The Future of Hindsight (for Christine and Frieda)

The Future of Hindsight (for Christine and Frieda) Collaborative audio sketches with artist and PHD Student at Glasgow university Jennifer Wicks for the exhibition Mother Curator. 6 Sketches cut from a live recording using reel to reel, minidisc, guitar, bass, mics and effects. Sketch1 8 min 48 Sketch 2 2min 06 Sketch 3 2min 12 Sketch 4 1min 09 Sketch 5 4min 48 Sketch 6 10 min 32 Inspired by the recordings of women who dedicated years to local community and action the work explores shared threads that offer alternative modes of memory, authorship, and transmission, valuing the tactile, the collective, the imperfect, and resistant practice. The project and collaboration has grown from Bex’s research into the Woman in Communism interview series recorded by Neil Rafeek, held at the National Library of Scotland’s Sound Archive. Ideas of hindsight and time and central to the work and the constant rearranging of sound and feedback are used to experiment with ideas of archival permanence and truth. Looping and feedback are methods which continually reshapes and recontextualises the material, allowing voices and sounds to evolve over time, generating new associations and temporal layers. Looping becomes a mechanism for transforming memory into material experience, disrupting the fixed temporality of aural archiving. Archiving is considered as conversation, as scattering, as finding a collective voice through scrapbooking, effecting found and scavenged materials, repurposing, sharing, re-editing, resharing, and revoicing each other’s words. Who gets to speak whose words and how do collective histories circulate through sound and material practice?