
Presented as an audio-visual installation, Sounds from Beneath finds Karikis in collaboration with visual artist Uriel Orlow and a male colliery choir. Centred around a new choral work for which Karikis invited Snowdown Colliery Welfare Male Voice Choir to recall and sing the subterranean sounds of a working mine, Sounds from Beneath brings a desolate disused coalmine back to life through song. A colliery in East Kent, once populated with workers, machines and the sounds of their activities transforms into an amphitheatre haunted by a stranger, resonating sounds of explosions in the ground, machines cutting the coal-face, shovels scratching the earth and the distant melody of the Miner's Lament, all sung by the choir grouping in formations reminiscent of picket lines. Sounds from Beneath continues Mikhail Karikis's exploration of notions of the stranger and his engagement with the voice as a sculptural material, investigating diverse vocal acts and the marginalisation of voices. In addition to the work being a meditation on singing as an act of resistance and community, it ruminates upon the relationship between the human voice and the machine, reflects on the under-representation of old voices, while celebrating communal music-making. Credits by Mikhail Karikis with Uriel Orlow featuring Snowdown Choir produced by Olivier Pierre composition Mikhail Karikis video by Uriel Orlow with Mikhail Karikis camera & editing Uriel Orlow and Mikhail Karikis sound recording by <b>...</b>
mikhail karikis
uriel orlow
miners' choir
snowdown colliery choir
miner's lament
sound art
experimental singing
extended vocal techniques
political art
voice''
video
xenon
colliery
coalmine