Welcome to the second episode of Notes From The Field, a Cement Fields podcast where we talk to artists, practitioners and researchers to dig deeper into our projects and the people behind them. Our guest for this second episode of Notes From The Field is Sea Like a Mirror lead artist Ivan Morison. Sea Like a Mirror is an ambitious national partnership programme, commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, inspired by the profound legacy of their life-saving work. At the heart of the programme is a newly commissioned artwork, White Horses, by Ivan Morison, from the collaborative practice of Heather Peak and Ivan Morison. Produced through a series of visits to lifeboat stations in six diverse seaside towns around the coastline, this travelling 16mm film work, housed in a sculptural tent, explores the myriad roles the sea plays for those who hold a deep connection to the water. Across May and June this year, White Horses returned to these locations, and in each setting was presented alongside a series of commissions from local artists, made in collaboration with the area’s community, making up the Sea Like a Mirror programme. Ivan Morison has established an ambitious practice that transcends the divisions between art, architecture, theatre and social practice; questioning what it means to be an artist in the 21st Century. His primary preoccupation has always been how we navigate catastrophe and the violence of change – from the wider collective view down to how individuals deal with moments of personal calamity. Alongside Heather Peak, he is co-director of artist-led creative practice Studio Morison, whose work centres around spaces of human coexistence and the communities that occupy or may gather there. They categorise their work as a situated practice constructed from layers of social sculpture and sculptural space. Sea Like a Mirror is a partnership project led by Cement Fields, with Art Gene, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, North East Lincolnshire Council & East Marsh United, and Super Culture. With thanks to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Supported with public funding from Arts Council England. Presented in Gravesend for Estuary 2025 with Estuary Festival. Thank you for listening.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Notes From The Field, a Cement Fields podcast where we talk to artists, practitioners and researchers to dig deeper into our projects and the people behind them. Our very first guest in this series is Floating University Berlin. We’re really grateful that we got to spend some time with a few of the team behind the pioneering project this Summer, as part of a Cultural Bridge funded peer to peer exchange programme called Wetland. Through a series of online reading groups and two week-long labs in London and Berlin, we explored and reflected on the practices of care and hospitality we use to engage communities and redefine our former industrial locations. Condensing several month’s worth of discussions proved challenging, so we have chosen to zoom in on our visit to Berlin as the culmination of our time together, and as such the moment when the threads of our exchange began to gather. This episode of Notes From The Field invites the listener into our week-long Lab, which took place during a September heatwave in the rainwater retention pool of the former Berlin Tempelhof airport, the site which floating has called home since 2019. Over 36 minutes we attempt to encapsulate the spirit and potential of Wetland and provide a window into our shared practice. Cement Fields is a visual arts organisation working collaboratively with artists and communities to create ambitious new art along the Thames Estuary in North Kent. Our programme is an exploration of place and process, defined by the multiple shifting landscapes that stretch along the Thames from Dartford to Whitstable. We invite artists, participants and audiences to use North Kent's unique contexts to ask radical questions and explore new ideas. Through this interaction we create experimental art and develop imagination, skills and pathways into creative careers. Cement Fields has grown out of Whitstable Biennale, a visual arts festival founded in 2002. We’re proud to be a National Portfolio Organisation, supported using public funding by Arts Council England, and the University of Kent. Floating University Berlin is a Natureculture learning site and fully functioning urban campus run by non-profit organisation Floating e.V., a self organised group of practitioners whose mission is to open, maintain, and take care of this unique site while bringing non-disciplinary, radical and participatory programs to the public. Floating operates in solidarity with the site's history and the lineage of alternative narratives for urban development. It is an ecosystem in which to learn to engage, embrace complexity, and imagine different forms of living. Wetland was funded by Cultural Bridge, which celebrates bilateral artistic partnerships between the UK and Germany through a collaboration between Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council, Creative Scotland, Fons Soziokultur, Goethe-Institut London and Wales Arts International. f1e3d260-f826-11ef-8900-65aff1b3e373
SONIC COMMONS is a series responding to the poetic and phonic landscape of North Kent, produced in collaboration with FIELDNOTES. Featuring field recordings, readings, and sonic landscapes, the series was produced whilst walking along the Thames Estuary. It includes encounters with people met along the way, who give voice to the collected texts that reference these places. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Thanks to all the collaborators, those who sent us texts and those who voiced them: Kashif, Eugene, Shippey, Joshua, Ollie, Katie Lane, James Hendrix Elsey, Gina Prat Lilly, Carolyn Oulton, GK Mollett, John Hartley, Jon Davis, Monty Williams, Nicole Mollett and Sarah Westcott. Travelling through Warden Bay and the Leysdown Arcades on the Isle of Sheppey, this third and final episode was broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM on Tuesday 26 April 2024.
