Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast: Recent Episodes
Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
Fermynwoods Contemporary Art is an educational charity and arts organisation that supports life through art. We commission innovative and meaningful ways for visual artists to engage with audiences, in public spaces across Northamptonshire and online.
Our podcast is an audio gallery space and extension of our programme, featuring original sound art, artist discussions, and audio essays.
The first episode of our Love + Light season of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast presents Of Immeasurable Consequence by Pale Blue Dot Collective.Pale Blue Dot Collective (artists Louise Beer and John Hooper) spent four months in residence with Fermynwoods to create Of Immeasurable Consequence - originally an immersive photographic and sound based installation installed in All Saint Church, Aldwincle, from 24th March to 7th April 2024.In this version of Of Immeasurable Consequence, which has been adapted to include parts of recorded conversation, Pale Blue Dot Collective examine our place within the universe, framing the impact of the climate emergency through the eyes of evolution and the immense time period it has taken for each form of life to arrive at this point.More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-p...The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss
The final episode of the Xylophobia season presents a radio play written by our podcast guest curators, SUBTERRA: Marie-Chantal Hamrock and Astrid Björklund.
Told through the voice of the Narrator, we are presented with an eccentric cast of characters living and contending with an ever diminished and hostile landscape, made up of old mines, towering blast furnaces, an inexplicable blackness which seems to spread insidiously, and a strange red substance that emanates from the earth.
Among the characters are an unnamed man who searches in desperation for 'that place' using an old ironstone amulet; Niko and Launo are two hardened characters who seem to have strayed from their community and traverse this landscape alone, speaking wistfully of old times; The Withered Arm is a disembodied human arm working as a barmaid in the Inn of Ill Omens with its ever decreasing customers sadly sipping from their worthy pints; The Strange Man seems to know something sinister no one else does and plays cruel tricks on those around him. And finally, the Fermyn is an ethereal character who cannot be described in words and has no discernible form but somehow seems to know more than anyone else about the nature of this dark world.
… All the while the narrator begins to lose her grip on reality and starts to question her very own existence.
Please note: This episode is binaural/atmospheric recording best listened to with headphones.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-24-subterra
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss
This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast presents a new work, O' God of Weather by Saoirse Horne.
O’ God of Weather combines elements of ambient music, folk song, and field recording, which together paint a vivid and imaginative world, rooted in messages of phantasm and fabrication.
Somehow, through a painterly appreciation of texture, patience and solitude, the artist manages to create a sensitive and ethereal act of balladry – O’ God of Weather considers how deeply weather affects our lives - and how it can impede our access to woodland spaces. The work has a visionary awareness of multiple temporalities, giving the listener glimpses into the lived experience of the artist, while also offering interpolated fictions and folklores that lead to imaginative world building. Painting through wave, tone, harmony and storytelling, Saoirse’s work feels both permanent and ephemeral in its reverence for an invisible, yet powerful deity.
This work might make one feel as though through the simple act of listening they are part of some sacred incantation, invoking the almighty God of Weather.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-23-saoirse-horne
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss
This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast with artist Tosca Terán draws from fungal mycelial communication research to create a soundscape which the artist herself describes as ‘perhaps a bit ominous with a dash of science fiction’.
Working with the bio-electrical activity of living mycelium, in Forest UnderSound = Ways of Knowing, Tosca reveals the ethereal fungi frequencies of the oyster mushroom, pleurotus ostreatus.
Threading control voltages throughout what Tosca affectionately refers to as a 'Myco-Synth' the mushroom becomes a conduit for pulsating waves, coursing through intricate patch cables to construct a mesmerizing drone.
Thanks to Spencer Graham for providing the field recording from Fermyn Woods that was interpolated into this work.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-22-tosca-teran
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.
