INSTALLATION IN NEW YORK

Our audio installation Requiem For 114 Radios features in ‘Seeing Sound’, an expansive exhibition curated by Barbara London at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. The exhibition runs September 27 – December 17, 2024, with an opening reception on Thursday, September 26, 2024, 6-8pm

In our installation, 114 domestic, analogue radio sets stacked on shelves come to life in communal song. Individual voices are broadcast to the sets, and as some radios join together in harmony, others crackle and find the ‘in-between space’ between clear and broken reception. Collectively these unseen singers perform a dramatic new version of Dies Irae from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass.

“You’ll know Dies Irae… it’s musical shorthand for doom, its ominous trochees among the most quoted melodies in the classical canon.” – The Guardian

The musicians contributing their voice to the disembodied choir are: Matt Berninger (The National), Jehnny Beth (Savages), Casper Clausen (Efterklang/Liima), Jarvis Cocker, Jimi Goodwin (Doves), Rachel Goswell (Slowdive/Minor Victories), Blaine Harrison (Mystery Jets), Joe McAlinden (Linden, ex. Superstar/BMX Bandits), Aimée Nash (The Black Ryder), Beth Orton, Conrad Standish (Devastations), Jonnine Standish (HTRK), Elena Tonra (Daughter) and Rachel Zeffira (Cat’s Eyes).

“With its obsolete technology, Cold War bunker ambience and allusions to Kubrick’s apocalyptic black comedy Dr Strangelove, it sent the requisite sepulchral shiver up the spine.” – The Times

Curator Barbara London is one of the world’s most influential curators of new media art and the founder of the Video-media Exhibition & Collection Programs at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. London brings this group of artists together in Seeing Sound as the culmination of many years of research and devotion to presenting media art. To London, “media art in its many forms continues to evolve and develop in tandem with new audio-visual tools and new ways of experiencing art, whether online, in museum and gallery spaces, or in new art venues we can barely imagine.” Through the integration and interrogation of sound, Seeing Sound challenges ideas about what art in a perpetual state of flux may be.

The touring exhibition is organised by Independent Curators International (ICI).