DARK MEDITATIONS
Contemplating the complexity of climate crisis - being able to ‘stay with the trouble’ as science and technology scholar Donna Haraway puts it – is the first step to developing resilience. Holding space for difficult issues can be a beautiful and moving experience, allowing for spontaneous connection. This event allows listeners to contemplate ecological change through music and moving image.
A screening of Ythancastir: Atoms on the Wall. 2022. 16min 44 sec and an interview with The Keeling Curve and Nastassja Simensky.
Wales-based band, The Keeling Curve have collaborated with Nottingham-based artist Nastassja Simensky to create Atoms on the Wall, a live audio-visual performance, album and soundtrack for the film Ythancastir: Atoms on the Wall. Using field recordings and footage from the Blackwater Estuary and singing of the local Othona Community,Ythancastir: Atoms on the Wall asks us to reflect upon the changing politics of land use, stewardship and industrial afterlives. In 2002 Bradwell A was the first UK Magnox nuclear power station to enter the 'care and maintenance' phase of the decommissioning process. Meanwhile, consultation and planning are underway for a new nuclear programme, Bradwell B which would have a devastating effect on local wildlife.
We will also discuss The Keeling Curve's first E.P., Turpentine Tree, a dark meditation on the history and impacts of climate breakdown. The final track incorporates a statement due to be given in court by an Extinction Rebellion protester.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nastassja Simensky is an artist who uses fieldwork to consider the unevenly distributed impacts of global energy regimes and extractive processes upon particular geographies. Nastassja often works collaboratively with artists and non-artists to make authored and co-authored artworks. Previously, these have included: live performances staged within a cockleboat, a limestone quarry, and a 7th Century chapel; amateur radio transmissions of text and image; soundworks produced for radio and cassette tape; moving-image works; and poetic texts.
Nastassja coordinates the Archaeology-Heritage-Art Research Network. Through engaging with archaeology’s processes, politics and methods, Nastassja considers archaeology as one of multiple modes of knowledge production that can inform embedded, experimental and collaborative art practices.
The Keeling Curve (Will Frampton and Rhiannon Bedford) is an electronic music duo comprising composer Will Frampton and violinist Rhiannon Bedford. They make ambient and experimental music exploring humankind’s relationship to nature and place using modular synthesizers, tape loops and found sound. They have been featured on broadcasts and compilations, performed live around England and Wales, collaborated with other artists, and guest lectured in universities. Since formation in early 2020 they have released five E.Ps., been awarded grants from Sound and Music and Arts&Heritage, were shortlisted finalists for RMA’s inaugural Tippett Medal, and have undertaken a Britten Pears Creative Retreat.
https://thekeelingcurve.bandcamp.com/
https://soundandmusic.org/discover/composer/the-keeling-curve/