For many of us our restricted routines have reduced the variety of sounds we encounter. Whilst we may be compelled to tune out these newly inescapable noises, we might also try to re-evaluate them. This piece provides a remote invitation into another’s intimate space, though even in our increased desire for intimate connections this implies an intrusion as well as closeness.
Stat is made from sounds of my boiler and breath with adjustments to the reverb settings, and forms part of my work considering individual timekeeping based on the body and experiential rhythms. It explores ideas around the levels of space we inhabit and how our outlook and relationship with these spaces may have changed as we have retreated inward. The relating of body and home in the piece weakens the distinction between these levels, so the body can be contemplated as both a home itself and as a singular system with the mind.
Similar to the cyclical nature of breath prompting its own continuation, Morton Feldman’s De Kooning instructs ‘each instrument enters when the preceding sound begins to fade’. This creates a responsive, mindful approach through reliance on sensory perception and the present moment, which is emphasised by the absence of melody through a reduced need to remember what has, or anticipate what will, happen.
Our mental state and perception of time are linked through preoccupation with memory or anticipation, so it seems possible that for some of us lockdown has affected our sense of time. Realising this fragility could permit embracing both the more objective, unifying, stable, atomic time which helps facilitate our connections to each other, and the subjective, responsive, flexible, rhythmic time which might help connect us to experience. After all, central heating uses both a timer and a thermostat.




Nationality and location:
UK

Website:
alicequarterman.co.uk

Social Media:
instagram.com/alice.quarterman

About the artist:
David Loscher (*1982 in Neustadt an der Aisch, Germany) grew up on a Franconian farm. From 2004–2007 he studied musicology and German literature in Erlangen.
In 2011 he received a Baden-Württemberg scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He graduated in media art & scenography at the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design in 2014. David Loscher lives in Karlsruhe and works as a media artist & musician.

About the work:
length: 6:38 minutes
format: 24 bit/48 khz
lyrics & music written & performed by David Loscher
all tracks were recorded live without overdubs on 23.05. & 17.12.2020 the audio file contains following works
plötzlich (1:40 min)
Maskenpflicht (0:54 min, poem based on anagrams)
ich wiederhole mich (0:48 min)
Kontaktverbot (0:54 min, poem based on anagrams)
Körperverletzung (2:17 min)




Website:
davidloscher.info

Part I is kicked off by the anger about upcoming trends, which want to question unquestionable things. So it is a direct reaction. It is a sound sculpture which declares again the heliocentrism, after Nikolaus Kopernikus. A manifest against the mad flat earth and others : “The world is round!” it is spoken out of a speaker, from voices of a newsreader or they are also nearly freaking out about all this madness.The heavy sounds are like a big machine which prints louds of news or tries to move further on. To preserve a sharp mind in a mud of upcoming nonsense.

Repeated and declared; “Kopernikus says: The world is round!” “The world is round!”

Part II is philosophical metaphor: A choir repeats just the word “kling”, which could have the meaning of the german word “klingen” like “clink” or german “Klang”, which means in english “sound”. Like sounding. Like the sound of coins. Like something abstract or a feeling that we maybe recognize as a century. Or something all time omnipresent, which is wrapped around all recognizable.

Part III sounds like the inner of a working machine with little, fast and detailed movements. But it could also be a metaphor for a thinking process inside a brain, a society or an ongoing transformation process inside an unknown sphere. Understood that a lot of processes are often invisible until they appear on the surface. That there are sometimes multiplex fields with endless details, thought that something has to move until it is finished.

The end of the piece is like the end of focusing that percept. An appearance vanishes in this moment, as soon as its process isn’t viewed or recognizable anymore. Just the gazed thing is recognizable or: there where the gaze is dropped is the consciousness.



