Pushkin House invites you to the CIVIC SOUND ARCHIVE x PUSHKIN HOUSE on 22 October 2022. The session involves a participatory discussion with Moi Tran and Ellen Greig about Civic Sound Archive and the chance to contribute your own “sonic expression”.
Civic Sound Archive explores the anarchive process for new research and creation in contrast to making a static archive. Tran has called this anarchive process of gathering and recording audio, “sonic witnessing”, where the invitation from Tran often leads to fleeting, transitory and non-mediated performances.
This approach to recording personal expression refuses easy categorisation and provides a space for self-determined personal histories.
Civic Sound Archive is an unruly, anecdotal repository for sonic expression as personal testimony, celebrating the joy of poor acoustics and fleeting sonic encounters that are often devalued within traditional archival methods. The project is an ongoing process of knowledge-making that uses sound to map personal experience and celebrate the encounter of anarchive practice from marginal spaces.
An archive is commonly understood as a collection of historical records. Anarchive, in contrast, resists mere documentation and interpretation in favour of live and material processes, approaching matter from alternative perspectives to engage, producing new work and nodes of research creation.
Over the past two years, Moi Tran has invited people to contribute audio and visual recordings of sounds, songs, prayers, stories and poems in various languages and dialects, that they feel have emotional value or have been unjustly overlooked. The result is a growing, open-source collection of sonic and visual material.
SCHEDULE
12–12:45pm
In conversation with Ellen Grieg and Moi Tran about Civic Sound Archive.
This will be an informal talking session about the work of Civic Sound Archive which was recently exhibited at PEER. We encourage a live and engaged discussion; attendees are invited to participate and contribute questions throughout the conversations, in place of the conventional Q&A at the end.
1pm–1:45pm
Performative recording – Audio Recording
Moi Tran invites attendees to record and contribute a “sonic expression” to the growing Civic Sound Archive. Attendees who are interested in contributing please register in advance. Once we have received your details, we will send an invitation letter to read through and a consent form which you should sign and return via email to civicsoundarchive@gmail.com.
Contributions may be made via email or in person as part of the live recording session. Each session will be private between the contributor and the artists. In order to work within timings, we will allocate time slots; please do give us as much information as possible to the length of your recording.
Participants should take time to prepare before the session.
SIGN CHORUS (2022). These works, made in collaboration with teachers and students at Central Deaf Services in Da Nang, Vietnam, line the walls of the gallery. In this work Tran and her collaborators reflect on alternative forms of emotional expression prioritising non-vocal forms of communication.
This event is part of the Conflicts and Displacements season at Pushkin House.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Moi Tran is an artist based in the UK; her practice explores the intersection between contemporary art and live performance through theatre, text, sound, installation, and video. Born in Vietnam, her recent works examine theorisations on emotional reckoning as valued knowledge, encounters of witnessing in events of fugitive performativity and the politics of sound as critical record.
She has presented and performed her work nationally and internationally, including ‘Sonic Signalling in Reverse’ (GIBCA)'; ‘The Bolero Effect’ (VCCA Hanoi, Vietnam); ‘The Circuit’ (Prague Quadrennial Festival, Czech Republic); ‘I love a broad margin to my life’ (Yeo Workshop, Singapore); ‘Shy God – A Chorus’ (SPILL International Festival); and ‘SLEEP’ (Live Art Development Agency). In 2022 she is presenting a solo show, ‘Civic Sound Archive’, at PEER Gallery London, including a collaboration ‘Sign Chorus’ with CDS Sign Language School in Da Nang Vietnam.
She is currently Artist in Residence at The ArtHouse (Wakefield, UK). Her current works in theatre, film, dance and opera as a visual collaborator include Rambert, Hampstead Theatre, The Royal Court, Young Vic and Headlong.
Art – moitran.com
Design for Performance – moitran.co.uk
Ellen Greig is a curator and writer based in London, where she is Director of PEER gallery, London. Previously, she was Senior Curator at Chisenhale Gallery and has held curatorial positions at Focal Point Gallery, LUX Artists’ Moving Image and Liverpool Biennial. She was a curatorial advisor for the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2022), curated by Cecilia Alemani, and is a Trustee at The Old Waterworks, Westcliff-on-Sea.
This event is part of the Conflicts and Displacements season at Pushkin House.