'Changeover'. A two week habitation↝happening at Hweg gallery, Penzance, 21st January - 3rd February 2023. Curated by Julia Gros. Sound performance and publication launch - Friday the 3rd February.
Poster by Joe Lyward.
'Changeover' Installation details.
"...Ben Victor Waggett arrived empty-handed with an open mind and an open mic. What happened then was as much in the hands of visitors as it was in those of the artist. The collaboration was collaged into a 20-minute soundscape presented at the closing finissage. At Hweg, visitors involuntarily activated the environment with their presence, their voices in dialogue with Waggett and others, and their footfall continually remodelling the atmosphere. Contributions were not given passively; the purpose of the project was known to them. By participating in the opportunities offered and utilising the objects set out, the reality of that space was embellished by their consenting agency. The equipment assumed the role of the acritical witness, the seeing eye and listening ear that remembered. The soundscape emerged from how the interior was used by the people who briefly occupied it in the transient fashion of everyday life.
On Friday the 3rd of February, Waggett performed a piece drawn from hours of recordings. In the same way that his contributors among the Penzance public had helped build it, his presentation was not passive but responsive. Eschewing the obvious role of artist-creator, he built upon the edit by assuming the role of one more participant in the project. As the music of the past two weeks played and interwove itself around layers of casual talk in the gallery, the passing street noise and occasional calls from Koyangi, the resident house cat, Waggett improvised his response in live performance, using the same objects that visitors had handled during their visits. The outcome was strangely mesmeric. Often atonal and, above all, exploratory and revelatory. The performance might not have captured the music of the spheres, but Waggett had distilled the sound of existence, confirming that there is no such place as nowhere, that everywhere is sonic and audible..."
2023