Andrew Brown

°1959
en

Andrew Brown has engaged in solo and collaborative projects involving sound, text, film and performance since the late 1970s. He is Course Leader for the interdisciplinary MFA course at Nottingham Trent University and has written for various art publications, as well as being author of a book on the devising processes of the Anglo-Belgian performance company Reckless Sleepers.

 

Andrew founded the project Open City in 2006, inspired by a chance event witnessed in a city square in which several (presumably unconnected) individuals began to run in different directions at the same moment.

 

Everyday urban behaviour has since been observed, sampled and released back into environments across the world, with previous manifestations taking place in cities such as Aix en Provence, Berlin, Belgrade, Toronto, and Budapest, each composed of material responsive to the specificities of a time and place and based upon a subtle critique of our relationship with the city.

www.artwalking.org

research

research expositions

  • Soundwalking in contested space (2022) author(s): Andrew Brown published in: Research Catalogue
    I am an artist researcher undertaking a Ph.D. by Published, Established, and Creative Works at Nottingham Trent University, entitled ‘Soundwalking in Contested Space’. Soundwalking is an expanding creative discipline with its origins in situationist practices and soundscape studies. Alongside numerous fellow artists and researchers, I am exploring the far-reaching possibilities of the medium. In my thesis, informed by over two decades of leading art walks and composing soundwalks, I interrogate my own soundwalking practice, that I use as a means of investigating contested space. I consider findings from six of my soundwalks composed between 2013 and 2018 and guide the reader through my process and the methods of aleatoric composition, temporal shift, synchrony, and ordeal that, in combination, distinguish my soundwalks. Alongside writers and theorists such as Tim Edensor, Brandon LaBelle, and Frauke Behrendt, social geographer Doreen Massey provides a firm theoretical foundation through her conception of space as ‘the product of interrelations’ and imaginable as ‘a simultaneity of stories so far’ (Massey, 2005, p. 9). While Massey adopts a generally progressive tone in her articulation of space, in recognition of the human potential that can be realised through spatial encounters, I place emphasis upon its contested nature, as a product of the unequal power relations that arise out of the everyday interactions of human beings. My contribution to knowledge is both thematic and methodological, through my core concern of human-contested space, the specific combination of methods that I apply within my practice as research, and in the ways these methods encourage deeper appreciation and understanding. My research journey traces a path through contested urban and rural space and exposes the lived realities of human experience when utopian or hubristic visions falter or fail. My findings are directed towards researchers investigating contested space, be it from artistic, social-historical, or environmental perspectives. .
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