Lawrence English / Energy Fields : Vibrations Of The Pacific

Interview with Lawrence English

In conversation with the Australian composer, producer, artist and co-curator of ‘Energy Fields’; a complex expressive framework comprised of various forms of art and scientific interactions.

INTRODUCTION:

From 15 September to 19 January, a new polycomposed exhibition with a scientific-artistic focus will open to the public at Chapman University (in both the Guggenheim Gallery and the Packing Plant). The initiative is the result of the concatenation of various elements and is accompanied by a series of performances and programmes located in Los Angeles at various cultural venues in the area.

The central pillar is the investigation, analysis, and reworking of the intersections between seismic movement in a specific territorial area and phenomena such as light, space, and electromagnetic spectra. The location is not coincidental: Pacific is known for being the largest active seismic area, where significant tectonic plate movements occur.

Each artist, tackles a small facet of the vast topic and expresses their contribution and artistic identity through a multisensory work created in previous years.
The exhibition not only analyses and reworks known auditory vibrations but also reaches an additional level, investigating what is usually imperceptible (as in ‘Wild Energy’ sound installation of Annea Lockwood and Bob Bielecki.)

Visitors experience a sensory elevation, accessing a field of elements that are typically not accessible. The observer can delve into an unknown realm, doing so through artistic experimentation. Once again, the concept that science and art are separate fields not destined for interconnection is transcended. What society establishes as separate is here unified and exploited in order to achieve greater cultural value and contemporary sensory sharing.

“Curation is a kind of questioning, a restlessness and willingness to be unsettled”

Minoru Sato, Thermal Acoustics, 2013-ongoing
Malena Szlam, stills from ALTIPLANO, 2018
Steve Roden, ear(th), 2004

What is the driving force behind this project, how did your involvement as co-curator come about, and what does it represent for you and your career?

Energy Fields : Vibrations Of The Pacific is an exhibition I have had the pleasure to work on with my co-curator and long time friend Robert Takahashi Novak. The exhibition is part of PSTart, a Southern California wide initiative by The Getty. This is the third PST and each time they develop the project the team at The Getty find a curatorial focus for it, this time is was the intersection of art and science.  Robert is the director of Fulcrum Arts in Pasadena, Los Angeles’ leading art and science organisation, and he reached out to me when The Getty announced this curatorial framework. We’re both very interested in pushing at the edges of areas including sound studies and phenomenology, considering a wide reading of how it we observe or sense that which unfolds around us. We’d actually worked together on Seirá, a project I made as part of the AxS festival in Los Angeles in 2018.
(https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-lawrence-english-air-raid-siren-concert-20181107-story.html)
Robert and I were talking about this curatorial framework The Getty had proposed and during these conversations LiGO’s work around the discovery of Gravitational Waves came up. I proposed, I guess you could say poetically, that LiGO’s research and facility was perhaps the most ambitious listening project we, as a species, have ever undertaken.
It was a bit of an off handed comment, but it stuck and we dove deeper into how vibration operates on us and our surroundings. The idea of a vibrational ontology, coming to know the world through these chaotic ongoing vibrational energies, and the waves that are resulting from them, seemed like a powerful approach for defining the scope of the project and from there we never looked back.

“I think that friction is vital for how a project takes shape”

Akio Suzuki, Analapos
Ross Manning – ambient painting
Ross Manning – ambient painting
David Haines, Joyce Hinterding, Telepathy, 2008

How and where can we see the transposition of your identity? In what ways are your artistic vision and strong imprint visible in the curation of this exhibition?

In terms of my interests curatorial, what was wonderful about Energy Fields and working with Folks like Robert, and also Marcus Herse the gallery Director at the Guggenheim at Chapman (where the show is up presently), is they shared a desire to test how it is we approach these very familiar ideas like art and science. I think we have very preset notions around what these terms mean and how they might function, and the pleasure in something like this is the opportunity to unpack those a priori positions and interrogate what they might mean, rather than what we understand them to mean already. Curation is a kind of questioning, a restlessness and willingness to be unsettled. Through that new perspectives are revealed I find. We were able to bring together 15 artists from all across the Pacific and through doing that we were able to created a kind of relational atlas of works that speak to the diverse practices and ways of knowing that are maintained and fostered in various countries and communities.

Are there any critiques or uncomfortable/triggering aspects that are not immediately easy to grasp, but which have been directed towards today’s society? How does this represent a step out of your comfort zone? What turning point has it brought about, and what innovative key or punk spirit lies behind it?

I think for any exhibition, especially those that are responding to a curatorial prompt, there is always a moment, or in fact many moments, where things are unsteady and perhaps even uncomfortable. I think that friction is vital for how a project takes shape. What was wonderful about the dialogue Robert and I were able to develop was that it never settled, even right up till a few months from the show, we were thinking about how it is these fundamental questions of vibration might be represented in the works. We were also always thinking about the ways the works might talk to each other in the gallery. What was most satisfying was being able to move amongst the pieces and see how they form this mesh of fascination, practice and knowing.

What is different about this project, and what does it have in common with your previous works?

Energy Fields is easily the largest show I have been involved in. I think that’s likely the same for Robert too. We’ve both been active as curators for almost two decades, but the scope – and by that I mean everything from geography to fabrication to conceptual framework – of Energy Fields is truly something unique and profound. To stand inside Steve Roden’s Ear(th) work or be in Joyce Hinterding and David Haines’ anechoic chamber work Telepathy is to be consumed by the work. Likewise, something like Akio Suzuki’s Analapos piece or Kyle Slabb’s incredible Binanggu work, these pieces show the breadth of how artists might embrace the promise of knowing that is held in vibration.

Kyle Slabb, Binanggu, 2024.
Akio Suzuki, Analapos
Len Lye, Particles in Space, 1980.
Ear(th) and telepathy -packing plant Chapman university
Robert Takahashi Novak and Lawrence English

Lawrence English / Energy Field

Credits:

Curator: Lawrence English / @room40shoots
Co-Curator: Robert Takahashi Novak / @robtakanova   director of Fulcrum Arts (Pasadena) / @fulcrumarts
Venue: Chapman University / @chapmanu  Guggenheim Gallery / @guggenheim.gallery
Interview: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci
Editor: Maria Abramenko  / @mariabramenko
Collab: Nikita Marykov / @nikita_marykov

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