Nationality and location:
Based in Stuttgart

Website:
friedrichhensen.art

Social Media:
instagram.com/friedrich.hensen soundcloud.com/holofoton

The audio deals with my quarantine experience in Santiago – Chile, Praia do Forte and Salvador, the last two in Bahia, Brazil, during the year 2020 and early 2021. It was a period that I made new friends, reviewed sea turtles, Jubarte whales, I knew the origin of Brazilian Candomblé up close, I approached the entity Yemanjá, I experienced the difficulty of loving and I faced the pain of loss. It was a year of great intensity, with many events in a short time.



Nationality and location:
Brazil, Brasília

Website:
isabelacouto.org

Nationality and location:
German, based in Stuttgart

Social media:
instagram.com/vpnjona

During the corona-based locked down-period I followed an artist-in-residency program at Schloss Solitude. During that time I ended up in hospital. The audio-file consists of voice memos reporting my situation to friends of mine. It documents my experience during lock down as an in-patient at Klinik Schillerhöhe.

During that time the whole 2nd floor was filled with corona patients which resulted in an excessive demand of the staff – especially nurses – and a lack of care for every individual patient.



Nationality and location:
Amsterdam, NL

Website:
peterpandreams.com

We’ve tried to create an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty, we think the expression of German language is ideal for this and then we spiced it up with human drama.

During quarantine, people were forced to stay at home and this caused an increase in the number of domestic conflicts. This story is fiction, but there is some truth in every fairy tale. The reference of famous german fairy tales like Lorelea also influenced on our artwork.



Nationality and location:
Moscow people

Website:
behance.net/antishanti

Social media:
soundcloud.com/jinxed-choker instagram.com/redantishanti

During the pandemic, the place we spent most of our time was in our apartment. The most perceptible thing you see, while being in a room is the tilting and increasing movement of the light. Light penetrates and disappears suddenly, as it changes the atmosphere of the room and the emotion of the people inside.
Words by Sangyi Lee.



Nationality and location:
Sangyi Lee, *1994, Seoul, South Korea
Karl Alexander Seidel, *1995, Berlin, Germany

Website:
rodrigoromero-flores.wixsite.com/arte

Social media:
Sangyi Lee: instagram.com/isangyi_ Karl Alexander Seidel: instagram.com/rare_appearance___

“Lockdown in Paradise” was created after the first UK lockdown in 2020. I left my base in London to go back to my family on the North coast of Ireland for a period of 4 months. This is the longest period of time I have spent at home in 4 years.

The work combines traditional Irish instruments (wooden flute and violin), field recordings, singing, contemporary music production and spoken word. The field recordings coming through in the music were recorded in the Irish countryside and London. “Lockdown in Paradise” expresses the bizarre nature of finding purpose and meaning in the midst of a lockdown. It also explores the paradox of anxiety and liberation I found in having to leave my work and life in London to go back home for an unknown amount of time. I had extensive amounts of free time, which was initially quite daunting, however as I created a bit of routine for myself and found things to keep me busy it became quite an amazing experience. I reconnected with the Irish countryside, started running and hiking and spent quality time with my family who I would rarely see normally. Despite being in lockdown, I found a little bit of paradise.



Nationality and location:
Irish, Currently based in London

Website:
toraighwatson.com

Social Media:
instagram.com/toraighw soundcloud.com/toraigh-watson

The work “TWO STATES OF BEING” works, among other things, with fragments of a reading of my texts. These texts describe paintings that depict scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, such as Tizian’s Danae or Correggio’s Jupiter and Io. In these paintings, the strange moment of transformation into another biological form of existence is represented.

Die Arbeit „TWO STATES OF BEING“ arbeitet unter anderem mit Bruchstücken einer Lesung meiner Texte. In diesen Texten sind Gemälde beschrieben, die Szenen aus den Metamorphosen von Ovid abbilden, wie z.B. Tizians Danae oder Correggios Jupiter und Io. In diesen Bildern ist der seltsame Augenblick der Verwandlung in eine andere biologische Daseinsform dargestellt.



Nationality and location:
UK national currently based in Sion, Switzerland

Website:
villa-nix.de