Commissions


Body x(n)

15.01.2020



Body x(n) is a film and visual project by Imogen Mansfield, based on artist Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova’s piece of the same title. Body x(n), body in dimension yet-to-come, considers potentiality and change in relation to a body capable of becoming pregnant, to the process of abortion, and to the limits of language when it comes to the appearing and disappearing of matter. Härtelova’s original Body x(n) piece exists in many variations: as an audio recording, a sheet music score for words, a poem for six voices, a performance, and an audio installation. Härtelova and Mansfield met in Berlin, where Magdalena was presenting the piece as an improvised performance of the poem score accompanied by ambient synthesized music by John Broback. After hearing it for the first time, Imogen was keen to combine Magdalena’s audio project with her own vision of film and photography, and together they began the process of creation. The film was premiered in January 2020, as a beautiful and tender beginning to the new decade.

Director: Imogen Mansfield
Score: Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova

Director of Photography: Polina Georgescu
Lomokino Footage and Still Photography: Solène Milcent  
Cast: Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova, Catherine Mamani Valles,
Salma Jaber, Kahina Daaou, Ana M. Alarcon
Set Design: Lisa Giese
Clothing: Aniela Parys  
HMUA: Katy Mason

Body x(n) recorded by Magdalena J. Härtelova at Anchorage Museum
Soundscape: Slowfoam (Madelyn Byrd)
Mastered by John Broback






I’m Worried About The Future

01.01.2020



I'm Worried About the Future is a seven minute-long soundscape by slowfoam (aka Madelyn Byrd) created at the onset of 2020, grappling with life among the human destruction of planet Earth. The composition sits somewhere between an ambient sonic essay and a score from an early electronic sound laboratory. The piece exists with a video by Caroline Byrd as well.Byrd's short accompanying text to the piece, tying the nuclear (family) doom and avoidance to the recent Australian bush fires, ends with a sentence: “Mother Earth is weeping and I cannot wake up.” Byrd's sound piece feels like a dream indeed. Sonically, the artist embraces raw electrical noises, standing in contrast to the highly processed palette of much of contemporary electronic music. The sound piece feels like a dwelling. The precisely crafted space allows Byrd to stretch herself where she needs to go, search between the radio static, bird sounds, and drone repetitions for the memory of what we could be to the Earth, before capitalism, before racism, before draught. It is a story about how human machine sounds silenced nature to the point that all we can hear of her now are the sounds of floods and man-made earthquakes. The bird field recording are a memory re-appearing without a body, now without the sound of trees, now randomly when searching for samples. When human vocals enter the composition, they are a reminder that we have misplaced even ourselves. We dreamt of accumulation of power and now cannot wake up. The ultimate strength of Byrd's approach to the topic lies in her position within. She accounts herself as one of the humans. The medium of sound to investigate the current hellscape of the environmental destruction has been on the table for some time. However, the analytical distance, the focus on hard data, and the computer generated methods used by many other researchers and artists in this field often lacks the flexibility that seems to be necessary in any attempt at addressing the environmental crisis: the flexibility to, at once, see the bigger picture, the planet, and the individual human experience, to be truly with, within, and out in the space at the same time. As Daisy Hildyard points out in her book The Second Body (2017): “The Earthrise picture shows you the whole world, but you can't see individual lives in it – only mists, gases and abstract emissions.” She goes on to explain how the porousness of our own bodies, the fragile boundaries between us and our environment we are reminded of every time we take in a foul smelling breath, have always brought people a great sense of terror. However, it is also through our permeability that we experience pleasure and relate. I'm Worried About the Future is right here, on Earth, in the middle. The destruction of the environment is a sight of great horror indeed. To face it, Byrd takes it personally, sits with it, and “stays with the trouble”, to paraphrase Haraway. Her composition is a true piece of science.
Written by Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelová

Sound by Madelyn Byrd, Video by Caroline Byrd






To Know Your Tone - Hoop (Music Video)

24.12.2019



To Know Your Tone was written and recorded by Caitlin Payne Roberts and Allyson Foster with Nich Wilbur at The Unknown in Anacortes, WA
Cinematography & Editing - Madelyn Byrd
Creative Direction & Featuring - Lauren Ashley Moore






Transitions - Le lenteur 

20.12.2019

Transitions is a collaboration between two visual artists, using videos, photographies, writing and voices to express their feelings about the "in between state".

Concept & Direction
Mery Baridon & Solène Milcent

Styling
Catwalk

Music
Slowfoam
Cordial Surface (extract)
slowfoam.bandcamp.com