Artur Vidal, Bandstand Meditation, 2014
Artur Vidal, MPhil candidate, Sound arts, CRISAP, London College of Communication has been selected for the AER residency with Banff Centre, Alberta Canada.
Set up by Professor Lucy Orta UAL Chair of Art for the Environment – Centre for Sustainable Fashion in 2015, The Art for the Environment International Artist Residency Programme (AER) provides UAL graduates with the exceptional opportunity to apply for short residencies at one of our internationally renowned host institutions, to explore concerns that define the 21st century – biodiversity, environmental sustainability, social economy, and human rights. Through research, studio practice, critiques and mentoring the AER programme is designed to envision a world of tomorrow; to imagine and create work that challenges how we interact with the environment and each other.
Artur Vidal is a Spanish-born saxophone player and sound artist who grew up in Paris and currently resides in London. His work is interested in the possibilities of improvisation from the perspective of its implications within the social field. As an active member of the improvised music scene, he has been playing and recording with musicians who include Eddie Prévost, Phil Durrant, Jennifer Allum, Roger Turner and Sébastien Branche, with whom he makes up the improvising saxophone duo ‘Relentless’. He has currently completed an MA in Sound Arts and started in 2013 an Mphil/PhD research at London College of Communication about the notions of silence and sociality in Improvised Music.
Founded in 1933, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is a learning organization built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and creative development. Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to inspire everyone who attends their campus – artists, leaders, and thinkers – to unleash their creative potential.
Read Artur’s succesful residency proposal:
My work is originally related to the practice of free music improvisation. It has to do with a collective musical practice that enquires about musical conventions. For instance, it has to do with an exploration of potentialities of how an instrument can sound and with unwritten scores or score still to be made that enable one to play with others.
Artur Vidal, Sax Changes, 2015
As part of this research I have been interested in outdoor spaces to interrogate how much the context in which music is produced is also part of what music is.
More recently I have been working on the study of listening thanks to the work of composer Pauline Oliveros.
This work proposes an inclusive idea of what music can be by including sounds made by musical instruments, environmental sounds, musicians and non-musicians. The proposal I would like to develop in the Banff center would consist of testing what I would like to call ‘intentional music’.This idea has to do with a music that takes place primarily in the body of each participants and that is realized (or become real) when participants experience is shared. The work is about sharing experiences that would be primarily related to listening. The object of our listening would be the environment in which the residency is located. The aim of this experiment is to explore how what we can listen to is defined by our body and how by sharing the experience of what our bodies can perceive, it is possible to build new realities.
Intergroups, with Sébastien Branche, Claudia Doms and Artur Vidal, 2014
The proposal would consist of exploring and studying the environment around the residency space to design different listening exercises. Then I would develop a series of workshops involving members of the community and finally it will consist of gathering all the experiences made by participants in the form of a publication.
New Residency opportunities are being added all of the time, please keep checking the dedicated webpages for other AER Programmes available for application.
NOTE: Applications accepted from UAL graduates, postgraduates and recent alumni (within 12 months from graduation date).
Related Links:
- Banff Centre
- Artur Vidal
- AER residency with Banff
- Centre for Sustainable Fashion
- The Art for the Environment International Artist Residency Programme
The AER Team:
- Professor Lucy Orta AER Founder, UAL Chair of Art and the Environment, Centre for Sustainable Fashion
- Camilla Palestra AER Associate Curator, Centre for Sustainable Fashion
- Camilla Brueton Postgraduate Community and Event Manager