Hey Music Patrons!
For your eyes only, I’m sharing higher quality recordings of three audio collages and music videos that I co-created with my collaborator, Gemma Nash, as part of a project I’ve been working on since January 2022 called The Quips.
They were live-streamed on Monday 23rd of May over YouTube, and were part of a much longer programme. It was a great success and you can watch the archived version below. The only downside was our WiFi wasn’t strong enough to stream high quality video, hence these links.
These three audio collages capture Disabled people’s experiences of the pandemic. They’re loosely arranged around three time periods (pre-pandemic, pandemic past, and whatever we call this moment).
Gemma is a Disabled sound artist and DJ based in Manchester. We’ve known each other and worked together as CUTTER // NASH for the past five years, sharing our work at swish places like South Bank Centre, London and No Limits Festival, Berlin. Faaaannnncy.
For this project, we worked with found sounds, electronic instruments, field recordings captured at The Art House in Wakefield where we were in residence, and clips of the interviews which were held largely over ZOOM during March 2022.
Gemma and I then got together again in May 2022, improvising with these materials at her home in Manchester using Ableton software. Musician and technologist Kris Gjerstad saved the day by helping to sift through over FOUR HOURS of material, and to finesse the arrangements with us.
The visuals are made from videos captured using my GoPro camera and arranged by me using free my Mac’s iMovie software. Are these tip-toes into a glittering MOVING IMAGE career? Is this my Andy Warhol moment? Not sure about that…we’ll see.
The Quips Movement One
The Quips Movement Two
The Quips Movement Three
About The Quips.
The Quips is a 1hr 20min broadcast of experimental music, political poetry and conversation about how Covid-19 has changed the landscape of access and digital inclusion. It distils tens of hours of reading, interviews, field recordings and open-call contributions into a programme curated and presented by CUTTER // NASH.
We were inspired by radio stations such as the 1947 French radio show ‘La Tribune de l’Invalide’, where disability activists spoke out about the neglect of disabled civilians, and ‘Gaywaves’, the first British radio programme run by and for gay men in the 1980s, the era of Section 28.
This legacy was important to us because when Covid-19 arrived, our interactions – with culture and each other – were all remote and online. The access provisions Disabled people had been demanding for years were made. Now, as society begins to ‘reopen’, Disabled and high risk people are at risk of being excluded again. In this landscape of diminishing support and connection, we wanted The Quips to claim creative space for Disabled people’s voices – their humour, rebellion, sexuality – and amplify them.
