WHAT’S ON
SOUNDS OF CONNEMARA
with Tom Connolly (Fohn)
Thursday, 6 March 2025
IC Visual Lab / 6 West Street BS2 0BH
BOOK TICKETS
Tom Connolly, is a musician best known for his work with the celebrated Bristol quartet Quade. In 2024, he released his first solo record under the moniker ‘Fohn’. The album, ‘Seanteach’, explores displacement, lore and belonging in relation to the West of Ireland. Tom draws attachment via his Dad's family, who were from Connemara yet forced like many others to migrate to Boston. Using the fiddle as his primary tool of composition, his music shifts between traditional folk, field recordings, ambient electronics and experimental sound collage.
Join us for an evening of music and discussion. Tom will be playing a selection of songs and field recordings from the West of Ireland, while discussing the history of the region and its diaspora. We will unpack themes of power, authenticity, displacement and tradition, ultimately asking how the region’s cultural history might lead us to unexpected futures.
This event is the fourth of our ‘Thursdays’ series. Each event invites a guest to present a collection of music, alongside photography and film. The series focuses upon hidden collections, field recordings, ethnographic sounds and accidental archives, considering what they tell us about today’s entangled world.
WANAWAL SOUNDS
with Êvar Hussayni
Thursday, 6 Feb 2025
IC Visual Lab / 6 West Street BS2 0BH
BOOK TICKETS
The West Asian and North African Women’s Art Library (WANAWAL) is an alternative archive and library that exists to catalogue, preserve and share creative practices from West Asian and North African practitioners. Founded in 2019 by Êvar Hussayni, the project challenges the colonial methods and histories that lie at the heart of many archives, instead favouring experimental and collective methods that embrace slowness and dialogue at all times. Ultimately WANAWAL aims to create an open and accessible library that builds towards a more liberated collective memory.
Aside from leading WANAWAL, Êvar is a multi-disciplinary artist focused on Kurdish genealogies, feminisms and identity. Her work investigates the colonial violence of archives, which often erase communities that do not conform to a dominant reading of history. She is interested in the psychological aspect of the archive, as well as the role that memory-making plays in shaping freedom - specifically for occupied people and lands.
We are honored to be joined by Êvar for an evening exploring WANAWAL’s sound archive. Expect Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian and Cypriot field recordings, interviews, resistance music and chants, alongside conversations and visual projections.
This event is part of the City Centre and High Streets Culture and Events Programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority. All events are free - the ticket fee of £6 can be refunded to all who attend, or exchanged for refreshments.
Aside from leading WANAWAL, Êvar is a multi-disciplinary artist focused on Kurdish genealogies, feminisms and identity. Her work investigates the colonial violence of archives, which often erase communities that do not conform to a dominant reading of history. She is interested in the psychological aspect of the archive, as well as the role that memory-making plays in shaping freedom - specifically for occupied people and lands.
We are honored to be joined by Êvar for an evening exploring WANAWAL’s sound archive. Expect Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian and Cypriot field recordings, interviews, resistance music and chants, alongside conversations and visual projections.
This event is part of the City Centre and High Streets Culture and Events Programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority. All events are free - the ticket fee of £6 can be refunded to all who attend, or exchanged for refreshments.
SOUNDS FROM OKINAWA
with David Mckeown (aka.zato)
Thursday, 7 November 2024
IC Visual Lab / 6 West Street BS2 0BH
BOOK TICKETS
Originally hailing from Newry in (N.) Ireland, in 2017 David Mckeown moved to Okinawa, Japan, immersing himself in the local music scene. He organised experimental music nights under the name inis:eto, alongside an ongoing mix series that continues to draw together DJs and selectors from across the globe, all set against the backdrop of Okinawa. with David Mckeown (aka.zato)
Thursday, 7 November 2024
IC Visual Lab / 6 West Street BS2 0BH
BOOK TICKETS
Now based in Bristol, he retains strong connections with Japan. By day he is an academic researcher studying the legal frameworks, contested values and spaces of activism that surround Japan’s satoyama landscapes. By night he is a prolific music selector, recently launching the label Bellyache, alongside a monthly show on Noods Radio and regular parties at Strange Brew under the moniker O.S.T.
David’s musical commitments reach beyond dancefloors, incorporating field recordings, ambient sounds, folk music and overlooked oddities. During his years in Okinawa, music and activism often overlapped, with many dance floor friends involved in efforts to resist the expansion of a nearby US Marine Corps base in Henoko. Studying the colonial histories of both Okinawa/Ryukyu and his native Ireland, led to an understanding of the shared importance of sound as a form of cultural resistance across both locations. In the case of Okinawa, this sound has often taken the form of Min'yō folk recordings, which stand as a testament to cultural independence and perseverance.
Through a dialogue with images of protest, folk and club culture, the evening will reflect on the intersection of music and resistance in Okinawa. David will be playing a selection of Min'yō folk recordings, unpacking their ongoing significance today. Alongside the music, we will be screening Tomatsu Shomei’s seminal photobook Camp Okinawa. Photographed over a 40-year period (1960-2008), it offers a unique portrait of the island, examining the culture born from the American military presence, as well Okinawa’s relative isolation from the rest of Japan.
The Majazz Project: Palestinian Sound Archive
Thursday, 7 November
IC Visual Lab / 6 West Street BS2 0BH
Late Show from 8:30 - 10 PM
Through years of digging, discovering and remastering, artist Mo'min Swaitat has created The Majazz Project, an archive of Palestinian sound and music. An act of reclamation and a site of resistance to colonial erasure, the archive is an embodiment of Palestinian culture across decades. Weaving tales of joy, grief, love, resistance, and steadfastness, these sounds are bridging generations. These sonic stories have travelled a long way to you, beckoning, a hand held out through time itself.
In collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival, Mo'min will be presenting the archive - playing records and discussing their significance. Join us for an informal evening of sound and discussion.
In collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival, Mo'min will be presenting the archive - playing records and discussing their significance. Join us for an informal evening of sound and discussion.
UNSHOWABLE PHOTOGRAPHS
16 Oct to 17 Nov 2024
Thu-Sun 11am-5pm
In 2009, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay visited the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to view archival photographs of Palestine, taken between 1947 and 1950. The images document the forced displacement of the Palestinian population – an event commonly known as the ‘Nakba’. Azoulay was instructed that the archival images could not be reproduced or exhibited unless strict conditions were met, limiting the free interpretation of the material and ultimately of history itself. In response, Azoulay decided to draw the photographs, creating a record that exists beyond the control of official narratives and archives.
About Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay holds a dual appointment in the Department of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. She is a film essayist and independent curator of archives and exhibitions. Her research and recent book, Potential History (Verso, 2019), concern key political concepts/institutions: archive, sovereignty, plunder, art, human rights, return and repair. Potential history, a concept and an approach she has developed over the last decade, has far-reaching implications for the fields of political theory, archival formations, and photography studies as well as for the reversal of imperial violence.
Azoulay studied at the Université Paris VIII and received her DEA from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and PhD from Tel Aviv University’s Cohn Institute. Her books include Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012), From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950 (Pluto Press, 2011), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008), and (with Adi Ophir) The One State Condition: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (Stanford, 2012). Among her films are Un-Documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder (2019) and Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012). Her exhibitions include Errata (Tapiès Foundation, 2019; HKW, Berlin, 2020), Enough! The Natural Violence of New World Order (F/Stop photography festival, Leipzig, 2016), and Act of State 1967-2007, (Centre Pompidou, 2016; Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa Fotográfico, 2020).
In collaboration with:
