The final episode of the Xylophobia season presents a radio play written by our podcast guest curators, SUBTERRA: Marie-Chantal Hamrock and Astrid Björklund. Told through the voice of the Narrator, we are presented with an eccentric cast of characters living and contending with an ever diminished and hostile landscape, made up of old mines, towering blast furnaces, an inexplicable blackness which seems to spread insidiously, and a strange red substance that emanates from the earth. Among the characters are an unnamed man who searches in desperation for 'that place' using an old ironstone amule ..read more

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast presents a new work, O' God of Weather by Saoirse Horne. O’ God of Weather combines elements of ambient music, folk song, and field recording, which together paint a vivid and imaginative world, rooted in messages of phantasm and fabrication. Somehow, through a painterly appreciation of texture, patience and solitude, the artist manages to create a sensitive and ethereal act of balladry – O’ God of Weather considers how deeply weather affects our lives - and how it can impede our access to woodland spaces. The work has a visionary awaren ..read more

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast with artist Tosca Terán draws from fungal mycelial communication research to create a soundscape which the artist herself describes as ‘perhaps a bit ominous with a dash of science fiction’. Working with the bio-electrical activity of living mycelium, in Forest UnderSound = Ways of Knowing, Tosca reveals the ethereal fungi frequencies of the oyster mushroom, pleurotus ostreatus. Threading control voltages throughout what Tosca affectionately refers to as a 'Myco-Synth' the mushroom becomes a conduit for pulsating waves, coursing through ..read more

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features a rich and profound work by A Ton of Worms - a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose primary focus is an immersive communing with Taxus Baccata (the English yew), through both classic art forms as well as field recording, whittling, fermentation, and propagation. Their work also addresses the conservation of persecuted wildlife and plants, the maligned and misrepresented (often chthonic) species overlooked by many, and the beauty and effulgence of decay at the intersection of nature and civilisation. Wood as Home, Dirt as Ti ..read more

This video is a response by artist Sapphire Goss to Episode 20 of the Fermynwoods Podcast which features a discussion with artist Spencer Graham, whilst utilising the Music and Talk feature on Spotify, which allows for tracks to be integrated into the conversation. Spencer Graham is an artist based in Northamptonshire, UK. His practice revolves around a deep interest in music, and questions ideas relating to materiality and place. Utilising and sharing very specific collections of music, acquired according to self-set constraints, he considers how we access, consume, use, and most importantly ..read more

This episode of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast features a new audio essay, The forest will answer in the way you call to it, by Hanna Tuulikki, encouraging a conversation with the woods, exploring her Finnish heritage, and weaving together family stories, folklore and song. The piece reflects on how ideals of ecology, identity, and nationhood are constructed and entwined. The essay features audio extracts from her installation Under Forest Cover (Metsänpeiton Alla), commissioned for Helsinki Biennial 2021.  More at: https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-17-hanna-tuulikki ..read more

Musician and artist Rebecca Lee returns with a new sound work and discussion in the last podcast of our 2021 season. This is the second work Rebecca has made in response to and collaboration with the students from The CE Academy as part of our Alternative Provision programme. Last year, Rebecca’s You Can Hear The Wind presented student recordings made during workshops in the previous school year in as pure a form as possible whilst still resulting in a cohesive listening experience. For this new work, Dream Job, she has approached the recordings of her 2021 Zoom workshops the same wa ..read more

In this episode, the Fermynwoods Podcast shifts slightly from our current programme theme of how humans influence and affect the landscape around them, to how a history of changing landscapes can shape a human. Sayed Sattar Hasan is a British-born artist based in Oslo, Norway. His work explores the parameters of national identity, heritage and belonging and the faultlines between tradition and change. In this new sound work, made during a mandated travel quarantine between his past and current home, he tells the epic tale of his alter ego Hasansen, digging down into the layers of the places an ..read more

An enhanced discussion between Fermynwoods Director James Steventon and David Blyth. David Blyth is an artist and Course Leader in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His work is informed by the craft skills of taxidermy and draws upon narratives of folklore, shamanism and cultural memory. David's work will be in included in our upcoming exhibition The Howse Shal Be Preserved at Rockingham Castle starting 11 July 2021. This episode of the Fermynwoods Podcast is supported by Arts Council England and by a grant from Localgiving and Postcode Plac ..read more

Artist Lucie McLaughlin mines her everyday for sounds in the three-part audio work Clickety-Clack. In this work, we can hear the sound of seagulls, a printer dancing, music leaked through walls, the quiet rabble of voices outside a pub and the purr of a washing machine. In the form of a triptych of sound works, Clickety-Clack comprises field recording and constructed narrative sequences. Here, the material of listening is loose footed, both aware of its construction and interrupted by words. Perspectives on familiar or often overlooked sound are shifted into condensed spaces to reveal an aural ..read more