credit: Invisible Cities

São Miguel Island residency

Description

How does sound form our experience of place? How do we remember places through audio recordings? As field recordists, how do our activities help create a place? These are some of the questions posed by “In that place, the air was very different”, a sound work that incorporates sonic memory traces of the places I have visited. The proposed project consists of both the investigative process and the resulting sound installation.

The premise of my practice is that a place is not a passive location awaiting documentation, but an active matrix always in the process of being formed, changed by every attention. We create place as place creates us.

My residency will consist of deep research, framed as a “sounding” of São Miguel, which is to say an investigation in and through sound. I will engage with the settlement history, economic activity, volcanic geography, and distinctive biome of the island using sound walks, on-site research, conversations, and other processes. The outcomes will include extensive sound recordings, but also poetic and descriptive writing, photography, and other tangible results. Ongoing documentation will be available through a blog, opening up the project to audiences both local and international. Additionally, I will be available to facilitate seminars or workshops during the residency, and look forward to fruitful collaboration with other resident artists.