Sound Artist Residencies

‍ We awarded our Immersive Audio Network Sound Artist Residency to Ximena Alarcón, a Sonic Migrations Artist, working in collaboration with Oslo-based composer and spatial audio researcher Ulf A. S. Holbrook.

The sound artist residency funded their sound work: Unravelling. It was based on recordings of eight different Colombian migrant women expressing their own migratory journeys in Spanish and English, as well as responding to fragments of an oral archive with testimonies collected by the organisation Diaspora Women in 2018.

The sound work was a reflection on their multilayered responses and synchronicities that weave a fragmented history of migration and conflict. This sound work existed both as a sound installation and as a concert piece, allowing for different modes of presentation.

Ximena and Ulf explored how people could experience the installation involving responses to the listener's body in movement, either with an array of speakers or also considering headphone listening and experimenting with Head-Tracking for Audio, integrating it with Ximena's Intimal App. 

The finished work toured as an installation at Centro de la Memoria Histórica in Colombia, performed at art spaces such as Iklektik and Cafe Oto in London, as well as Dareshack in Bristol. It was also a Resident talk at The Studio in Bath and featured at festivals and conferences internationally.

"Valle de Cocora" in Colombia. The palm is Colombia's national tree called "Palma de Cera del Quindío". Photo credit: Ron Herrema.