This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features a rich and profound work by A Ton of Worms - a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose primary focus is an immersive communing with Taxus Baccata (the English yew), through both classic art forms as well as field recording, whittling, fermentation, and propagation.Their work also addresses the conservation of persecuted wildlife and plants, the maligned and misrepresented (often chthonic) species overlooked by many, and the beauty and effulgence of decay at the intersection of nature and civilisation.
Wood as Home, Dirt as Time is the audio recording of a performance piece undertaken on the Summer Solstice of 2023 and edited retrospectively into sound collage. It explores themes of time, space, nature, and human connection through the chthonic lens of an ancient yew tree - conjuring the imagined state of consciousness of a being that lives and perceives in centuries rather than years.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-21-a-ton-of-worms
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.
This video is a response by artist Sapphire Goss to Episode 20 of the Fermynwoods Podcast which features a discussion with artist Spencer Graham, whilst utilising the Music and Talk feature on Spotify, which allows for tracks to be integrated into the conversation.
Spencer Graham is an artist based in Northamptonshire, UK. His practice revolves around a deep interest in music, and questions ideas relating to materiality and place. Utilising and sharing very specific collections of music, acquired according to self-set constraints, he considers how we access, consume, use, and most importantly, listen to music.
Spencer's deep interest in music and the everyday has led him to work with records, CDs, cassettes and MP3s as his primary media for the last ten years. In this episode Spencer discusses circular narratives, his Xylophobia / Shinrin-yoku audio mixes produced for our Xylophobia: Online exhibition, forest themed tracks that didn't make it into those mixes, and his own fields recordings from Fermyn Woods.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-20-spencer-graham
This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features the work of Maja Zećo. In September 2022, Maja negotiated Hazel and Thoroughsale Woods from Corby town centre, Northamptonshire, as Silencer.
Silencer is a performance in a sensory impairment soundwalking suit complete with earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones. Where Maja experienced the environment in complete silence the suit made ‘the other’ visible in public while concealing gender, body shape and voice. At once both a playful intervention and an unexpected encounter, the work has connotations of protective clothing and social distancing that speak to larger fears of walking through woodland spaces.
At the heart of this work are two very important questions: “Who is listening?” and “Who is performing?”
Listeners are advised to listen with headphones as this is a binaural mix.
The following episode features themes that might be triggering for some listeners and contains strong language which may be unsuitable or offensive.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-19-maja-zeco
This episode has been edited by Astrid Björklund, the other half of SUBTERRA.
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.
For this episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast artists Danny Treacy and Johannes Zits from our Treewilder exhibition at Barnwell Country Park, share a drink and conversation with Marie-Chantal Hamrock, one half of our podcast curators SUBTERRA.
With both artists work speaking to and of the trees, Treewilder curator Angela Kingston suggested that Danny might represent the dark, whilst Johannes the light. However through the following conversation, both artists reveal how such binary oppositions might in fact not be the case and the works coalesce and converge - meeting at what is perhaps the most intriguing uniting theme: joy.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-18-danny-treacy-johannes-zits/
This episode has been edited by Astrid Björklund, the other half of SUBTERRA.
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.
This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features a new audio essay, The forest will answer in the way you call to it, by Hanna Tuulikki, encouraging a conversation with the woods, exploring her Finnish heritage, and weaving together family stories, folklore and song. The piece reflects on how ideals of ecology, identity, and nationhood are constructed and entwined. The essay features audio extracts from her installation Under Forest Cover (Metsänpeiton Alla), commissioned for Helsinki Biennial 2021. More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-17-hanna-tuulikki/
The accompanying visual is a video response to the episode, by artist Sapphire Goss.
A new video by Sapphire Goss in response to episode 16 of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast by Maya Livio.
Episode 16 features an original sonic essay by Maya Livio and JP Merz, followed by a discussion with Maya Livio: Salvaging Birds contains a chorus of human and non-human voices, drawing attention to biases within avian conservation datasets. Here she has set a research-driven essay against sounds generated by an AI which was trained on specific datasets, particularly ones from the Cornell Library of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library – the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive of wildlife recordings. By using machine learning to speculatively queer birdsong datasets, the work complicates datafied approaches to conserving what and who is left of our world.
