The Modern Language Experiment at Urban Encounters

The Modern Language Experiment at Urban Encounters

The Modern Language Experiment, has been invited to be a part of Urban Encounters a photography and Urban Culture's symposium initiated by Goldsmiths, University of London and Tate Britain. Which is a part of Urban Photo Fest, initiated by Paul Halliday, which will engage with the political and social issues surrounding notions of materialities within the urban context. This engagement will be realised through the following themed panels: Forensics, Object hood and Disappearances.

For Urban Encounters we have collaborated with artist Leslie Deere where we will be focusing on the presence and absence of materiality in relation to image, cities, architecture and aesthesis. This will take the form of three radio broadcasts hosted on Resonance 104.4FM. where will debate further our curatorial concepts as well as develop a new mode for artistic exhibition. Featuring discussions with Ami Clarke, Carmen Billows, Celine Lunsford, John Driver, Mark Harris, Mark Jackson, Paul Halliday, Paul O'Kane, and Steven Ball .

EPISODE ONE
This conversation will centre on the materiality of urban environments, and how artists reflect upon them through their works. Keh Ng from the Modern Language Experiment will draw upon his own ideas that permeate his artistic practice where he researches and redeploys urban mythology in his works.

Keh will be hosting this conversation in two parts. In the first part, Celine Lunsford of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt will highlight current issues and trends within the realms of photography art making in conversation with the artist Paul O’Kane who will be discussing his own photographic based practice in relation to ideas of capturing volume in urban environments. The second part of this show will be in conversation with Mark Jackson of IMT Gallery and Ami Clarke of Banner Repeater where they will be discussing audio, materiality and art practice from the perspective of artist and gallerist.

This one hour episode will serve as a snapshot, soundbite and debate about how artists today are dealing with this topic.

Keh Ng

EPISODE TWO
“As we map the territories and create zones these divisions only symbolise our failed attempts at any such mapping” Sam Basu, The Treignac Project.

It is possible to speculate that there is disquiet at the heart of any understanding of the city, Indeed Freidrich Engels the German social scientist expressed dismay about a London that embodied both wonder and hideousness. Engels found the speed and aggression of a 19th century London’s populous at odds with his accepted social understanding. In contrast Charles Baudelaire embraced this speed and aggression in his writings about the crowd in a Paris that to him was full of wonder. What is interesting in these two examples is that they are both attempts at mapping or zoning the city so as to enable connections with it. John Rajchman, in his series of essays entitled ‘Constructions”, is also engaged in a similar process of mapping connections and ‘unseen relations’ by focusing on the philosophy of the city through artistic space, time, vision, technology and architecture. Interestingly Rajchman maps a possible future city and a future architecture.

Engels, Baudelaire and Rajchman offer ways in which a possible understanding of the city can be revealed by enabling new connections through the process of zonal mapping that in extension aims to demystify the relationship between society and the materiality of the city.

This conversation will be Hosted by Matthew Stock of The Modern Language Experiment and will be in three parts. Artists and educator John Drever will be discussing his recent sound art and its composed utilisation of the dyson public toilet hand dryer. Artist and educator Mark Harris will be discussing the materialty of sound in relation to the urban environment as well as his own sound works. The final part will be a conversation with curator Carmen Billows and Steven Ball about her recent project London Seizure, a film screening and discussion series across different London sites. The conversation will be interspersed by sound samples from film works presented within this project. London Seizure is an ongoing series of film screenings and talks responding to issues of replacement, disappearance and loss in contemporary urban structures and will spread to other cities in 2014.

Matthew Stock

EPISODE THREE
Leslie Deere will take reference from the following sources and present a show that aims to map unusual places in London, paying particular attention to the acoustic terrain and sonic properties of the place. This will include field recordings, musical passages, interview samples and soundscapes.

Specific inspiration for this radio show will come from Brandon Labelle’s essay about his work The Sonic Body in the publication Parole #2 Phonetic Skin - Salon Verlag (Cologne) & Errant Bodies Press (Berlin / Los Angeles), 2012.

Notes Toward a Sketch of a Sonic Body
Brandon Labelle

“The big ear falls all over the place – we stumble over it; we pick it up, toss it over the shoulder, pass it around. It becomes a new symbol, a body-narrative filling the imagination with new fantasy.

And back again, ducking underground, down the stairs, through this passage, and then inside, a forgotten space to be filled with a community with no name: like a new skin, wrapped everywhere.”

R Murray Schaefer - An environmental world soundscape is unfolding around us ceaselessly. We are both audience and composer.

Leslie Deere

Image: STADT, Karl Hermann Trinkaus, 1927

Resonance 104.4fm

Schedule

8th October 2013 8-9pm EPISODE ONE KEH NG
9th October 2013 8-9pm EPISODE TWO MATTHEW STOCK
10th October 2013 8-9pm EPISODE THREE LESLIE DEERE

8th October 2013 (Keh Ng)
Introduction, who we are, what we will do, Urban Encounters symposium, the artists what to expect.
Invited Artists Playlists
Discussion with Celine Lunsford of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt with Paul O’Kane.
Invited Artists Playlists
Discussion with Mark Jackson and Ami Clarke.

9th October 2013 (Matt)
Introduction, who we are, what we will do, Urban Encounters symposium, the artists what to expect.
Discussion with artist Dr John Levack Drever from Goldsmiths about his work and the politics of noise in relation to the city.
Discussion with Mark Harris about Materiality of sound
Invited Artists Playlists
Discussion with Carmen Billows and Steven Ball.

10th October 2013 (Leslie)
Leslie Deere - Will present a show that aims to map unusual places in London, paying particular attention to the acoustic terrain and sonic properties of the place. This will include field recordings, musical passages, interview samples and soundscapes.

We are very pleased to have commissioned the following artists to produce two 3 minute sound works for the broadcasts playlists

Craig Cooper
Dorine Van Meel
Gordon Shrigley
Keh Ng
Matthew Stock
Maya Inbar
Mitra Saboury
Patrick Goddard
Robert Crosse
Sam Basu

Download Broadcasts as they are aired.
TMLE resonance 104.4FM Episode one / Download
TMLE resonance 104.4FM Episode Two / Download
TMLE resonance 104.4FM Episode Three / Download

Download ARTISTS Play list
Artists Playlist / Download

Media for all episodes

EPISODE THREE RESONANCE FM 104.4FM 11th October 2013 8-9Pm

On tonights show hosted by Leslie Deere

Brandon LaBelle
artist / author / professor
The Sonic Body - Research, writing and art project revolving around sound and dance.
http://www.brandonlabelle.net/

Thecla Shiphorst
professor / software designer / dancer
LifeForms - computer compositional tool for choreographers. Founding developer and Merce Cunningham collaborator.
http://www.sfu.ca/~tschipho/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.10/schiphorst_pr.html