Black Seas Ensemble
Steve Bates.
Thierry Amar, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, Martin Brandlmayr, Angelica Castelló, Michaela Grill, Timothy Herzog, Christof Kurzmann, Mark Molnar, Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt, Sam Shalabi, Burkhard Stangl, Sophie Trudeau
Black Seas is an ongoing project by Steve Bates investigating historical and contemporary experiences of auditory hallucination through sound and music, film and video, installation, performance, broadcast, objects and materials. Drawing from horror literature and film, cognitive science, philosophy and sound studies, histories of nihilism and pessimism, religious studies, mysticism, and telecommunications. Black Seas considers experiences of auditory hallucination as creative and electro-chemical responses to existential and sensorial voids, hyper-stress, auditory and mental health conditions. Cognitive science and psychological study is quickly revealing the depth and breadth in which hallucination is experienced amongst general populations.
Black Seas takes into consideration the physical/material elements of hallucination, ideas of agency implicit in the experience, and the impact of forces such as colonialism, capitalism, state terror, and oppression on the phenomena.
Black Seas considers the vast and rich sonic experience of historical and contemporary hallucination as a fascinating study of sound and soundscape while acknowledging the experience can be full of terror, confusion, annoyance, humour, boredom, and banality, an intrusion and a welcome accompaniment.
Sporobole centre en art actuel Sherbrooke 2017
Imago Dei Festival Krems 2018
Suoni per il Popolo Festival Montréal 2019
Mutek Montréal 2019
for more details and other iterations of Black Seas please visit Steve Bates’s page.