To maintain the digital integrity of the Maya's AI driven work, Sapphire's response using obsolete analogue technologies is presented separately from the main episode.
Find Sapphire's video on Spotify and more at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-16-maya-livio/
This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features Salvaging Birds, an original sonic essay by Maya Livio and JP Merz, followed by a discussion with Maya Livio.
Through the use of what Maya calls expanded nonfiction, she constructs a haunting and lyrical sonic essay containing a chorus of both human and non-human voices. The work draws attention to the biases and misclassifications within avian conservation datasets.
Here she has set a research-driven essay against sounds generated by an AI which was trained on specific datasets, particularly ones from the Cornell Library of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library – the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive of wildlife recordings. By using machine learning to speculatively queer birdsong datasets, the work complicates datafied approaches to conserving what and who is left of our world.
More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-16-maya-livio/
Thumbnail image: Salvaging Birds, generative image by Cassie McQuater, 2022
To accompany the first episode of the new season of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast by Samm Anga, Veronica Petukhov reimagines the mythological character of Lisovyk. Also known in Russian as leshy or borowy, leśnik, leśniczy, lasowik, in Polish, Lisovyk is inspired by Slavic folk tales Veronica's grandmother would tell her when she would visit her in Odesa in Ukraine. As the story goes The Lisovyk is a seldom seen forest spirit who is mostly harmless but when angered can be treacherous. Veronica reimagines this entity through a 3D environment, layering poetry over an uncanny floating forest, using augmented reality and glitchy visuals to create a hypnotic digital universe.
Watch the video component of Lisovyk in Spotify or on our website at: https://fermynwoods.org/lisovyk-veronica-petukhov/
Episode 15 of the podcast features an original audio work by Samm Anga and a discussion with Veronica Petukhov, who collaborate as audio-visual duo Muto Major.
The pair responded individually to the theme of Xylophobia, our new two-year programme funded by Arts Council England. The programme is named from the fear of wooden objects or forests, addressing related fears and issues of place and belonging which go to the heart of community feelings of exclusion from both the art world and woodland spaces.
The first episode of the new season of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features an original audio work by Samm Anga and a discussion with Veronica Petukhov, who is part of the collaborative audio-visual duo Muto Major, with Samm. The pair responded individually to the theme of Xylophobia. Xylophobia is Fermynwoods Contemporary Art's new two-year programme funded by Arts Council England. The programme is named from the fear of wooden objects or forests, addressing related fears and issues of place and belonging which go to the heart of community feelings of exclusion from both the art world and woodland spaces. In this new sound work Samm takes a solitary journey into his own psyche and heritage, ruminating on his own fear of nature: water. Through field recordings, sonic representations of Nigerian mermaid song and recorded conversations with his parents, he navigates the listener through a rich ambient soundscape. More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-15-samm-anga/
Spotify episode video by Sapphire Goss
Musician and artist Rebecca Lee returns with a new sound work and discussion in the last podcast of our 2021 season. This is the second work Rebecca has made in response to and collaboration with the students from The CE Academy as part of our Alternative Provision programme.
Last year, Rebecca’s You Can Hear The Wind presented student recordings made during workshops in the previous school year in as pure a form as possible whilst still resulting in a cohesive listening experience. For this new work, Dream Job, she has approached the recordings of her 2021 Zoom workshops the same way she approaches the music she makes as Bredbeddle - elevating the experience of making to art.
She discusses these different approaches, her socially engaged practice, and how the medium might still be the message, in a discussion with Assistant Director Jessica Harby later in the episode.
More at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-14-rebecca-lee/
In this episode, artist Simon Faithfull is in discussion with curator Yasmin Canvin about his influences, his work, and the dark humour of Sisyphus. Simon's work Going Nowhere 1.5 is part of the group exhibition Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Countryside Park.
