A Heap of Stones

Justin Bennett’s new multi-channel sound work at Přespolní Community Cultural Center ARK, Lubná u Poličky (CZ)
09/06 – 16/10/2024
Opening: 09/06/2024, 18h

A Heap of Stones is a project by Justin Bennett around the landscape of Shap Fell in the Lake District of England. ‘Shap’ derives from a Scandanavian word for ‘a heap of stones’ and the human relation with stone goes back there literally to the Stone Age, with quarries for axe heads. A very large prehistoric stone monument, Shap Avenue, stood here until the 17th century and the surrounding hills are littered with stone circles and burial mounds. There are still large quarries in operation, for pink and blue granite and for limestone, and there is a large cement factory which uses limestone as its raw material.

A Heap of Stones is a cycle of audio and visual pieces which can be combined in different ways looking at the human inhabitants’ relation with nature through history, and today, when there is a lot of pressure for re-wilding and for ceasing the extraction of stone from the hills. Already one of the largest quarries has stopped production and is now a nature reserve with no access for the public.

For the audio installation at Přespolní, the first piece in the cycle, Bennett records situations with a single microphone, then uses this recording as a kind of ‘score’: making another recording while listening to the first. He builds up layers of sound in this way which, when presented simultaneously through multiple loudspeakers, create a fictive space which emerges from this process of (re)listening to the site. The piece combines sounds of water, weather, stone, wildlife and industrial machines, contrasting the almost-silence of the nature reserve with the violent noise of the quarries and the cement factory.

 

Practical:

PŘESPOLNÍ
Lubná u Poličky 125
Czech Republic

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