Listen with the Longplayer Trust
An introduction to the Longplayer Trust's new chair and trustee, and a list of listening recommendations and sound events curated by our staff and trustees
Introducing the new Chair and Trustee of the Longplayer Trust
We are delighted to introduce the incoming Chair of the Longplayer Trust, Sam Kinchin Smith, and a new Trustee, Tadeo Lopez-Sendon.
Sam is head of special projects at the London Review of Books, where he has spent the best part of a decade developing new applications for the LRB’s unique angle of approach, and devising new ways for it to intersect with the wider culture. His books include a monograph about the opera Peter Grimes (Routledge, 2018) and an illustrated history of the LRB (Faber, 2019). His writing, mostly about music, performance and literature, most often appears on the LRB blog, but occasionally turns up in other publications too.
Sam first worked with Longplayer on the 2020 Longplayer Assembly, produced by Artangel in association with the London Review of Books, which brought together 24 distinct voices from around the world in an exchange of ideas about our times; past, present and future.
Tadeo is a cultural programmer and creative producer with a specialism in digital, sound and technology, currently serving as Chief Executive of Abandon Normal Devices. His work focuses on bringing together artists and technologists to explore and create innovative projects, often involving new approaches to emerging technologies.
Sam and Tadeo will each play a key part in Longplayer’s preparation for our 25th anniversary in 2025, and we are very grateful for the unique skills that they bring to the Trust.
Longplayer’s board of Trustees and small number of staff are dedicated to keeping Longplayer playing. We are passionate about the opportunity Longplayer affords to engage with long-term thinking and are proud to act as stewards for a brief moment of its 1000-year-long span. We are also artists, musicians, performers, researchers, composers, designers, teachers, editors, programmers and producers, all with a deep interest in sonic philosophies, technologies and practices.
By way of introduction, we would like to share with you a list of listening recommendations and events curated by some of our Trustees and staff.
Longplayer Listening List
James Bulley is a Longplayer Trustee and an artist, composer and researcher whose practice explores sound, space and the more-than-human world. James recommends:
Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991, an exhibition which surveys the history of digital art from a feminist perspective, focusing on women who worked with computers as a tool or subject and artists who worked in an inherently computational way.
The exhibition is on at Mudam, The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg until February 2025.
https://www.mudam.com/events/opening-radical-software
Gilbert Carnell-Mckean is Longplayer’s Invigilation Manager and a Motion Designer. Gilbert recommends taking a look at:
Katie Paterson’s Future Library, about a forest planted in Norway which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in 100 years time.
https://katiepaterson.org/artwork/future-library/
Ella Finer is a Longplayer Trustee who also works with performance, sound and acoustic subjectivities; she is affiliated faculty at Syracuse University, London. Ella recommends:
Cycles at the Van Gogh House, an exhibition by Clara Hastrup, Vibeke Mascini (contributor to the Longplayer Assembly), and Inés Cámara Leret, exploring natural and mechanical rhythms and processes, featuring sound interventions inspired by the house by Rie Nakajima, Rory Salter, and Samuel Loveless.
Van Gogh House, until 15th December.
https://vangoghhouse.co.uk/cycles/
Simnikiwe Buhlungu’s hygrosummons (iter.01), 2024 at Chisenhale Gallery, their first solo show featuring installation, sculpture, and sound (including a live Zither performance), which summons water to reveal the ways knowledge, history, and ecology circulate and pool.
The exhibition runs until 3rd November. Ella will give a talk in response to the work at Chisenhale Gallery on the 17th October.
https://chisenhale.org.uk/project/simnikiwe-buhlungu/
https://chisenhale.org.uk/whats-on/talk-20241017-1900/
Image credit: Andy Keat Majazz Project: Palestinian Sound Archive at the Southbank Centre, a project reviving and remixing vintage Palestinian and Arab albums to showcase the richness and diversity of their cultural and musical heritage.
Southbank Centre, until 1st November.
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/majazz-project-palestinian-sound-archive/
Jem Finer is the composer of Longplayer and an artist and musician as well as a Longplayer Trustee. Jem recommends:
The wonderful cello improvisation of Lori Goldston - Convolusions:
Some fantastic Flamenco with an electric blues twist by Antonio Fernandez & Pedro de Dios:
A podcast about a fellow Long Term Art Project, As Slow As Possible, the 639 years long John Cage organ piece playing in Halberstadt, Germany, by 99% invisible.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/as-slow-as-possible/
Imogen Free is Longplayer’s Producer and a researcher, writer and teacher working on sound in modernist women’s writing. Imogen recommends:
Bodies of Sound, edited by Irene Revell and Sarah Shin, an exploration of feminist sonic cultures and radical listening featuring texts from over fifty contributors, on gender, ways of knowing, witnessing, sounding and speaking, translation, displacement, violence and peace.
Out this November on Silver Press.https://www.silverpress.org/products/bodies-of-sound-1
Wren BC's sublime new work 'Annwn', a shimmering sonic exploration of the landscape and mythology of Wales:
Lois Keidan is a Longplayer Trustee who co-founded the Live Art Development Agency and was Director until 2021. She was also Director of Live Arts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London from 1992 to 1998. Lois recommends:
Laurie Anderson’s new live stage work at Factory International, ARK - United States V, marking the end of the world in a momentous mix of music, cinematic imagery, songs and stories.
Factory International, 12-14th November.
https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/laurie-anderson-ark-united-states-part-5/
Sam Kinchin-Smith is Longplayer’s incoming Chair of Trustees, and as introduced above, a writer and head of special projects at the London Review of Books. Sam recommends:
‘Sentir que no sabes’, the new album by the Guatemalan avant-garde cellist Mabe Fratti (performing in London on 6th November).
Oliver Beer’s ‘Resonance Project: The Cave, 2024’, a series which integrates voice, body, and architecture in compositions designed to reveal and amplify the natural resonant frequencies of diverse location.
At La Biennale de Lyon until January 2025.
Tadeo Lopez-Sendon is Longplayer’s newest Trustee. As introduced above, he is also a cultural programmer and creative producer with a specialism in digital, sound and technology, currently serving as Chief Executive of Abandon Normal Devices.
A Riot in Three Acts at Somerset House, a large-scale installation by artist, filmmaker and composer Imran Perretta, considering the interconnected narratives around riots, civil uprisings and the systemic injustices that spur such collective actions directed against the state. The installation features eight intimate live performances of Imran's original score for a string quartet, performed by the Manchester Camerata orchestra within the installation.
Somerset House, until 10th November
https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/imran-perretta-a-riot-in-three-acts
The Centre for Investigative Journalism’s ‘Source!’, the 10 year anniversary edition of the CIJ Logan Symposium at the Barbican, bringing together some of the most courageous and innovative new investigative reporters and outlets in the world to forge alliances against official censorship, surveillance and deceit.
Barbican, 14th and 15th November.
https://tcij.org/logan-symposium/source/
Finally, Gavin Starks is a Longplayer Trustee who has spent 20 years helping to make our data infrastructure useful to everyone: creating and leading businesses, bringing together the web, finance, policy, data, science, the environment, art and media. He is also a musician who has just released Binary Dust, a long-term series of musical works inspired by cosmological models and astrophysics:
Happy listening!
Longplayer Conversation 2024
In our next newsletter, we will be announcing our fantastic speakers and how to get tickets for our annual Longplayer Conversation. In the meantime, you can read about our past conversations, featuring the likes of Sir David Attenborough, Marina Warner, Ali Smith, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Timothy Morton and Brain Eno, among others, here.
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