More at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-13---simon-faithfull/
In this episode, the Fermynwoods Podcast shifts slightly from our current programme theme of how humans influence and affect the landscape around them, to how a history of changing landscapes can shape a human. Sayed Sattar Hasan is a British-born artist based in Oslo, Norway. His work explores the parameters of national identity, heritage and belonging and the faultlines between tradition and change.
In this new sound work, made during a mandated travel quarantine between his past and current home, he tells the epic tale of his alter ego Hasansen, digging down into the layers of the places and cultures that have made him.
More at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-12---sayed-sattar-hasan/
An enhanced discussion between Fermynwoods Director James Steventon and David Blyth.
David Blyth is an artist and Course Leader in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His work is informed by the craft skills of taxidermy and draws upon narratives of folklore, shamanism and cultural memory. David's work will be in included in our upcoming exhibition The Howse Shal Be Preserved at Rockingham Castle starting 11 July 2021.
This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is supported by Arts Council England and by a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Places Trust, a grant-giving charity funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
More about this episode here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-11---david-blyth/
Artist Lucie McLaughlin mines her everyday for sounds in the three-part audio work Clickety-Clack. In this work, we can hear the sound of seagulls, a printer dancing, music leaked through walls, the quiet rabble of voices outside a pub and the purr of a washing machine. In the form of a triptych of sound works, Clickety-Clack comprises field recording and constructed narrative sequences. Here, the material of listening is loose footed, both aware of its construction and interrupted by words. Perspectives on familiar or often overlooked sound are shifted into condensed spaces to reveal an aural poetics in movement, whilst the words performed ask questions of the spaces we’re in or are hearing.
This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is supported by Arts Council England and by a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Places Trust, a grant-giving charity funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
Clickety-Clack was originally commissioned as part of URGENCIES at CCA Derry~Londonderry, a project supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Derry City & Strabane District Council.
More on this episode here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-10---lucie-mclaughlin/
You can find Lucie McLaughlin at https://www.luciemclaughlin.com/
Artist Marie-Chantal Hamrock presents new audio work The Iron, The Pitchfork & The Sow in this latest episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast. Building on her film There is Something in the Ground, There is Something in the Sky from our online Triple Harvest exhibition, Marie combines real and embellished Northamptonshire histories in this tale of ritual.
Thank you to Corby Borough Council Archives and artist Amanda Loomes for sharing material included in this work.
Marie-Chantal Hamrock can be found at: https://www.mariehamrock.com/
More on this episode, including images and transcript, at our website: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-9---marie-chantal-hamrock/
The second season of our podcast starts with an original audio work by, and discussion with, Anna Brownsted. Anna works across a wide range of media including sound, installation, and performance.
Her work Week Nine was originally released by HOME Manchester during the ninth week of England's first lockdown. It is a cinematic landscape, meant to be listened to via headphones in a dark room.
Feeling zapped? Want to get away? We offer deep relaxation at its most unexpected. Join us on a journey for your own good – rethinking productivity, one week at a time…
Week Nine is a Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Homemakers commission, with support from Arts Council England and Cambridge Junction
Anna Brownsted: https://www.annabrownsted.com/ HOME Manchester Homemakers series: https://homemcr.org/event/homemakers/ Cambridge Junction: https://www.junction.co.uk/
More at our website: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-8---anna-brownsted/
For the final episode of our first podcast season, host and Assistant Director at Fermynwoods Jessica Harby talks with artist Geoff Diego Litherland about his new album of music. Since 2016, Geoff's practice developed from painting landscape to cultivating it. He grew a field of flax, harvested and spun the fibres, and then learned to weave his own uniquely textured linen canvases. This year, he turned those weaving patterns into sound loops to produce the basis of music, now available on his album Woven / Ground. Listening to the music, which runs throughout this episode, is listening not only to his paintings, but to the entire journey from cultivated dirt to finished work of art.
http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-7---geoff-diego-litherland/
Episode 6 of our podcast features a discussion between artist Tom Baskeyfield and writer Josh Allen. Tom's works on paper, depicting local stones floating on a black plane, are currently on display in our In Steps of Sundew exhibition. As you'll hear in this discussion, stone is both emblem and starting point for much larger issues and ideas. We begin with a pebble in the hand of a rambler and travel through issues of mindfulness, theology, human vs geological time, nationalism, and home.
