Monday Guest Lectures –
Trevor Mathison – is a founder member of Black Audio Film Collective, the award-winning documentary film group (Handsworth Songs, The March). He formed Dubmorphology with Gary Stewart in 2005.
Culture critic Kodwo Eshun has hailed Mathison’s pioneering use of tape loops for their ability to make “the imperial anxieties of the early twentieth century resonate… with the multiple fears of the present.”
Ashley Clarke, film journalist in his article ‘A Centrifugal Force: the magnetic sounds of Trevor Mathison’ for Sight and Sound magazine states: “His intricate work incorporates elements of dub and musique concrète“
Jean Fisher on Handsworth Songs 1987 describes: “a polyvocality of recorded testimonies and intercessional poetic voiceovers that, contrary to the ‘explanatory’ panoptical impulse of the documentary narrator, build an oblique relation to the audiovisual track.”
Mark Fisher, “Trevor Mathison’s astonishing sound design certainly draws upon dub, but its voice loops and seething electronics are equally reminiscent of the work of Test Department and Cabaret Voltaire. Source: Trevormathison.com
Take Away From The Talk
Some notes from the talk: Collaborate with people. Trevor feels that working with people and maybe having a collective is really important. He feels it’s becoming harder to find artist spaces to display work – think about empty shops where art could be installed. He likes to listen to a building and work with sound that ‘bleeds’ together. He likes the idea of a sonic shift as you move from space to space. He has a time based engagement to his work. He puts the wrong sound in the space. He likes to look at abnormal rhythms and patterns. He likes to affect time with sound. When sound is slowed down more sounds become audible ‘it’s like a sponge cake made up of different layers’. His work has an interesting juxtaposition position of sounds. His work is very atmospheric, powerful and evokes emotion. Sometimes it is deliberately jarring.
‘Whatever works for you is the key – there’s no magic bullet, it either works for you or it doesn’t. You are happy or you are not happy and experimentation is key’.
A Selection of Presentation Slides
