"In that place, the air was very different"

Installation

Arquipélago - Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, Ribeira Grande, São Miguel, Açores. 9 April 2017.

Description

“In that place, the air was very different” is a multichannel sound installation. Prior to the opening, the artist spends days (or weeks) gathering field recordings from the environs. These personal responses to place form a sound pool, which is added to similar pools from previous installations. In this way the piece accumulates a sonic “memory”, changing over time and with each rendition. The listener is free to wander through this milieu, tracing their own path in a reflective process that speaks to memory and place-making.

This piece premiered as part of ISSTA 2016: Temporary Autonomous Zones, in Derry, Northern Ireland. See the previous entry.

Review

“The installation encouraged a curious ear, and exploratory listening. It encouraged movement, but also invited remaining still in one place, listening in a meditative fashion. The site was used beautifully and sensitively.” – Hildegard Westerkamp

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Journal entry: Time Zones

Ittoqqortoormiit is in Eastern Greenland. It was founded only in 1925 and means “Big-House Dwellers” in the dialect of Eastern Greenlandic. Only 450 people live there.

The Republic of Cabo Verde (commonly but incorrectly called Cape Verde in English) is an archipelago of ten volcanic islands, 570 kilometres off the coast of West Africa. It was uninhabited until encountered by Genoese and Portuguese navigators around 1456, and subsequently became a Portuguese colony. The current population of around half a million.

The Autonomous Region of the Azores is an archipelago of nine volcanic islands, 1643 km west of Lisbon. It was uninhabited until perhaps 1427, but now has a quarter of a million inhabitants.

These three territories are the only inhabited part of UTC minus 1, making this the loneliest time zone in the world, judged by human standards.

UTC-1 is the time zone of the Atlantic, the time of unrelenting waves, deep currents, and salt spray. The zone of the moray, the baleen whale, and the ling. The zone of towering underwater mountains and everlasting tectonic disturbance.

To keep time here is a pretense one clings to, like a castaway battered against a rock.