Philip Miller
Triggering Sonic Memory
Summary
A fascinating discussion on audible and visual works of art that tell a story. Sometimes a feeling of memory is derived from this art, even though the onlooker may not have had that exact memory themselves. It provides a sympathetic look at history and a possible way to heal trauma.
Philip Miller
Philip Miller is a South African composer and sound artist. His starting point is often to draw from sonic material from public and personal archives, which are digitally processed and collaged. He works across different musical genres and media leading him to establish significant collaborations, including his long-time collaborator, South African artist William Kentridge. He has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies at the Rockefeller Bellagio Centre, Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, and the Archive and Public Culture (APC) Initiative at the University of Cape Town.
Jenny Kagan
Jenny Kagan has been using the language of theater to make installation artwork, often reflecting on the contemporary relevance of stories of survival and trauma during the Holocaust. In 2018 she was creative director for the exhibition Through Our Eyes, which finds new ways to use survivor testimony to tell the story of the Holocaust, at the University of Huddersfield. Since being invited to participate in the Kaunas Biennial in 2017 she has continued to make work there, exploring the Jewish experience of the city through participatory work and creative interventions in the community and public spaces. Her large-scale immersive experience Out of Darkness, which tells the story of her own parents’ survival in war time Lithuania, was shown in Kaunas in 2022 as part of the European Capital of Culture.
Voice. Obviously voice is important for me. I believe the voice is so, it brings so much to particularly to testimony and personal memory. The voice, the tambra, the gaps between, and then singing, and the fact that the voice comes out of the body. I like the connectedness of the voice coming out of the body.
No, not every piece. And I think I’m glad that’s not the case. I think at times I’m influenced by so many different things. So I can be influenced by, in Head And The Load, the big piece with William, I was very influenced by two different things. I was influenced by the modernist composers that were just entering into the musical realm of Sternberg, Shostakovich at that moment, Hindemith… But I was also interested in The Sounds of War and the Zulu Chants.