Tom has provided a wealth of supplementary material for this discussion. Visit the link for images, a full bibliography of works sited during this discussion, and a short film, as well as a full transcript of this podcast episode.
http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-6--tom-baskeyfield/
For our fifth episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast, we focus on our Alternative Provision programme with students from The CE Academy. Artist and musician Rebecca Lee has created her sound piece You Can Hear The Wind entirely from recordings made by students.
Rebecca Lee is a musician and sound practitioner producing performance, sound works, projects and publications with a particular focus on music and narrative and collaboration. She often works long term in relation to specific site and places, draws on written forms and uses improvisation, scores and DIY approaches to combine period and contemporary materials and processes. She moves between public off-site or project-based work, traditional arts venues and DIY music spaces. Rebecca performs as Bredbeddle, makes improvised music with Marie Thompson and is part of Primary Music group.
More on this episode at our website here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-5-rebecca-lee/
Rebecca Lee's website: http://www.rebeccalee.info/ And her SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/rebeccarecordssounds
The fourth instalment of our podcast is an original sound work in response to our Triple Harvest callout by London-based artist, collaborator and researcher Anja Borowicz.
Before transitioning to art, Anja studied industrial engineering - an experience which instilled an enduring affinity for industrial landscapes, diagrammatic instructions and thinking across taxonomies. This made her response to our Corby steel industry heritage films particularly insightful. Her work "extracted : crashed : smelted" finds the music and humanity in the sounds of an industry populated by large metal monsters.
More from Anja Borowicz on this sound piece at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-4-anja-borowicz/
To watch the seven films made by artists as part of our Triple Harvest project visit http://fermynwoods.org/triple-harvest-films
Artist, writer and researcher Leyla Pillai takes us on a guided tour of a fictionalised truth in episode three of the Fermynwoods Podcast. Building on episode two's exploration of Pleasure Garden, this new audio work is rooted in the imagined space of Deene Park and begins a contemplation and lure into its external grounds. A stream of consciousness style of spoken word, considering the garden as an acoustic sound mirror.
An accompanying text and images by Leyla are available at our website here: http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-3---leyla-pillai/
You can listen to the archives of Who'sThat Girl w/ Leyla Pillai here: https://www.nts.live/shows/whos-that-girl
This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is an audio essay by writer and curator Amy Lay-Pettifer addressing our current state of collective pause. The audio work encapsulates her experience of curating Pleasure Garden, an exhibition meant to open early May 2020 at Deene Park and includes discussion with and contributions by Pleasure Garden artists Alice Channer and Bethan Lloyd Worthington, as well as interjections by artist Harriet Plewis.
Images, references and a transcript for this podcast are available at http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-2/
Our first podcast episode is a talk between Fermynwoods Assistant Director Jessica Harby and Sarah Gillett, an artist and writer investigating the life of things across space and time, as well as across media. Sarah has been commissioned to produce work over two years and multiple sites as part of our programme In Steps of Sundew. In this talk, she discusses the inspiration provided by the grounds, archives and staff at Rockingham Castle, research on how astronauts dream, the promise of future seances, and the joy of collaboration.
This episode features clips from her sound work "Well Well" as well as a presentation of another work in its entirety, the hypnotic "Black Night".
For more information on this podcast, including images mentioned in the episode, visit http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-1---sarah-gillett