Music Is Dying Now: Simon Whetham

19 нояб. 2015 г.

Simon Whetham

For almost a decade Simon Whetham has developed a practice of working with sound recordings as a raw material for composition and performance. These are often environmental sounds he has captured employing a variety of methods and techniques, in order to obtain discreet or obscured sonic phenomena. More recently, when presenting work in a performance or installation, for him the space and the objects within become instruments to be played.

Simon has a large number of works published through many specialist organisations, including Helen Scarsdale Agency, Crónica, Line, Dragon's Eye, Monochrome Vision and Entr'acte; has performed extensively internationally; collaborated with artists from musicians to performance artists, painters to video artists, dancers to poets; has run listening and field recording workshops in UK, Estonia, Colombia, Chile, Australia and South Korea; and received a large number of commissions and awards for projects and installations – notably for his own project 'Active Crossover'.

Supported Arts Council England and PRS for Music Foundation, the project combines sound installation, performance, collaboration and workshops. 'Active Crossover' toured six cities in the UK and has been hosted in Estonia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Australia, Germany and Norway.
Most recently the project ran as a two-month collaborative residency, supported by Arts Council England and the British Council, hosted by MoKS in Estonia, with participating artists from UK, Estonia, Latvia, Korea, Australia, USA, Austria, Finland, Norway and Chile.

As a further development of Simon's practice, he gives workshops sessions for groups of children and young people. This began with the participation in the arts education project RED Artes Visuales de Medellín in Colombia, where he ran workshop sessions for 7 groups of children aged between 8 and 18 years old, each week for 10 weeks, exploring listening exercises, recording techniques, microphone construction, public interventions and instrument and kinetic sculpture building. This has led to workshop sessions with children in Norway, Australia and South Korea and with unaccompanied minors in a refugee camp in Munich, Germany.

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Simon Whetham has been capturing and composing almost primarily with field recordings since taking part in a research trip to Iceland in 2005.

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This residency has resulted in ‘Active Crossover’, a touring sound exhibition project that toured through 2011 in four exhibition spaces across the UK, with associated live performance events featuring artists such as Colin Potter, Philip Jeck, Mark Fell and Scanner.

Events and projects in 2011 also included live performance at the Moers Festival, Germany; a further collaboration with Hugo Olim at Observatori Festival in Valencia, Spain; a site-specific performance at McNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA; and running field recording workshops at both the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia and Madeiradig 2011 festival.

Throughout 2012 Simon is traveling the globe, participating in residencies, performing, recording and collaborating with other musicians and artists in each country he visits, and continuing to run Active Crossover as a residency and performance project.