What: Soundhouse: Intimacy and Distance Listening Rooms

Who: Soundhouse

Where: Online via the Barbican, Choose a Listening Room here 

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Via the Barbican:

Soundhouse is a platform for creative radio and podcasting, and a space for reflections on audio culture. In 2018 it took the form of a pop-up venue at the Barbican, with a focus on communal listening and experimental events in a sensory environment for sound. This year, Soundhouse exists here online, and we explore ideas of Intimacy and Distance through three ‘listening rooms’, and four specially commissioned pieces of writing

Co-creators Eleanor McDowall and Nina Garthwaite write here about why this theme felt apt for the ‘socially distanced world’ many of us are living in, and how ideas of intimacy and distance have always been intertwined with the way we experience radio. Here ‍

Learn more about the three featured listening rooms from the curators below:‍

Listening Room 1 Axel Kacoutié: And Again 

'I want to share pieces with you that have made me forget where I am and who I was and other works that have made me feel a lack, or reimagine a possibility that I didn’t begin to think existed. And yes. of course, I have shamelessly repeated all of these productions, hoping to hear it for the first time again.'‍

Listening Room 2 curated by Ariana Martinez: Mirror Touch‍

‘With the belief that sound is a kind of touch, this selection of works for Soundhouse centres around the tactile qualities of sound—those which ground us in our bodies and to our surroundings. Pieces were selected for their potential to provoke actual, physical sensations in listeners, for their attunement to sound as a physical material with textural qualities, and for their reflection of visceral sensations or sensory-rich environments.'‍

Listening Room 3 curated by Arlie Adlington: The Place Where The Light Bends‍

‘Making work like this often involves a personal sacrifice to some extent - because it means letting strangers hear something intimate and personal. They might not understand it, they might judge you for it, or they might want to retaliate against it. It also takes a lot of energy to explore complex ideas, at a systemic and personal level simultaneously, in a way that’s thoughtful and structured. But as well as involving some kind of sacrifice, making this type of work also has the potential to be healing for the producer (although there’s no way to know until you go through the process of making it).'  

Contact: Website