6 video-sonic pieces (for projection and online)

 

Returning to Birmingham neighbourhoods for the first time since studying here in the late 80’s, Antony set out to weave together field recordings (video and sound) from the local River Rea trail and the distant Elan Valley in Wales - the source of Birmingham’s water supply.

 

Through different seasons of the year, his aim was to walk these waterways, hills, valleys and along pipelines - tuning-in, listening, observing and reflecting.

 

Coming from a hybrid mix of backgrounds (science, art, landscape study), his process is to spend time, and work with what emerges in his encounters - through patience, serendipity, spontaneity. The approach is poetic (or geopoetic), and also kinaesthetic, relying on the experience of 'moving through’ physical spaces and landscapes. It is also about seeing and hearing with different - outsider - eyes and ears. In that way, perhaps shifting the lens and reflecting back some strangeness or unfamiliarity.

 

Video and audio field-recordings were manipulated and meshed together to produce a series of 6 short films, or video-sonic works, each 5 minutes in length.

 

Some influencing themes are:

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 - Water, and waterways; the preciousness of water (and need for protection and awareness); water as a gift, and much more than simply a substance that comes out of a tap

 - Landscapes, people, nature and ecology, with a special focus on entanglements with other (non-human) dwellers, observed at different scales

 - What do we do, and how do we act, next to water? What is this enduring attraction?

 - Questions about commodification, control, commons, freedom; wild water and 'tamed', domesticated water (and parallels with wild/tamed nature, and wild/tamed humans?)

 - Outsider/insider; being a stranger; native/non-native

 - Water and connection; water and conflict; as weapon

 - Underground waters, and undercurrents

 

 

As well as taking part in Ten Acres of Sound, Antony is artist-in-residence at the Elan Valley this year, hosted by the Heritage Lottery funded Elan Links scheme.  The water supply for Birmingham comes from the Elan Valley, 73 miles away.

 

Antony Lyons

www.antonylyons.net

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Entrance to the work is stepped and from the River Rae, however there is an alternative, step free entrance - just ask the invigilator.