DYCP PORTFOLIO | REBECCA LEE

Sherds: Five Verses on Six Sacks of Earth

Residency, performance, broadcast 2018-2020 with Nastassja Simensky

Original commission for In-Situ & Pendle Landscape Partnership.
Supported by Arts Council, Jerwood Arts, Sound and Music, Nottingham Contemporary

Sherds is an ongoing experimental work initiated on a residency during a five-week archaeological dig. Performed by an ensemble of musicians, archaeologists and vocalists, Sherds exists as a live performance, a collection of writing and a 90-minute audio work. SHERDS brings together spoken word, improvisation, vibrating rocks, field recordings, live audio and new compositions and draws on the specialisms of the extended ensemble of performers and archaeologists to unearth, collapse, backfill and reassemble the rhythms of archaeology, changing land-use, topography and history.

Four community performances in Pendle, 2018; full scale performance Nottingham Contemporary 2020
Radio broadcast for Radiophrenia 2020, Montez Press Radio, 2021.

Making it up, this moment of June

Instructional score, performance and publication, 2019

Commission for Radar, Loughborough University
Suported by Arts Council, Hinrichsen Foundation

A new performance score developed as part of (re)composition, a set of commissions drawing on research by Dr Allan Watson in Loughborough University’s Department of Geography. Alan’s work explores the connections between the social and economic relations fostered by music; musical infrastructures; and working conditions in the music industry.

The project investigated forms and relations of listening that (re)produce and are (re)produced by personal and public places, thinking through non-musical, musical and technological listening. I brought together an ensemble of Loughborough musicians to explore ways to trace boundaries of music, place and registers of listening in a rehearsal and recording process. The public were invited to a recording session of the first performance of the score.

With funding from the Hinrichsen Foundation, the score for Making it up, this Moment of June was published in hard copy. It was designed in collaboration designer Blue Firth, and features an experimental essay on the politics of listening by David M. Bell, which can be read here.

Dream Job

Workshops and Audio work, 2021

Commissioned by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art for the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast, broadcast September 2021.

A new audio work made for the 2021 season of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art podcast and broadcast alongside a discussion with Deputy Director Jessica Harby. The piece is made from the recordings of and in response to two online workshops with young people on the complementary education programme and is very much of that time when we were all tired out from 18 months of Covid.

We used vibrating hex bug toys and things from our houses to make as many different sounds as possible - the weirder and most unexpected, the better. We recorded these, and used a share DJ software to loop and mixing the sounds. Inevitably, during the time of the workshop, we ended up talking about all kinds of things, as well as struggling with the internet and technology.

To make the work, I applied the same method I use when making pieces Bredbeddle (a side project I have making looped collages of music). I worked with the full workshop recordings to make the piece, taking in conversations as well as our sound explorations. The final piece does not quite tell the story of the workshop, gives a sense of it and how where we were all attempting to make and connect using the things around us and the internet to do so (and failing some of the time). You’re able to come and just kind of hang out in this loopy, virtual space it for a bit.

This Certifies That

Generative score, soundtrack and performance, 2016

Commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary for Yelena Popova’s moving image piece This Certifies That.
Supported by Arts Council.

Original score composed as a soundtrack This Certifies That, moving image work by Yelena Popova that deals with issues of image, currency and value. Working with musicians and computer-generated voices, I developed a process-based score which was then re-performed changing infiintely alongside the moving image work by a computer using MaxMSP.

The score and visuals were shared live at special closing event, 'Scores and Sources', with musicians and artists working with chance methods and MaxMSP generated cues to re-create the installation live. Other scores concerned with value, process and cooperation from The Scratch Orchestra, Frank Abbott and Chrisitian Wolff were performed by Primary Music Group

Rehearsing Memory, 2015

Audio walk, moving image, film and printed work, 2015 with Belen Cerezo

Commissioned by Trust New Art, The National Trust for Belton House and park.

Commissioned for the centenary of the beginning of the First World War on Belton Park, Rehearsing Memory, Belton 2015 explores what is means to commemorate and used a reflective, exploratory and collaborative approach to address how Belton’s history is remembered by its community of staff, volunteers and visitors.

Belton House and Park are the National Trust’s most visited property and we worked with staff, volunteers and the public within the wide programme of events (archaeological digs, talks, exhibitions, archival research and re-enactments) that took place at Belton House during summer 2015, researching and commemorating the Machine Gun Training Corps that operated on the park during the war. 

Each of the four art works functions on its own as well as forming part of a whole that encourages new reflections on role of memory in imagining the future and the part that Belton park plays in storing memories. The printed work and moving image work were collaborations, the film was Belen’s own response to the brief and the audio walk was mine.

The audio walk starts in the marble hall and guides visitors across the park to the (now empty) site of the Machine Gun Corps. Taking in viewpoints from members of the Belton community, historical materials and the contemporary experience of the park, the walk is a guided and embodied reflection on memory, perspective and place.