Channelling 2: Anahit

Channelling. Be a vehicle. A path. A hole. Go. Let go. Make way for something to happen. Something, the other. Be others. Guide. Make room and draw a line. Mark a step. Divide. Contain. Carry from one place to another. Create. A plan, a landscape, a spectrum, a call.

'Channelling' connects the medium of audio with other realms. Logistics, infrastructure, landscape transformation. As a practice, channelling takes many forms: tapping into otherwise unheard voices, an invocation, a form of transmission. In this online collective exhibition, three artists explore channelling through sound.

Curated by Andrea González, with works by Laia Estruch, Anahit, and Ainhoa Hernández Escudero.

'Confirmers of the Present', 8min 41s
'RX_004_Tr1_Stereo to master' 5min 3s

In these sound works, Anahit engages with two conflicting notions of channelling. The first refers to a contemporary need for hyper-presence in our synchronous society: an ever-flowing stream of sensory experiences generated by relentless synchronisations, where one sensation swiftly displaces another, leaving scant opportunity for any to fully blossom. The other recalls the primordial experience of being in time: attunement to natural cycles, the eternal flows of water channels, the ominous tolling of melting.

To capture this last aspect, Anahit made field recordings in Argentine Patagonia – suspended over crevasses, capturing micro-rivers of runoff from the Perito Moreno glacier. The resulting piece ‘Confirmers of the Present’ prompts the listener to immerse themselves fully in a single, uninterrupted soundscape. Against these beckoning drips, the channelling impulse of the synchronous society calls: the first part of the piece is an algorithmic composition, made up of data sonifications from the logs of continuous software updates on Anahit’s phone. These channels flow into one another: the inexorable ebb of water against the deluge of global data generated in our hyperconnected society.