A conversation with Laura Phillips, Creative Wales-BSR Fellow, in which she speaks about the work she has produced during her residency at the BSR from September to October 2024, ahead of the Winter Open Studios.
Prior to embarking on the BSR Creative Wales Fellowship I was living in a small town enveloped by countryside. Part of my reasoning in coming to Rome was to experience and research noises of modern city life and I started my residency by walking & wandering through Rome, listening and making field recordings in the street; it’s a rich tapestry of traffic, people and wildlife. Part of my aim to map the sound of the city involved constructing a simple electro-magnetic field (EMF) mic device that uses an induction coil to capture and convert EMF into audible sound. It sounds more complicated than it is, as you can tell from the picture.
Taking this mic, I began to follow spaces packed with people; tourist grounds, metros, stations, stadiums. Following the herds of people I was mapping the invisible waves and radio detritus caused by humans or faulty electrical devices. Traces of sound and radio waves have become a recurring theme in my work.
So far, I’ve relished the city’s soundscapes and cultural/music scene. Deep listening, experimental music & expanded film have informed my ways of approaching making art and having no formal training in music I am inspired by egalitarian approaches: PUNK, D.I.Y hacktivism as well as composers such as Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, & Feminist Improv Group (to name a few.) The serendipitous nature of improvisation & collaboration has been conducive to my ways of working so I was very excited to meet other practitioners in Rome.
The day I arrived in Rome there was a commemorative event at The Royal Dutch Institute for the film ‘Donna – Women in Revolt’ (1980) by Yvonne Scholten. It was recommended by fellow BSR resident Eloise Fornieles and was an inspiring way to start the residency. The film begins with recounting the brutal fascist attack on Roman free radio station Radio Donna, during a Housewives’ Collective broadcast in Jan 1979. The film goes on to detail forms of women’s resistance across Italy through the ages.
My stay has also coincided with an exhibition at the Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia ‘Vedere l’invisbile’ Seeing the Invisible’ celebrating the life of Italian radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi. Organized by the Italian Ministry of Culture, the exhibition is an evangelical biopic. Around the world there are lots of commemorations to mark the 150th year of Marconi’s birth; for example a new sculpture in Wales that marks the first wireless transmission across water from Lavernock Point to Flat Holm Island in the Bristol Channel. The transmission took place on 13th May 1897 and was made by Marconi and George Kemp, a Cardiff Post Office Engineer.
The exhibition details Marconi’s political, social & economic position and this made me reflect on his legacy in the UK, such as networks of infrastructure that often follow historic, economic & colonial legacies i.e. internet cables in the deep ocean also mirror the paths of the transatlantic trade/ slave routes; or the current rail lines in South Wales, still follow the industrial routes connecting the collieries.
A large part of my work has been researching psychogeography and mapping the emotional space of waiting/hanging around/loitering and lag in the city.
For example, the image below is of tarmac that has indentations from where scooters place their pedals.
I’ve been using the topography of pavement, floors and the bottom of domestic utensils as ways to create frottage prints (both via optical sound on 16mm film & on mono prints on paper).I’ve been working on sugar paper (aka construction paper) as a utilitarian paper stock that I associate from my primary school classroom. This dyed paper bleaches easily from exposure to the sun so that inadvertently the prints are also primitive and eco proto cinema devices, akin to Tony Conrad’s paracinema painting series Yellow Movies.
Currently the tourist parts of Rome is under-going a massive transformation and ‘tarting up’ for the big Jubilee; fences, plastic, & barricades mask off construction and preservation work across the city. These temporary fences are key ‘street furniture’ that affect how one navigates this city, and they act like Kafkaesque, ornamental decoration. The renovation here is impressive and it feels like a city in preparation mode. Even the poor Talking Statues of Rome have had their sartorial notes/ posters removed.
I have been exploring the ‘desire paths’ (improvised routes that are unplanned created by human or animal traffic) that have evolved because of these temporary barricades. The art of fencing and the development of ‘desire paths,’ have roots in pastoralism and agriculture, and I’m prompted to think about landscape paintings I’ve seen here as well as my trip to the Via Appia Antica. Taking an ebike for the first time I travelled over the old road and was reminded of another Roman road, Sarn Helen that stretches through Ceredigion, Wales.
In another one of my rambles, I came across large crowds of people in Piazza del Popolo from the transport and metal workers unions: a firsthand encounter with history, industry and current economic/labour struggles. I’m interested to see how places like GKN factory in Florence can provide positive and ethical solutions to both climate and labour related issues [1].
As I left the piazza, I picked up an abandoned union flag and a bit of plastic shield from a vespa collision as a souvenir from the event. Anywhere I go I’m both a Womble (1970’s British cartoon character whose motto was ‘make good use of bad rubbish’) and interloper. In a roundabout way, it prompts me to consider the post-industrial struggles and legacy within UK history. I’ve been researching the M4 Motorway in Wales, how the road system developed, including the historical context of Toll Roads, the Rebecca Riots and a CND Cymru protest march in 1982 from Cardiff to Brawdy. I was lucky to have the chance to show some work in progress which reflected these themes at Castro Projects Space in Rome.
During this residency I went on my first ever high-speed train to the autonomous province of Bolzano – South Tyrol to see Analogica Film Festival 14. On the way I kept an eye out for toll castles in the landscape.
Analogica Festival was born as a spontaneous event originally in Rome in 2008, through a series of super8 and 16mm film screenings. As detailed in their bio:
‘These first screenings were organized in response to the gradual disappearance of film production, which had been in a significant economic and commercial crisis for years. The first events of Analogica were dedicated to ”the analogue resistance’, the idea of keeping technology and its knowledge alive.’
Like the festival, my own approach to filmmaking is an independent ‘make do and mend’ ethos. A lot of the work screened at the festival had a strong connection to slower ways of filmmaking such as Caffenol development processes, and a variety of films dealt with subjects of marginalised voices and stories of migration. My highlights include a stroboscopic display of phantasmagorical devices and delights (including use of a flash and EMF mic) from Napolian based filmmaker and sound artist Andrea Saggiomo (aka 70fps). His treatment of material is akin to an Artardian Theatre of Cruetly; the performance included elements of loops, tinting/toning of film and variable speed projection of a modified 16mm projector.
I’ve massively enjoyed experiencing Rome’s rich musical heritage. Some of the highlights for me were @BobJunior DJ set at the DIY space Fanfulla and seeing visiting Bristol based musician Kelan play on the same night. Kelan is a journeyman of nihilistic poetry who spits lyrics and industrial beats that stab at the heart of neoliberal zeitgeist. His performance is a raw, cathectic proletariat doom of oblivion!
For my open studio I hope to show some new prints, film rushes and develop a paracinema event which will play with the threshold of space in the studio. On returning to the UK this work will develop into a 16mm expanded film performance.
