You are invited to take a seat, gaze from the window and embark on a journey…
This weekend and next weekend (7/8 and 14/15 Sept), artist, sound designer and lecturer in sound for film at Screen Academy, Zoe Irvine will be exhibiting her work Listening Windows as part of Art Walk Porty. Sitting between radio documentary and filmic soundtrack the pieces in Listening Windows form a mini retrospective of Zoe’s work from 2006 – present. Visitors to Art Walk Porty are invited to seek out the different sites where Zoe’s work is installed and through sound, explore a night walk in the Amazon Jungle, a sad farewell in Antwerp, Reminiscing farmers, a lonely world trip and selected fragments of Magnetic Migration Music.
Listening Windows can be found in the following locations using the Art Walk Porty Map:
• The Hub on Bellfield Rd
• Houses 40, 53 & 71
• The Telferton Allotments
The Art Walk Porty project is an artist-led project run by volunteers, that brings together local audiences and artists celebrating the public space and creative community of Portobello, Edinburgh’s seaside, culminating in an annual festival based around a walk. Zoë Irvine is an artist and lecturer in sound for film. She has been working with BA Film at Edinburgh Napier University since 2014, taking on a permanent part-time post in 2018. Zoe is now developing the sound for film community.
Listening Windows featured works are:
Nightwalk – Torch required (5:20) 2007
Come on a night walk in the Brazilian Amazon with Anthony the jungle guide. You are not afraid are you? This piece was originally released on released on Vibro Files “Citizen Band” Issue (CD) in 2007
and part of the Audible Picture Show (curated by Matt Hulse) at de Player (live) and re-released on BIG MAG Editions (vinyl) 2011. There is also a sound and text video version of this work which has been shown internationally.
The Last Afternoon in Antwerp (5:20) 2013
So, you find a tape in a drawer of an abandoned flat in Vienna, next to it there’s a tape machine. There’s no real option not to listen to it, right? This piece features short extracts from a cassette tape correspondence between secret lovers found in 2005. The improvised music is from a live session in Almaty, Kazakhstan by Sacha Chikmakov (guitar), Zoë Irvine (computer) and Denis Kolokol (Electronics). It was created for the RSA annual show Between Late and Early 2013
Travels Together (6:00) 2006
We are on the trail of Alma Maximilane Karlin (1889-1950) who was an extraordinary Slovenian traveller and writer. In this extract we hear actress Vivien Löschner reading from the first chapter of Karlin’s book Einsame Weltreise (The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman), weaving in and out of field recordings from my journey in her footsteps. We also hear from Marijan Pušavec, writer expert on the life and work of Alma Karlin.
Magnetic Migration Music (6:00) (1998-2008)
Did you ever see fragments of audio tape flapping in the wind? Snagged round a branch or lamp post? trailing down the road? If you have you are probably around the same age as me. It is certainly far less common now than it was in 1998 when I first picked up a piece of tape, cleaned the clag off, spliced it into a cassette and listened to the revelatory sound of chewed and mangled rendition of ‘tutti fruti’. I have collected, respooled, listened and shared tape fragments ever since. This is an extract from the expansive MMM project which was actively collecting tape 1998 – 2008, but continued archive performances to the present day.
Full Doric Mode – a language or a dialect? (6:00) 2019
Come back in time with participants from The Formartine Oral History Project, we’re in the North East of Scotland, the folk spik Doric there. Listen to archive recordings with Jimmie Dick (farmer), Charles Reid (blacksmith) and John Barron (farmer). In this extract we also hear my contemporary recordings with Helen Taylor, a primary recordist and motivator for the project, in conversation with Carol Eddie, who also took part back then.
https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk