What if everything we know is wrong?

'What if everything we know is wrong?' is a performed sound work initially developed across research residency periods commissioned and supported by Brown University (Providence, USA) and Pact Zollverein (Essen, Germany). With the project's initial propositions being further explored and developed across a series of context-specific public manifestations and performances of the work subsequently commissioned and supported by Artium (Vitoria, Spain), Pradillo (Madrid, Spain), Alhóndiga (Bilbao, Spain) and Glasgow University. The project being realised within Brookes’ ongoing artistic collaboration with Spanish artist and performer Rosa Casado.

'What if everything we know is wrong?' engages new approaches to the spatial construction and animation of ambient sound in performance, and explores the generation of discursive and reflective social situations through that performance. The work proposes and activates such situations through a direct and overt act of representation specifically. The event of the work being shaped by the performers’ attempts to construct a tangible aural representation of somewhere else – using only fragments of sound captured on 30 pocket dictaphones, drawing, and a handful of Polaroid snapshots for reference.

Realised amongst a crowd of unseated spectators within an open and otherwise empty public space, the work is defined and structured by a located attempt to reconstruct the spatial and ambient qualities of one place, from its collected fragments and details, within another place, where it would not otherwise be present.

Once constructed and established, the resulting social situation of each individual public manifestation of the work is used to support the introduction and consideration of a selected reflective archive audio recording - chosen for its relevance to the specific context, and in the language of that context.

Research questions include:
How might the key elements of a place’s aural ambient be mapped, captured, and reconstructed within another place?
In what ways might the careful spatial arrangement of such captured fragments allow a direct and navigable encounter with aspects or qualities of the place being reconstructed?
How might readily portable daily technologies enable such a reconstruction to be performed live and directly, without the need for any prior or additional technical infrastructure to be installed?
In what way might such a performed reconstruction highlight the absence or otherwise inaccessibility of the place being evoked, and refresh perspective or attentiveness to the actual and present?
How might the artistic act and event of such a performed reconstruction be used to open and sustain reflective social situations and considerations of place?