I was interviewed for the American magazine TransplantNATION about my work with the late photographer Tim Wainwright and patients in two UK organ transplant centres.
A co-authored article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) discussing the findings of HPNoSS (Hospital Project on Sound and Sleep), assessing the impact of the acoustic environment on both patients and staff. Co-authored by Andreas Xyrichis, Jamie Mackrill, Anne Marie Rafferty, Angus Carlyle and John Wynne.
> image > memory > sound > text
My chapter in The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art is entitled '> image > memory > sound > text'. I decided to approach writing about sound by starting with images and working through the memories they trigger, focusing on Anspyaxw, an installation which grew from my work with speakers of Gitxsanimaax, an endangered indigenous language in Canada. Looking back through the photographs taken by Denise Hawrysio and myself during our fieldwork in and around the reserve at Kispiox, I was struck by the untold — the people, stories, sounds, and relationships that got left behind in the process of turning fieldwork into artwork.
Edited by Marcel Cobussen, Vincent Meelberg and Barry Truax. Contributors include Douglas Kahn, Steven Feld, Helmi Järviluoma, Don Ihde, Katharine Norman, Jean-Paul Thibaud, David Dunn, David Toop, Emily Thompson, Salomé Voegelin, Frances Dyson, Seth Kim-Cohen, Andrea Polli and John Wynne.
Beyond text? Critical practices and sensory anthropology, edited by Rupert Cox, Andrew Irving and Christopher Wright, contains a short essay about the Transplant project, and the accompanying DVD features a 20-minute excerpt from the first Transplant video produced by myself and Tim Wainwright (available in its entirety here).
Beyond text? is about the relationship between anthropological understandings of the world, sensory perception and aesthetic practices. The volume brings together leading figures in anthropology, visual and sound studies to explore how knowledge, sensation and embodied experiences can be researched and represented by combining different visual, aural and textual forms.
Contributors include Steven Feld and Virginia Ryan, Angus Carlyle, Louise K Wilson, Peter Cusack, John Wynne.
Celebrating five years of exhibitions by Gazelli Art House in London, this publication features two of my installations for the gallery. Other artists include Littlewhitead, Saad Qureshi, Recycle Group, and Aziz + Cucher.
Hearing Voices: Speakers / Languages
I am pleased to announce the release of v 2.1 of the Hearing Voices app. It is available as a free download from ELP Publishing. It contains contains many of the recordings and photographs from this project, with transcriptions and English translations, recordings of click-language choirs, maps and information about the languages, and interviews with Dr Andy Chebanne (University of Botswana) and Professor Peter Austin (Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics at SOAS), as well as photographs by Denise Hawrysio.
Also published by ELP is my article 'Hearing Voices: Research and creative practice across cultures and disciplines' (see below).
Hearing Voices: Research and creative practice across cultures and disciplines
Language Documentation and Description Volume 12 is a special issue on Language Documentation and Archiving, edited by David Nathan and Peter Austin. My 30-page contribution is entitled 'Hearing Voices: Research and creative practice across cultures and disciplines'. I was invited to discuss the process, issues and techniques involved in my field recording practices, with particular reference to the project I carried out in the Kalahari Desert with linguist Dr Andy Chebanne of the University of Botswana. Together with Denise Hawrysio, who took photographs during the fieldwork, we worked with speakers of 5 highly endangered indigenous 'click languages'.
This publication coincides with the release of an updated version of the interactive app Hearing Voices (see above).
Outside In: Re-framing urban noise
Urban Traces - Wahrnehmung im öffentlichen Raum (Perception in Public Space) is a German/English publication with contributions from architects, historians, film-makers, artists, designers, gallerists and one sound artist. Edited by Barbara Herbert and Jasmina Samssuli. In my chapter, I discuss my practice over the last two decades as it relates to sound in the urban environment.
Chapter in Hlysnan: The Notion and Politics of Listening. Listening requires intensified concentration and attentiveness toward what one is listening to; linked to notions of desire, anticipation and understanding, it is a striving for possible meaning. Edited by Berit Fischer and published to accompany an exhibition that attempts to reconcile audio practices with contemporary social and political realities, this book understands listening as agency, gesture, attitude, and taking a position, offering a comprehensive overview of the notion and politics of listening. Contirbutions from artists including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Andra McCartney, Christine Sun Kim, Brandon LaBelle, Peter Cusack, Udo Noll and John Wynne.
Chapter in Art of Immersive Soundscapes, edited by Pauline Minevich and Ellen Waterman. This book provides a fascinating tour of contemporary sound art practices, with scholarly essays, artist statements, and a DVD with sonic and visual examples. Included are perspectives from soundscape composition and performance, site-specific sound installation, recording, and festival curation. Contributors include: Andrea Polli, Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp, Darren Copeland, Gabriele Proy, and John Wynne.
'ITU: The Din of Recovery' examines sound in the intensive treatment ward of Harefield Hospital, one of the world's leading centres for heart and lung transplants, where I was artist-in-residence for a year. The DVD contains ITU, a surround-sound video made in collaboration with photographer Tim Wainwright.
Risky Practice: Artists in the Transplant Ward
Chapter in Risky engagements: encounters between science and art, edited by Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle. This publication "explores the complexities, uncertainties and risks involved in the communication of scientific understanding as an issue of art and as an issue of public health." My conribution is an essay and images from my work with heart and lung transplant patients in collaboration with photographer Tim Wainwright.
