Raising the alarm…a curatorial statement
Raise the Alarm — a day of deep listing and deep viewing of time-based art made by interdisciplinary artists, who make work in response to the natural world and the climate emergency.
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“For me, listening is a way of warning about arrogance and hubris, trying to say things to myself and others. To take a moment to listen, or glance across a shoulder next to you and see what’s behind.” John Akomfrah, ArtReview, April 2024
Exploring the work of artists who create sound, moving image and interdisciplinary art with an environmental focus, Raise the Alarm is based on deep listening — a premise coined by US musician Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016). Deep Listening outlines how consciousness may be affected by profound attention to the sonic environment — and applies it, not only to sound, but to other forms of stimuli, as a way of leading audiences to engage with the natural world, and to provoke engagement with the climate emergency.
Audio, visual and audio-visual works made by artists who work across disciplines from sound art to music, moving image, lighting, sculpture, theatre, movement and poetry, are at the core of this project. Their individual responses to the natural world invite us to open our ears, eyes, and minds, to actively understand what our world is communicating to us.
Audiences are invited to listen, watch and think deeply about ice sheets, oceans and rivers, marine life, echolocation, light pollution, the crepuscular and the nocturnal, gardens, rewilding, wayfinding, weather, bird calls, language and music, sound and silence, embodied knowledge, migration, anti-colonial uprising, ecological grief, dreaming and The Dreamtime, and to meditate on loss, longing, transformation, and kinship.
Raise the Alarm is devised as a space for awakening, reflection, conversation and provocation, and ultimately as a call to action, around one of the greatest concerns of our time.
—Martel Ollerenshaw, Glasgow, July 2024
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On 24 July 2024, the Reid Auditorium at the Glasgow School of Art welcomes audiences to stay all day for total immersion in a long form, deep listening and deep viewing experience or to linger to experience an excerpt of the programme, which includes a conversation with visual artist Mella Shaw.