Sound Performances
SONIC ACTIVATIONS OF THE RAKE
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 6:50MINS]
A site-specific commission to respond sonically to a room at Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, in which the eight prints of Hogarth's Rakes Progress were hanging. Curated by Marcus Orlandi, Props and Propositions, the Body as Sculpture, 2014, also featured performances by Jefford Horrigan, Louisa Ashcroft, Julia Hayes, Alys Hughes, Lily Johnson and Ilona Sagar. The work involved contact microphones on objects (tape measure, bucket, bottle and glass, chains, keys, paper scrolls, money and a dice) and a small dancing master's violin or pochette, kindly loaned by Ben Stevens, on which was played Bobbing Joe, a tune from Playford's English Country Dances from the 1651 edition. John Soane, architect and erstwhile resident at Pitzhanger bought Hogarth's original series of paintings (of 1733-4) in 1802. They now hang in the John Soane museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
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BRUCE NAUMAN
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 5:00MINS]
..playing a note on a violin while walking round the studio.., by Bruce Nauman 1967, (10 mins early U-Matic video) - re-enacted by Tansy Spinks, 2014, (5 mins, video) in the Wimbledon Space studio. The one note shifts very slightly to cause a beat between the two notes.
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LEEDS! LEEDS! LEEDS!
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 45:00MINS]
Sitting in my student, back-to-back house in Beeston, Leeds in the early 80s, I experienced an extraordinary sonic phenomenon: 40,000 voices raised in a vast cheer burst into the sitting room, followed by urgent chanting and a massively disappointed "ohhh.." It was unexpected (did I even know there was a football ground nearby?) and chilling yet very moving. These voices, raw, in atavistic unison impinged on the mundane activities of my everyday life. This surreal incongruity of hearing but not seeing the source of so many voices erupting uninvited into my house occurred on many subsequent Saturdays and I came to quite enjoy the unsolicited mass companionship. The memory has stayed with me ever since.
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THE LABORATORY OF SONIC POSSIBILITIES
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 6:45MINS]
The event was the culmination of a sound art residency at Wimbledon Space, Wimbledon College of Art, March 2014, as a collaboration between Tansy Spinks and Iris Garrelfs. The site specific event featured amplified objects sourced locally, a series of tributes to Joseph Toynbee, the c19th otologist and philanthropist who lived locally, small videos of the processes, drawings and sonic activations undertaken, a realisation of the magazine score on the wall, (heard on a CD player) and field recordings from a local park recorded binaurally.
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SEVEN BOWS
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 6:50MINS]
Devised, performed and filmed by Tansy Spinks and Klega, the video features a violin found in a skip and seven improvised bows: leek, whisk, windscreen wiper, milk container, carrot, coat hanger, egg. The violin is tuned to Bruce Nauman's tuning: D.E.A.D
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SOUNDING THE PORTAL
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 8:00MINS]
Sounding the Portal was a sound art work installed in the BE OPEN Sound Portal in London in 2013.
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SONIC RITUAL
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 5:20MINS]
A live, site specific performance which took place in the Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden as part of the British Sociology Association annual conference, April 2013. This was a commission on behalf of Goldsmiths University Visual Sociology department's live sociology stream.
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FOUR FULL STOPS
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 4:17MINS]
A live, site specific performance at the Parasol Unit, Wharf Road, London N1, April 15th 2013, responding to the work of artist Navid Nuur in his exhibition Phantom Fuel and in particular to the work 'WhereYou End and I Begin' in which he takes the full stop at the end of his press release and enlarges it 'until the full stop itself posits its own objectivity,' as the press release suggests. This work is framed and exhibited nearby whilst the performer walks the gallery, playing with the many meanings of the word 'dots', as described by Nuur and as understood by musicians presenting a layering of pizzicato resolutions and cadences which act as both endings and perhaps, new beginnings. With thanks to Navid Nuur and to Idit Nathan for videoing.
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SILENT ZONE
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 4:00MINS]
Silent Zone, Chelsea Old College Library, Chelsea College of Art, London SW1, March 1st 2012, 4 minutes from a six and a half hour sound performance recording and playing back the sound of writing into the working library space.
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FLOOR ZERO
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 3:03MINS]
A live site-specific sound piece devised for the goods lift at Camberwell College of Art for the exhibition in Camberwell Space - Elusive, Feb 8th to 26th, 2011 Floor Zero by Tansy Spinks, until 26th Feb.