Other chapters include the 'Chernobyl: The sound of dangerous places' (Peter Cusack), 'Minimata: Literary Resistance' (Masami Yuki), 'Fukishima and the philosophy of containment' (Toshio Kuwako), 'Detours and Puzzles in the Land of the Living' (Andrew Irving), 'Experimenting with Ruins' (Michael Gallagher), and 'Our vegetables are like the air' (Rupert Cox, Angus Carlyle and Kozo Hiramatsu).
Edited by Victoria Hume and designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio, this book contains a collection of essays with a wide range of perspectives on Wynne and Wainwright's Transplant project and the wider issues it raises. Contributors include David Toop, Charles Darwent, Lesley Sharpe, Magdi Yacoub, and Marcia Farquhar. The book includes a 35-minute video by Wynne and Wainwright which can also be seen in its entirety here.
Available through rb&hArts or by contacting info@sensitivebrigade.com
Installation for 300 speakers, pianola and vacuum cleaner
This Enhanced Audio CD contains a 45-minute recording of the installation as well as Bouncing off the Walls, a split-screen time-lapse video by Pete Gomes documenting the development of the piece during my residency at Beaconsfield Gallery in London. The enclosed booklet includes photographs and an essay by Brandon LaBelle entitled 'An Aesthetics of Pressure'.
Distributed by Sub Rosa in Europe and Art Metropole in Canada, or by contacting info@sensitivebrigade.com
Playing with Words: The spoken word in artistic practice was edited by Cathy Lane and published by the UAL research centre CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice). Contributors include Laurie Anderson, Ansuman Biswas, Jaap Blonk, Joan La Barbara, Brandon LaBelle, Leigh Landy, Katharine Norman, David Toop, Barry Truax, Salomé Voegelin, Trevor Wishart, John Wynne, and Pamela Z.
In their review of the book, TL Cowan writes, "Importantly, with the inclusion of essays like John Wynne's [To Play or Not to Play] on the ethics of ethnolinguistic explorations and art practice, Playing with Words also challenges readers to consider the cultural ramifications of trans-ethnic study and language appropriation."
Available through Uniformbooks. A double CD of audio works by contributors to the book is available through Gruenrekorder.
Transplant
Autumn Leaves: Sound and the environment in artistic practice was edited by Angus Carlyle and published by CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice). Contributors include Peter Cusack, Jem Finer, Christina Kubisch, Phil Niblock, Hildegard Westerkamp, Chris Watson, and John Wynne. My chapter is about the Transplant project.
The book is accompanied by 27 audio tracks, which are free to download from Gruenrekorder. This compilation won a 2009 Qwartz Electronic Music Award in France.
Hearing Faces, Seeing Voices: Sound Art, Experimentalism and the Ethnographic Gaze
Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Ethnographic Practice was edited by Arnd Schneider and Chris Wright. This book provides new and challenging arguments for considering contemporary art and anthropology in terms of fieldwork practice. In his chapter, John Wynne explores the political and ethical challenges of working with vulnerable subjects — such as heart transplant patients and speakers of endangered indigenous languages — while balancing the need for respectful contextualisation against his ambition for aesthetic experimentation. He argues that through his unique form of "composed documentary", and by making recording technology a visible, symbolic presence in his work, he can challenge the objective authority of the ethnographic gaze and reveal deeper truths about the subjectivity of both the artist and the subject.
Other contributors include Steven Feld, George E Marcus, and Lucy Lippard.
Notes on Process and Presentation
Cut & Splice: Transmission was edited by Daniela Cascella and Lucia Farinati. This innovatively designed book was published to coincide with the Cut & Splice: Transmission Festival at Wilton's Music Hall in London in 2010. It includes interviews with and statements by artists, newly commissioned texts, reprinted historical texts, interviews, graphic scores, and archival material.
Antonin Artaud, Ed Baxter, Jaap Blonk, John Cage, Nicolas Collins, Douglas Kahn, Jakob Kirkegaard, Sharon Kivland, Tetsuo Kogawa, Brandon LaBelle, Max Neuhaus, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Jennifer Walshe, Gregory Whitehead, John Wynne and others.
Symbolic Resistance: Turning the Rings
My contribution to The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State is a conversation between myself and John Wynne and Professor Helen Lenskyj, Canadian sociologist and historian. We discuss resistance to the games, particularly in Canada, as well as graphic subversions of the Olympic rings such as those I use in Faster Higher Stronger.
Edited by Hilary Powell and Isaac Marrero-Guillamón, this book brings together creative and critical work that has emerged in response to the arrival of the Olympics in East London. With contributions from Iain Sinclair, Lara Almarcegui, Jem Finer, Julian Walker, Susan Pui San Lok and many others.
Response Time
Wet Sounds is a CD featuring work which has been played on the Wet Sounds underwater speaker system. The system has toured swimming pools throughout Europe and the UK. My contribution is an excerpt from Response Time, a multi-channel sound piece installed at Metro Hall Square, Toronto, and at the Open Ears Festival in Kitchener, Ontario. Other artists on the CD include Hildegard Westerkamp, Yoshi Shinagawa, Tomoko Sauvage, Erik De Luca and Joel Cahen.