WGXC-90.7 FM
Jonathan Wright's The Quiet and the Still
Brooklyn (2003 - 2004) | Acra (2005 - 2015), NY
free103point9.org + transmissionarts.org/listen
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/
Jonathan Wright is a UK-based artist, and free103point9 Wave Farm's current artists-in-residence. This program was produced during Wright's residency.
Writes Wright, "The content of the next hour's broadcast comes form various sources. The broadcast represents an extension of a gallery show I curated in 2011 entitled The quiet and the still. All the work in the exhibition was sound based but none of the work made any sound, everything was mute. The show was inspired by a quote made by Gosta Kraken that had provoked Russell Hoban to write the remarkable book Fremder:
'Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillness blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is in those spaces of black between the pictures that we find the heart of mystery in which we are never allowed to rest.'
These spaces of black can be transcended by sound; sound can reach beyond the visual.
I have extended the scope of the work presented in consideration of Marcel Duchamp's Infra Thin and his assertion that the notion is impossible to define, 'one can only give examples of it.' I have also borne in mind the surreal book, Impressions of Africa of which Duchamp was so fond.
Sounds that are intuitively indulged and savoured can become more profound when attached to further layers of meaning. We hear more deeply on listening again, especially if we are offered more information to unravel these layers.
Being able to transfer this curation into a transmission is a remarkable opportunity. The running order is as follows:
Litany a work made by me as an immediate reaction to arriving at the Wave Farm using a text from Jonathan Sterne's The Audible Past.
Breath, is Sian Gledhill's piece made using news footage broadcast in the build up to the Iraq War.
Bundeena Rock pool, Honey bee hive c-series and an excerpt from Sonata for clarinet & nodar are field recording works by Jez Riley French. These are very subtle recordings.
Joseph Hatch made me in 1608 by Diane Dever and Gerry Kelly is an excerpt from a work made in response to the interior of a Mediaeval clock tower.
Fierce Temper, Harm Tempts Us and All Things Are Changing were made by the Artist at Wave Farm using Tinnitus recordings.
Walk is a piece by the Artist directly inspired by the environment of the Wave Farm and the its atmosphere.
Finally, Sirensong is a work carried over from the Quiet and the still, re-presented as a transmission, based on a fresh translation by the Artist of Kafka's Silence of the Sirens Performed by Zigi Ellison.