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Art Night: The Sound of the Crowd

By Neil Cooper, 06.06.2023
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Emma Hart, Red and Green Should Never Be Seen, 2022. Ceramic, wood and metal. Installed at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer. Photo by Corey Bartle-Sanderson. Courtesy of Brooke Benington.

 

The noise of art looks set to be heard all around Dundee this month, when, for one night only, Art Night comes to town. With ten commissioned artists showing off their wares in some of the city’s most iconic civic venues from early evening until late, this Dundee edition of the mini festival co-founded in 2015 by Philippine Nguyen and Ksenia Zemtsova will mark the first time the event has happened outside London.

Judging by the results of some of the commissions under Art Night’s current artistic director, Shetland born Helen Nisbet, who took up the reins in 2018, this is certainly worth making a song and dance about. Sound and music-based commissions include works by Emma Hart, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley and Richey Carey.

While Hart’s BIG UP aims to explore local rave culture, Braithwaite-Shirley’s The Lack: I knew your voice before you spoke will present a new generative game inviting users to share sounds and music with the virtual world. Richy Carey’s(stereo – type – music), meanwhile, is an installation and publication draws from work with community choirs and other groups to consider how publishing practices can shape the way people listen to each other.

Two film-based commissions will also utilise music and sound as key components.

Turner Prize winner Tai Chani’s piece, My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, and All the Bodily Remains that Ever Were, And Ever Will Be, features a score by Richard Fearless of Death in Vegas and composer/musician Maxwell Sterling.

Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, History of the Present, film stills, 2023

Screening at Dundee Rep, The History of the Present is Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon is an experimental opera-film that looks at Belfast working class women, and features sonic contributions from composer Annea Lockwood and opera singer Heloise Werner. 

The pinnacle of Art Night’s live events is Sonic Voyages, a musical takeover programmed by musician, broadcaster, DJ and guest director of Brighton Festival 2023, Nabihah Iqbal, whose album, Dreamer (2023), is released on the Ninja Tune record label. Sonic Voyageswill feature performances by invited collaborators including avant-garde string duo, Balladeste, performing at RSS Discovery, and Scottish dub auteurs, Messenger Sound System at the Arctic Bar.

Nabihah Iqbal portrait, photo credit Joseph Hayes

Art Night Dundee’s musical input comes from a personal place for Nisbet. 

“About 10 years ago.,’ she recalls, “I was visiting my brother who was living in Dundee, and spent this really magical weekend with him. He's a musician, and there was one night where we started at a bar, where a folk session was going on. My brother plays fiddle, and there were people playing banjos and guitars, and we ended up stopping off at sessions in various different pubs, and it was just one of those really electric nights.”

“The next morning, my brother had this kind of rooftop bit on his balcony, and he was playing his fiddle out there on the roof. It just really stuck in my mind what a brilliant night that was, how we'd ended up meeting lots of different people and having this incredible evening, and how music and sound had been the connection.”

“Dundee is a small sized city, but it's got such a rich cultural, industrial and political history, as well as all these incredible buildings. After that night, I thought Dundee would be a really perfect venue for a night where people could ideally walk around and mingle, and no venue was too far from each other.”

Nisbet also cites another epiphany, after she watched a busker singing a folk lament suddenly switch to playing a comic song in response to passers-by talking to him, with a mini sing-along the result.

“Again, it was just a really magical little moment that shows the importance of music in terms of togetherness.”

This sounds at the root too of Hart’s commission. Featuring a series of sculptures with hands raised in the air, BIG UP takes place in a multi-story car park, where DJs will hold court. Hart calls BIG UP “a celebration of raving, something that has been a fundamental force for good throughout my life. It's exciting to switch up the normal demands of sculpture and make it behave like it's been to a rave - one night only, and starting to look a bit wild after a few hours. It means me and the work and the audience are all in the same spot, giving it large on the dancefloor.” 

Emma Hart, Mamma Mia! 2017. Ceramic and metal. Installation view, the Whitechapel Gallery, commissioned in collaboration with Collezione Maramott. Photo: Thierry Bal. Image courtesy of the artist.

Such a fusion of forms gives the sense that Art Night Dundee will be a massive citywide Happening. 

“I don’t think there's many other contemporary art festivals that have that same kind of buzz and energy,” Nisbet says, “and I think music and sound work really well at the festival. I think the closest thing to what it does is an actual music festival. There’s that kind of feeling that if you're there and amongst the magic, then you're there, and if you're not, you've missed it.”

 

Find out more about this year’s Art Night in Dundee here: https://artnight.org.uk