In the corridor next to Elusive was a queue. As Roman Ondak's Tate acquisition Good Feelings in Good Times shows, we Brits love a good queue. We always seem to assume the end of it will hold wonders. Since it was a queue for the lift we assumed the wonders were in another floor. Not so, the wonder was the lift itself. As sets of people crammed into the lift we were trapped in Tansy Spink's live sound piece.
At first we couldn't see what the extensive recording apparatus in with us was for, but soon enough we felt a claustrophobic nausea as the lift voice 'First Floor, Going Up, Second Floor...' etc. gradually looped and layered to become a cacophany of sound that disorientated and, combined with the movement of the lift, nauseated.
When at one point the doors opened and we saw a man from the first floor get in smiling (ah! I found you!) I realised all sense of time and space were gone. This moment was artful, derivative of Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room or Gilbert and George's Gordon's Makes Us Drunk, but with a physical dimension all its own. The art was the feeling in the stomach, located in the whole body, not just the eyes and ears. An unusual feeling, adoring an art work yet blessedly relieved when you could finally walk away from it.
And so, breathing deeply, we did walk away into the dark Peckham night, leaving the imposing university building behind us, and clutching free posters. The best works were those which the poster could not capture, could not reproduce, those which will stay in our memories, no souvenir required.
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TAKE A SPACE MAKE A SOUND IN IT
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 4:30MINS]
Interpreting a small selection of Cardew's Improvisation Rites from Nature Study Notes at Morley, for The Engine Room festival, Morley College, December 9th 2011, 7 – 8.30pm - mapping the dimensions of the space using an electric violin and hoops for bows.
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HOOP
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 12:26MINS]
A performance at Beaconsfield Gallery, London, an ex Victorian Ragged School space, responding live to the site, and the films projected for RELLA event, curated by Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning. Features violin, hoop, feather and ball of wool with needles. "Amazing that a feather can be made to make such a loud noise.." (audience feedback)
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SEAFORT
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 16:38MINS]
Redsands Seafort, Whitstable Biennale, June 2010 with collaborator, Antoine Bertin
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SONIC TRIANGLE
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 9:00MINS]
A series of four live sound performances devised for Uncharted Stories exhibition, inspired by the military history of the site…within The Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Using a hacksaw, string, plumbers pipes, (alluding to the Panoptic prison design plan for aural surveillance), looping and MAX msp patch to send the sound around the three corners of the triangular gallery space.
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HENRY’S BALLAD
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 5:59MINS]
Five performances in October 2008 for Concrete Dreams Exhibition, Art in Perpetuity Trust' gallery, Harold's Wharf, Deptford, London, curated by Fran Cottell and Liz Harrison. Harold Works was built on the original site of the slaughterhouse serving Henry VIII's palace, himself, something of a composer. An evocation of the sounds in the slaughterhouse followed by an echo of one of his original ballads, 'Pastime with Good Company' may be discerned as part of the performance.
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SEVEN BRIDGES
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 6:50MINS]
A violin found in a skip without a bridge - seven objects, found to hand are used as provisional bridges: loo roll, mobile phone, bulldog clip, egg, red double decker bus, shallott, toy train set bridge… devised and played by Tansy Spinks and Klega.Edited by Fran Ross.
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BOILER ROOM
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 5:39MINS]
Live solo electric violin performance with looping pedal responding to the sounds of the boiler in the Fine art Studio, Middlesex University
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FASSBINDER’S JUKEBOX
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 1:54MINS]
Improvisation to the abbatoir sequence in 'The year of 13 Moons' devised by Michael Curran for Camden Arts Centre
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BROOKLYN NIGHTS
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 0:25MINS]
An extract from performance at Horse Hospital January 2007
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GALLOP
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 1:36MINS]
Extract from Gallop, (Rossini’s William Tell and Handel’s The Harmonius Blacksmith)
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SUGAR
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 0:47MINS]
Live solo violin improvisation for Yvonne Maxwell's 16mm film at Camden Arts centre
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WHITE CUBE
[PERFORMANCE VIDEO - 3:07MINS]
A performance at White Cube gallery, Bermondsey during the Christian Marclay exhibition, 2015. Performing a water score by Macunias, Duet for Full Bottle and Glass, 1962.
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