29/03/2015
“If time is considered as a landscape then one is obviously free to wander anywhere within that terrain, into the recalled, recorded past or even the projected future, armed with the sophisticated sensibilities of the present as a means of interpreting and utilising what we find there… In imposing or establishing a pattern, whether that be chronological or geographical, the natural impulse is to seek out elements which resonate or rhyme with one another, and indeed it might be said that in this sense the principal device of psychogeography is actually a form of poetry” - Alan Moore
“Dry landscape gardens suggest more than they define; the viewer becomes an active partner in the act of creating meaning from the forms.. A zen scroll, like a garden of stone and sand, achieves the greatest impact with the least of means”
- Stephen Addiss, The Art of Zen
“What you see is largely determined by what you hear”
- William Burroughs, The Job.
Drift. The title for the exhibition is the English translation of a term in French coined by Situationist theorist Guy Debord- dérive. Drift, in the sense Debord used it, is a term for an unplanned journey through an environment, where the walker allows subconscious cues in the surroundings determine where they decide to walk, with the aim of experiencing landscape in new ways.
Much of Jonathan Collinson’s sound art consists of beautifully recorded walks through different environments, created using binaural microphones, a technique which provides completely directional 3D sound recordings of the environments he chose to document. When we listen to the recordings on headphones, it sounds as if we are really there, wherever the recording might be, from wind whistling around stone circles to street scenes in London.
Drift seemed to be the most apt title for the event encompassing this meaning with several others which seemed significant- Drift as an accumulation like leaves or snow. A bank, not just of sounds but of recordings as silt- the sediment collected around a lifetime. A bank of virtual environmental recordings, of walks through landscape- literally digital footprint. There were other meanings tied up in the word which seemed to get to the central concerns of Jon’s work- drift as a journey, to stray from the usual path, to leave the beaten path, to get sidetracked. Drift as a statement of meaning, essence, of commentary, interpretation or gist- the kind of drift you can get. Drift as a flood, an overwhelming flow. As insight, intuitiveness, as a message, as signification.
In the exhibition, and the memorial sound library, we hope to create more than a collection of scattered fragments over different media- what we hope can be shown is a few of the many dynamic facets of a human being- a composite portrait, and a posthumous collaboration, taking the fragments and giving them form in the manner of a cubist painting. We hope that what will emerge as we examine the fragments and assemble them will be something of lasting meaning and beauty.
The Curators, Drift.
