Decaying Tail of a Sound is a live event by artist, Ashley Holmes as an outcome of his Jerwood Arts / FACT Fellowship. Centred on musical, theoretical and geographical explorations, Ashley will premiere a live version of a new sound composition developed from field recordings, conversations and materials gathered during his time spent in Liverpool.
The event title makes reference to a section of ‘Echo’, a chapter by Julian Henriques and Hillegonda Rietveld from The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies – a volume presenting a comparative and historically informed understanding of the workings of sound in culture.
Ashley’s interests focus on the sonic processes, iterations and influences of Dub, the sub-genre of reggae music, to examine Black music as a methodology to understand and re-define links between past and present within broader social contexts.
As part of his ongoing research he has broadcast radio shows and DJ mixes, produced audio compositions and worked with drawing and writing processes. Decaying Tail of a Sound continues this work and delves into the possibilities of sound, listening and movement as embodied practices.
The live event and research presented within his upcoming installation, bring together various visual and written materials that speak to the ways in which Black experimental sound facilitates encounters with geographical histories and Afro-diasporic philosophies that exist outside of prevailing, normative knowledge systems.
For this event, Ashley has invited artists Ratiba Ayadi and Seigfried Komidashi to share space and present live works that respond to themes of his research into echo, reverberation and notions of temporality and conceptions of place.
