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Fermynwoods Podcast - Season 1

15 MAY - 31 DEC

The podcast is hosted by Fermynwoods Assistant Director Jessica Harby and features artist talks, discussions, original commissioned sound art and audio essays. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or visit our website.


 


Episode 1 - Sarah Gillett


Artist Sarah Gillett in 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.


http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-1-sarah-gillett/


 


Episode 2 - Amy Lay-Pettifer


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 but that we now expect will take place in 2021.


The episode includes discussion with and contributions by Pleasure Garden artists Alice Channer and Bethan Lloyd Worthington, as well as interjections by artist Harriet Plewis.


http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-2/


 


Episode 3 - Leyla Pillai


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.


http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-3-leyla-pillai/


Episode 4 - Anja Borowicz


London-based artist, collaborator and researcher Anja Borowicz shares an original sound work in response to our Triple Harvest callout. Anja recently collaborated with a neuroscientist to stage GestureLabs, where the public responded to archives of recorded body labour while their movements were recorded in a purpose built booth. This project palpably informed her approach to the documentary footage of steel workers. Just as she has captured poetry in the repetitive movements of human bodies at work, her piece extracted : crashed : smelted finds the music and humanity in the sounds of an industry populated by large metal monsters.


http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-4-anja-borowicz/


 


Episode 5 - Rebecca Lee


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. For her workshops during the 2018-2019 academic year, Rebecca brought a variety of microphones, including those that could pick up the vibrations of our rural metal fences and those that could be lowered into nearby streams or withstand an onslaught of condiments. Students first experimented with creating these strange noises, then used software to loop and layer the noises into music.


When turning these recordings into a cohesive sound work, Rebecca’s main concern was to represent the young people in a way that allowed them to speak for themselves, without dressing it up or down. She used only their recordings as source material and edited them together with the same DJ mixing software they used. The result is a sound piece which represents the experience of one of our workshops, complete with imperfect recording technique, gleeful creative experimentation, swearing, and the peaceful environment surrounding Sudborough Green Lodge.


http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-5-rebecca-lee/


 


Episode 6 - Tom Baskeyfield


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.


http://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-episode-6-tom-baskeyfield/


 


Episode 7 - Geoff Diego Litherland


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/