SONIC COMMONS is a series responding to the poetic and phonic landscape of North Kent, produced in collaboration with FIELDNOTES. Featuring field recordings, readings, and sonic landscapes, the series was produced whilst walking along the Thames Estuary. It includes encounters with people met along the way, who give voice to the collected texts that reference these places. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Thanks to all the collaborators, those who sent us texts and those who voiced them: Kashif, Eugene, Shippey, Joshua, Ollie, Katie Lane, James Hendrix Elsey, Gina Prat Lilly, Carolyn Oulton, GK Mollett, John Hartley, Jon Davis, Monty Williams, Nicole Mollett and Sarah Westcott. Starting in in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, this episode was broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM on Tuesday 27 February 2024.
SONIC COMMONS is a series responding to the poetic and phonic landscape of North Kent, produced in collaboration with FIELDNOTES. Featuring field recordings, readings, and sonic landscapes, the series was produced whilst walking along the Thames Estuary. It includes encounters with people met along the way, who give voice to the collected texts that reference these places. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Thanks to all the collaborators, those who sent us texts and those who voiced them: Kashif, Eugene, Shippey, Joshua, Ollie, Katie Lane, James Hendrix Elsey, Gina Prat Lilly, Carolyn Oulton, GK Mollett, John Hartley, Jon Davis, Monty Williams, Nicole Mollett and Sarah Westcott. Starting in Gravesend, the first episode, was broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM on Tuesday 23 January 2024.
Nicole Bachmann is an artist working across video, text, sound and performance. Her work explores how the voice and movement can be activated by the individual to make oneself heard and used as an agent for social and political change. This conversation, between Nicole and Whitstable Biennale performance curator and artist Keira Greene, took place on 19 November 2019 shortly after Nicole's performance Or what is (variations) at Mimosa House. The recording includes audio extracted from Or what is (variations) and features Jia-Yu Corti, Patricia Langa and Legion Seven. A written transcription of the interview is available for hard of hearing people via our online journal: https://whitstablebiennale.com/journal/nicole-bachmann-in-conversation-with-keira-greene/
Anna Barham's artwork uses video, text, print, installation and live events to set up relationships between human and non-human others. Exposing language to different bodies, forms and technologies, she creates complex feedback loops in which we witness - and contribute to - the production, erosion and modification of meaning.Listen to Anna's reading of 'Undone in the face' - a new work produced for Whitstable Biennale Journal from material she generated during a residency at St John's College Oxford in Spring 2019 . The recording is followed by a conversation with Whitstable Biennale performance curator Keira Greene, in which Anna describes her work with reading groups and voice recognition software, as well as the ideas and texts informing her work.
Created by Siobhan Davies and filmmaker David Hinton in 2012, All This Can Happen is a film constructed entirely from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of cinema. Based on Robert Walser’s novella ‘The Walk’ (1917), the film follows the footsteps of the protagonist as series of small adventures and chance encounters take the walker from idiosyncratic observations of ordinary events towards a deeper pondering on the comedy, heartbreak and ceaseless variety of life. A flickering dance of intriguing imagery brings to light the possibilities of ordinary movements from the everyday which appear, evolve and freeze before your eyes. Juxtapositions, different speeds and split frame techniques convey the walker’s state of mind as he encounters a world of hilarity and despair. Whitstable Biennale screened All This Can Happen in 2016. This was followed by this conversation between Davies and Whitstable Biennale 2016 Cinema curator Gareth Evans .
