What is it like to commune with the ground? To turn your senses downwards – using experimental and electrical devices as portals to the underworld?
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This is an invitation to spend some time listening, trying to gain sonic access to the subterranean sounds along the Birmingham Canalside.
Soils are and hold mutable spaces, constantly shifting and changing over time. They have a genesis and a lifespan. They originate from rocks transformed over millennia by climate conditions, geological movements, biological processes, and the actions of organisms, at all scales. Soils are the product of highly complex relationships. They are both living and non-living.
Commentators agree that soils have no clear boundary. The earth erodes boundaries and separations, not least through constant climatic action, rot and shifting regeneration.
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For Grand Union’s September First Friday you can sign up for a one-to-one session, to spend as short or as long a time as you please, attempting to hear the subsonic frequencies in the earth. This is an offer to transduce, turning one form of energy into another by way of wires, minerals (extracted), amplification and vibratory matter. To see if we can tune into the micro sounds communicating with themselves beyond human perception and the everyday noises of the city.
Access informationOpen accordion
This event will be taking place outside on the canal side Common Field site, and will involve a walk from Grand Union to the site (approximately 0.2 miles on flat ground). The ground of the canal side banking, where the listening session will take place, is uneven and may be muddy.
This event takes place entirely outdoors, so please dress appropriately for the weather and wear comfortable shoes. Each session will be up to 45 minutes long, so be prepared to be outside for this amount of time.
This is a sound-based event which relies on listening to minute sounds, and sometimes there will be no sounds at all. If access to sound is something that poses a barrier to you, please get in touch at info@grand-union.org.uk and we can have a conversation about how to make this event work best for you.
This is a free event but booking via eventbrite is essential. Each session can last up to 45 minutes, but there is no pressure to use the entirety of this time. The sessions are designed to be one-to-one, but please get in touch via email at info@grand-union.org.uk if you require a companion for any reason or would feel more comfortable taking part as a pair. If this event is sold out, please get in touch via the same email address to be added to the waiting list.
A member of Grand Union staff will meet you in the Minerva Works carpark and walk you over to meet Michelle at the Common Field Canalside site.
About the Artist
Michelle Atherton’s work holds a fascination with the complex relations, dynamics and contradictions at play in day-to-day experiences and phenomena. Recent artworks have involved celebratory gatherings paying tribute to the dead across species; alternative imaginaries from the ocean’s depths; examining the nature of everyday irrational gestures and On Demand cultures. Her work often uses a remix aesthetic incorporating sound, image, text and installation to create fragmented narratives as hooks to explore our slippery perceptions of the world. The aim is to look again at matters that seem settled, beyond question, but where inherent instability opens into other questions of material states, refusals, politics and new imaginaries. Her research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and shown throughout Europe in galleries, museums, festivals and publications. She teaches fine art to postgraduates at Sheffield Hallam University.