A few months ago, the Dublin Arts Council asked me to visit all of their 24 public art works and write responses to them focusing on listening and sound. It was a pleasure, and now there is a Fieldbook designed for children (and adults) to explore the works. I’m happy to be a part of it, and am thankful that the Council was so open to the crazy idea of listening to sculptures and to places!
You can read more and download the Fieldbook here.
Here is a new, complete collection of MANY HANDS on Bandcamp — remastered (thanks to Secret Studio), reordered, renamed, and with new tracks — exploring LANDSCAPES and LABOR in Appalachian Ohio. The old phrase, “many hands make light work” is the starting point, where people work together toward a common cause and are greater for it.
The landscapes are named after small towns in Appalachian Ohio — from Moxahala to San Toy to Junction City (my father’s birthplace) — and evoke their natural and human rhythms. The labor portraits are named after past and present local people and their jobs, from prominent black labor organizers and boxing coaches, to miners and moonshiners. They reflect the shared rhythms of manual, community, and care labor that form the fabric of the region.
(And many thanks to the Little Cities of Black Diamonds Archive for the photo.)
You can listen to the album here.
Head over to Bandcamp to listen to a newly remixed recording of Forest Listening Rooms, incorporating local voices, field recordings, and ambient music. This is the recording that was installed at the Columbus Museum of Art this year, and if you didn't get the chance to hear it, you can do so now. It has been remixed and newly mastered (thanks to Keith Hanlon at Secret Studio), and sounds great both on headphones and speakers.
You can find my latest newsletter here, and read about the contextual history and thoughts on my album Silent City, as a way to memorialize my father’s death. It is hard to write about these things, but it also helps me through it all, somehow. I hope you find some meaning and connection in it. Be well, Brian
Photo by Calista Lyon, courtesy Columbus Museum of Art.
It was so nice to talk with the amazing Mary Lucier and curator Anna Talarico a few weeks ago for this conversation on our work and the Columbus Museum of Art exhibit, “Partially-Buried: Land-Based Art in Ohio, 1970-Now.”
It was just published in The Hoosac Institute, and you can read it here: https://hoosacinstitute.com/Anna-Talarico
#SoundArt #ForestListeningRooms #AppalachianOhio #hoosacinstitute #artmakescbus
This fall, I have a solo exhibition at the Miller Gallery at Otterbein University in my hometown of Westerville, Ohio. This includes three sound and visual works from my many years of work in Appalachian Ohio and this is the first time that they have been presented together. I’m also excited to share that we will be presenting a public screening of Shawnee, Ohio, as well as numerous workshops with classes from across the university. You can find more information about the exhibition here.
I was happy to be a part of “Covid Conversations: Life in a Time of Corona” podcast, through Ohio State University’s Center For Folklore Studies. Host Rachel Hopkin brought together Finnish composer, sound artist, and filmmaker Päiví Takala and myself for a fascinating conversation on our practices, our reaction to the pandemic, and our current projects. I hope you enjoy it!
So exciting to be in conversation with my friend Dao Strom in Aquarium Drunkard, to support her album TRAVELER'S ODE and book INSTRUMENT. Both are phenomenal, and I can't recommend them enough! We talk of sound, language, memory, and more.So exciting to be in conversation with my friend Dao Strom in Aquarium Drunkard, to support her album TRAVELER'S ODE and book INSTRUMENT. Both are phenomenal, and I can't recommend them enough! We talk of sound, language, memory, and more.
Read the full article here.
It was wonderful to be a part of this online workshop, all about listening to trees, as part of the "Critical Zones" exhibition at ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe, where "Forest Listening Rooms" was a part of the discussion.
To complete my year as an artist-in-residence with the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, I compiled and collaged recordings I made throughout the year as a continuous sound installation. Called Where the Forest Meets the Field, it is now up and running at the Gund Gallery through August, and it offers a sonic representation of the rural landscapes of Gambier and the Brown Family Environmental Center. If you'd like to hear an excerpt accompanied by a short essay, click below. Or, if you are in the area, you can hear it in person at the gallery here.
Over the past fifteen years, I've worked with many amazing record labels, including Atavistic in Chicago, Dust-to-Digital in Atlanta, and Karl in Berlin. Now, I am adding my own to the mix, called Winesap Records. It is named after the Winesap apples I remember eating as a child from my grandfather's orchard in Junction City, Ohio. Back in 2009, I released Silent City (on Atavistic), and the song "And Under the Winesap Tree" obliquely referred to those trees and the persistent memories of childhood and family.
I've already quietly released three albums on Winesap, and I will soon be adding Words and Silences, too. Plus: a big thanks to Samantha Rehark for her logo design work.
And finally: please note that, even though I am a big fan of (and prefer) Bandcamp's model of supporting artists, these albums can now be found on other streaming services, too, including Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube. Happy listening!
I'm so excited to share that my project Words and Silences has been awarded a 2021 MAP Fund Grant. Their support is a game changer, so that the project can be completed and performed. Their support also allows me to think and work deeply with the material, which is invaluable. To learn more about the MAP Fund and the amazing artist projects for 2021, click here.
I am near the conclusion of my year-long Art of Trees residency with the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College. The gallery has generously made this "activation guide," highlighting the listening sessions and learning process I've been developing with students and faculty. You can download a PDF of the guide here, and use for yourself or as a teaching tool.
Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture published an interview I did with Alex Sayf Cummings in their most recent issue. Titled "Listening to the Democratic Forest," we talk about how listening can be a radical act of attention, trust, and even love. We also talked of sound art, Appalachian Ohio, environment, political and cultural change, and Wendell Berry. You can read the full interview here.
Happy to announce that “Forest Listening Rooms” will be part of an exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art, in Ohio. Called Partially Buried: Land-Based Art in Ohio, 1970 to Now, the exhibition opens this Saturday and runs through November 28. More info can be found here. Picture: speakers for Forest Listening Room being installed.
On March 9, the screening premiere of Shawnee, Ohio will take place at the Wexner Center for the Arts. It will be online, and is free. Learn more here. Bringing together the full album and archival and contemporary footage, this version both captures the essence of the performance and allows the audience to deeply connect with the material. I am really excited to share this with you and hope you can tune in on March 9th. It will then be available to view through March 23.
It was such a pleasure to work with Mack Hagood on an episode of his Phantom Power podcast, exploring and discussing "Forest Listening Rooms" -- it gave me a chance to recreate some of the sounds and voices from the project. Give it a listen here!
Read my latest newsletter and listen to this new track from "Words & Silences" featuring monk and writer Thomas Merton alongside my own wonderful ensemble. Here he's celebrating New Year's Eve in solitude in 1967 at his hermitage. We have all been wrestling with the urge to be social and the need to stay apart, especially over the holidays, and this is a reminder that we can still celebrate––even in solitude––with humor and wonder and joy. Listen to it here.
#ContemplativeListening #ThomasMerton #Solitude #NewYearsEve #SoundArchives #WordsandSilences
The Forest Listening Rooms project was included in a fascinating “artist toolkit” called A Community is a Garden and was part of an Environmental Justice Practicum, called "Sustainable Futures," hosted by the Guggenheim Museum. Here, Yale student researchers created a toolkit to show how artists and community members work together to create “spaces of inclusion and participation for social and communal transformation.” You can learn more here, and download a more in-depth PDF booklet here.