On the afternoon of 4 August 2018, Dave Kane (double bass, Leeds), Alex Neilson (drums, Glasgow), Chris Sharkey (electric guitar, Leeds) and Alex Ward (clarinet/electric guitar, London) performed as an improvisational quartet for the first time. Their 45-minute set took place in a marquee on Ramsgate beach in front of a captivated audience of around 250 people. Recorded by Adam Ellis and Dynamic Production Solutions. Post Production for this recording was by Adam Coney for Contra Pop and Whitstable Biennale. Coney also interviewed the musicians - read the transcript here: www.whitstablebiennale.com/journal The performance took place at Contra Pop Festival as part of a partnership with Whitstable Biennale. With thanks to Kyle McCallum
This is a conversation between Keira Greene and the Creaking Breeze Trio. The recording took place at Café OTO project space, London, 27th February, 2019. The Creaking Breeze Trio is Ute Kanngeisser, Paul Abbott and Seymour Wright. The trio is a part of the larger Creaking Breeze Ensemble project (which in addition to the trio includes Evie Ward and Billy Steiger). As a part of Whitstable Biennale 2018, on 10 June, between 4:17pm and 5:17pm The Creaking Breeze Trio performed their new composition 'Slack Fulcrum Twelfths (Green Vitriol)'. Ute plays Cello, Paul plays a snare drum, Seymour plays Alto Saxophone. The composition has been guided by fragments from a series of letters about an imaginary band described in Nathaniel Mackey’s ongoing experimental fiction project 'From A Broken Bottle Traces Of Perfume Still Emanate'. The trio performed their composition, animated by the sea and the wind, at the end of The Street, a shingle spit stretching out half a mile into the sea at low tide.The performance lasted for 60 minutes: during the 30 minutes of ‘slack water’ time either side of the low tide mark at 4.47pm.In addition to the performance, the Trio facilitated a workshop on ‘Fictional Music, Experimental Composition and Performance’. This recording includes the following elements:A recording of the live performance in Whitstable - made by Keira Greene. The conversation that took place in London. Some music influential in the process of working on the composition. A ‘guide’ track listened to by Paul on one headphone, during the live performance. https://www.whitstablebiennale.com/project/slack-fulcrum-twelfths-green-vitriol/
Commissioned for Whitstable Biennale 2018, Prose Brut is a performance work by artist Jude Crilly made for Whitstable Harbour. It was composed of interwoven choreographies, a seagull swarm, and a site-specific sculpture in collaboration with artist Morgan Courtois. The performance is made up of both human and bird choreographies, each happening on its own time register but creating a unified image. The performance used the multiple perspectives inherent to the Harbour’s quays, with its industrial buildings, boats and the horizon line of the sea itself. Here, Jude is joined in conversation by artist and Whitstable Biennale 2018 performance curator Keira Greene to discuss scores choreography, and the joining of performers and audiences in public space. The interview is woven with extracts from the quadrophonic soundtrack made for the piece.
Acclaimed painter Rose Wylie takes a keen interest in cinema, and references from film spill into her work. On 5 June 2016, in a discussion hosted by Art Writer Skye Sherwin, Wylie talked to artist filmmaker Ben Rivers, about painting, film, and being the subject of Rivers’ film portrait, What Means Something, which was screened after the discussion. https://www.whitstablebiennale.com/project/rose-wylie-ben-rivers-and-skye-sherwin-in-conversation/
Andrew Kötting has been running ‘salons’ for over 15 years, initially developed with the artist and filmmaker Clio Barnard, at KIAD (now the University for the Creative Arts). Early on, students were shown diverse moving image works to pique curiosity and provoke debate. The salons grew in an organic way to include readings, sound pieces, and the occasional performance. Invariably the sessions were quite loose and Andrew would respond to something that Clio presented, almost as a call and response device. In the first of the two salons presented for Whitstable Biennale 2016, Andrew explores the notion of ‘atmosphere’, and how it might be experienced in a sonic, visual or textual way. He worked with a selection of prepared materials, but the structure remained loose and improvised. Salon references: Music Andy Stott – 'Passed Me By' Moving Image Clio Barnard - 'Hermaphrodite Bikini' Andrew Kötting – 'KLIPPERTY KLOPP' Franceso Patierno – 'Quel Giornio' Martin Arnold – 'Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy' Run Wrake – 'Rabbit' Jonathan Hodgson – 'Forest Murmurs' Books David Shields – 'Reality Hunger' Zygmunt Bauman – 'Liquid Modernity' Ragnar Kjartansson: 'A lot of sorrow'