Month: February 2022

Born in Dublin, based in London and New York, Vivienne Griffin constructs sculptures, drawings and audio works in their interdisciplinary practice. The voice, its vernacular dialect and noise are used in text works (2D and aural) and free poetic form is applied to mass collages of objects (found, recovered and human-made). They are currently focussing and tackling the problematics of hyper-individualism in a new body of work and the use of sound and/or silence, dance music, meditation, singing and podcasts as means of transcendence or removal from the self. Their work strives for liberation from the lethargic nature of unoriginality: intertwined with everyday life as it implicates the ordinary as rare.

Griffin completed their MFA at Hunter, New York supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. In 2016 they exhibited at Frieze, New York and 427 in Latvia. They also performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Romania in 2017, as well as in 2018 at both CONDO with Bureau in Southard Reid and The Centre de la Photographie Genève (CPG) in 2019. Currently represented by Gallery Bureau in New York, Vivienne and the group are currently working on a video game that functions as both a music interface and a space/program specialised in writing poetry. Their upcoming album ‘Music For Dead People’ (or requiem) was released in 2021. Griffin also currently possess a residency studio space in Somerset House (new wing).

Christina Wheeler is a multi-instrumentalist, multi-media, vocalist and electronic performance artist, based in Los Angeles, USA. Wheeler’s musical ventures have forayed into techno, house, 2-step, drum and bass, breakbeat, soul, dance hall, dub, world music, ambient, free jazz and improvisational forms. She blends a collection of songs and improvised electronic music from vocals, sampler, theremin, QChord, autoharp and Array mbira. Within her live solo electronic performances, she combines an organic string of electronic tendencies, processed vocals and vocal loops, hand-triggered sampler playing, processed four-octave electric mbira, processed electric autoharp, processed Q-Chord and theremin, software instruments, and live effects processing.

Wheeler has performed and recorded with a variety of different artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Chaka Khan, John Cale, Laraaji, Roscoe Mitchell, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Matana Roberts, Marc Ribot, Murcof, and ‘A Guy Called Gerald’. Wheeler’s work with David Byrne of Talking Heads included international tours and appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman and PBS’s Sessions at West 54th Street. MTV’s AMP have also featured her music.

Christina is currently working on two albums, Songs of S + D and Tres Es un Número Mágico: Kaleidoscopic Triptychs, as well as some solo song-cycle series, a collection of solo instrumental improvisational compositions, ‘The Magical Garden’, an ensemble-based multi-media performance/installation project, another immersive multimedia performance project, named ‘The Totality of Blackness Trilogy’, and collaborations with Nicole Mitchell, Laraaji, Vernon Reid, Hprizm/Priest, Greg Tate, and Satch Hoyt.

A multi award-winning Gibraltarian composer based in London, Holly Buhagair specialises in crafting bespoke scores for film, TV and Games. She has worked on a plethora of projects for shorts, feature length films and series alongside Grammy and Academy Award winning engineers in the finest studios across London. Completing a first-class honours degree in music production at Leeds College of Music, Hollie continued and completed a Masters at the National Film and Television School. In her career to date, Hollie has worked for the likes of Amazon, Sky, Channel 4, BFI, NOWNESS, Creative England, Tate, The Guardian, Film London, VICE and BBC. Her works have received critical acclaim winning various awards, including a Porsche Award, a Gold British Arrow and the McLaren Award for Best British Animation, as well as being a two time Unity Awards nominee. Hollie also produced the score for the 2018 British Short Animation BAFTA winning film – Poles Apart.

Consistently throughout her career, Hollie has been praised for her distinctive and unique sonic expressions, as well as her skills to create awe-inspiring scores that approach traditional composition from a refreshing and exciting perspective.

Hollie spoke of her recent and upcoming projects, including quite a few that she couldn’t discuss, including “several features and something really wonderful for Netflix”. Hollie recently had the joy of scoring ‘CRADLED’ by Chlöe Wicks for Channel 4’s BAFTA winning anthology series ‘On the Edge’, alongside two other beautiful films. Buhagiar also recently wrote the music for a sports series for Sky and an animation short called ‘Bug Therapy’ by Jason Reisig.

Buhagiar’s sonic thumbprint is certainly unique, with a lot of the timbral qualities of her music feeling extremely original. Hollie “forges a lot of them electroacoustically out of personally recorded found sounds”. In addition to this, the development of her vocals and the different palettes within its range have quite literally contributed to the creation of her own sonic voice as a composer. It’s extremely rare that Hollie will use a sample in its original form. She has also had to explore varying ways of processing different instruments that contribute to her sound. Engineering and mixing to Hollie, are all part of the compositional process.

When composing for image, Hollie “could never have foreseen just how much they (vocalism and songwriting pairing with visual mediums) would intertwine down the line”. Many times in Hollie’s career, there has been a need for diegetic pieces that require a more pre-existing sound and it’s fundamental to her to have that foundation of knowledge and understanding about what allows a track to feel genuine, from compositional elements through to engineering and mixing. Hollie attributes Leeds Conservatoire for this – “I most definitely attribute a lot of my knowledge of these skills to the institute, the close proximity you are given with the other students and courses was an education in itself.”

Since 1991, Vicki Bennett has been producing and manufacturing CDs, radio, and A/V multimedia under the name People Like Us. By animating and recontextualising found footage collages, Vicki brings a sense of both wit and a darkness, to her view of popular culture, combined with a surrealistic edge.

Vicki has produced work for, amongst others, Tate Modern, The National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, The ICA, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre, Sonar in Barcelona, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the BBC and Channel 4. She has also performed radio sessions for the BBC’s John Peel, Mixing It, and also CBC, KPFA and many more in the US. There have been features in The Observer, The Wire, NME, BBC website and Bizarre Magazine. People Like Us have been commissioned by The Arts Council England, The BBC, Sonic Arts Network, Forma, LUX and Lovebytes amongst others.

Vicki views sampling and collage as ‘folk art’, sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing obligatory to a populist medium. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both arrogant and redundant.

On the 15th of January 2021 via an online streaming festival ‘Imaginary Network Topologies 2021’ Vicki screened ‘Fourth Wall’, a new site-specific, wide screen movie that reflects upon the illusion of separateness. The title addresses the experience of illusory duality constructed by the mind, which is replicated through the lens of the camera, the stage, and the surface of the page, movie or computer screen. Through the viewing, cutting and editing of hundreds of pre-existing movies, Vicki searches for multiple and parallel narratives and collages these together to create a flowing stream of consciousness, attempting to breakdown this wall and reveal what she perceives as a greater reality and oneness beyond relativity.