maria_jardardottir

s i r e n :

In August 2005 Maria Jardardottir was commissioned to collaborate with artist, poet and publisher Alec Finlay, sound recordist Chris Watson and folk singer Clive Powell in the lyrical multimedia piece "siren"; a field recording of a sung performance accompanied by the swelling flow of high tide at dawn in a Northern English harbour, - subsequently and beautifully composed by Watson into a poetic field of sound.

“The singers are separate, alone on their pier. Emotionally siren was always concerned with aloneness and a quality of drowning; drowning in desire or a desirable sensation of immersion, womblike. The amniotic quality is located in the repetition, as the singers slow their performance down, descend into the breath, into the body; as they sing to someone, sing within themselves, sing the absence.” (Alec Finlay).

At early dawn placed on each their pier in a Northern English harbour Clive and Maria were invited to reprise a line from Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” and extend it into a litany:

”Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you.
Here I am, here I am, waiting to enfold you.”

Between them a wide distance of dynamically moving sea making its own song. The song of the sea combined with the physical separation of the two singers made it impossible for them to hear each other and amplified the notion of singing intimately to one self and to someone distant, someone imaginary.

“Whether by accident or deliberately we didn’t have the singers sing together beforehand. We weren’t trying to modulate them so they were the same and they had no idea of each other’s intonation. They sing to one another, in sight of one another not knowing how the other is singing back. Chris was talking about hearing Maria’s voice as the boat goes away. He said that you don’t really hear the words, you hear this tone.”
(Alec Finlay).

The field recording was carried out as a cyclic movement: Chris Watson and his sound assistant Ross Newsham was rowed by rower Robert Oliver in a loop between the two piers. This allowed Chris to cover and record the actual flow of sound and the overlapping sonic sequence; from one voice to the voice of the sea and the nature environment, then gradually to the second voice which again was overtaken by the voice of the sea and the surroundings, and back to the first voice anew, starting another cycle.

“The swelling flow of a high tide that morning against the stonework of the pier masks each of the opening lines and draws the listener to an individual voice in a sea of sound. When we were way out midchannel and Clive started to sing, before you could hear the formulation of any words or phrases, you could just get this notion that it is a song and an individual. It is very much a siren voice.” (Chris Watson).

siren is the forth in a series of bookscapes – an innovative series of publications created by Alec Finlay and platform projects (formally pocketbooks), exploring extended experiences of reading.
The release date was 10th of March 2006 and the format is a 12 paged book also containing an audio CD.
For further details on the project, contact project manager Laura Harrington: laura@platformprojects.org / +44 (0)191 265 6699. Tou may purchase siren here.

To listen to an excerpt of the piece and read about Jardardottir's thoughts on the project: listen.

More on the collaborators...