive and reflective devices. He studied at The Slade School of Fine Art and Dartington College of Arts and is currently a PhD candidate at Winchester School of Art with Jussi Parikka and Ian Dawson.
Stephen has had solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Berlin, Brighton, Bergen, Ljubljana & London and his work has been included in group exhibtions at the ZKM Center for Art & Media, Karlsruhe; ICC, Tokyo; Haus der Electronische Kunst, Basel; Sigma Foundation, Venice and at Bienalles in Lodz and Poznan.
He is co-director the Audiograft Festival in Oxford and the Consumer Waste record label and is a founder member of Bristol Experimental and Expanded Film.
His audio work has been published by Rumpsti Pumsti, VLZprodukt, Senufo Editions, MoTA, Winds Measure, 3leaves, Vitrine, Mantile and Accidie and he has collaborated with Ben Gwilliam, Patrick Farmer, Daniel Bennett and Samuel Rodgers among others.
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-cornford
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Olivia Block – „Open Air” (sound and visual installation) Sanatoriu Brehmera
In August, 2016, Olivia Block will complete a two-week residency commissioned by Sanatorium of Sound Festival. Block will create a sound and visual piece for various rooms in the beautiful dilapidated Sokolowsko sanatorium.
Layered breath sounds will quietly emanate from multiple speakers, coalescing with the atmospheric sounds of the space like ghosts. Large curtains made from loosely woven cotton surgical gauze, will be suspended from the ceiling and over the windows inside the sanatorium. The curtains will catch the circulating air, billowing and floating—animating a flow of energy.
Open Air draws attention to the movement of air in various forms– literally and metaphorically. The piece is inspired by the history of sanatoria, including related historical concepts of illness and transmission mechanisms and treatments of Tuberculosis.
Olivia Block is a media artist who creates sound recordings, audio-visual installations, performances, sound design for cinema, and scores for orchestra and chamber music concerts.
Over the last twenty years, Block has pioneered the utilization of audio field recordings and found materials in the realms of music and sound art. She combines field recordings, chamber instruments and electronic textures, resulting in mysterious and vivid electroacoustic sound pieces including Pure Gaze, Mobius Fuse, Karren, and others. Block creates multimedia installations and performances utilizing found sounds from micro cassette tapes, field recordings, video, and curated 35mm slides.
Block’s work reflects her interests in site specificity, ethnographic sound, architectural sound, and found/archival materials from the 1950’s-1990’s
Her work with expanded cinema and film artists has led to interests related to cinema sound, and visual phenomena like shadows and reflections.
Block has developed a body of partially-improvised compositions for inside-piano with various materials, including metal pieces and shards of broken glass. Her scores for orchestra and chamber instruments emphasize timbre and dynamics. Her most recent orchestral pieces include portions of “easy listening” inspired music from the 1970’s, playing underneath recordings of room ventilation, white noise and commercial spaces like malls.
Her solo performances include partially improvised pieces for electronics, amplified objects, and piano, presented in a slow and deliberate gestural style that Steve Smith of the New York Times described recently as having “palpable sensations of volition and emotional involvement.”
Block has performed, premiered and exhibited her work throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours in festivals including Incubate(Tilburg), Festival del Bosque Germinal (Mexico City), Sonic Light (Amsterdam), Kontraste (Krems), Dissonanze (Rome), Archipel (Geneva)Angelica (Bologna), Sunoni per il Popolo (Montreal), and many others. Additionally, she has presented work at the ICA (London), MCA (Chicago), La Biennale di Venezia 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music, The Kitchen (NYC), ISSUE Project RoomExperimental Intermedia (Brooklyn), and TIFF (Toronto).
She has completed residencies and premiered works at Mills College of Music, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The Berklee College of Music. Block has presented talks at additional universities in film, music, media arts, and anthropology departments, including Yale University, University of Chicago, and Indiana University.
Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, CONTEXT (Miami and NY), Millennium Park (Chicago), the library at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room (Chicago), and at the “Echoes Through the Mountains” exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics (Turin, Italy).
Her 2013 LP/download release, Karren (Sedimental, 2013) was chosen as “Best of 2014″ by The Wire, Pitchfork, and Artforum, among other publications. She was selected as a 2014 “Person of the Year” in the Chicago Reader. Aberration of Light, her latest solo release, is now available on NNA tapes. She recently completed her large-scale multi-speaker sound installation, Sonambient Pavilion, in Chicago’s Millennium Park, utilizing sounds from Harry Bertoia’s Sonambient sculptures. She is currently working on several pieces for piano and organ. She will perform at MOOG Fest in May. Olivia Block is based in Chicago