In March 2023 we, Ximena Alarcón & Ulf A.S. Holbrook, were awarded the Immersive Audio Network Sound Artist Residency for Unravelling!
"After a thorough shortlisting process, we are delighted to announce we have awarded our Immersive Audio Network: Sound Artist Residency to Ximena Alarcón, a Sonic Migrations Artist, working in collaboration with Oslo-based composer and spatial audio researcher Ulf A. S. Holbrook." The sound artist residency funded the ambisonic production of Unravelling, based on recordings of eight different Colombian migrant women expressing their own migratory journeys in Spanish and English, as well as responding to fragments of an oral archive with testimonies collected by the organisation Diaspora Women in 2018. The migrant women responses in an improvisatory form were collected as part of Ximena's art research project INTIMAL (2017-2019). The sound work is a reflection on their multilayered responses and synchronicities that weave a fragmented history of migration and conflict.
We worked during two months in the production of the work, in Bath at The Studio and at Bath Spa University's television studios, using the mobile audio kit provided by the Immersive Audio Network. The resulting work will exist both as a sound installation, and as a concert piece, allowing for different modes of presentation. We presented preliminary results at the IAN network meeting at The Studio, in Bath, and will present reflections on immersion at the NowNet Arts Conference, Nov 1, 2023, and at the Sound and Image conference at the University of Greenwich. We expect to show the work, and explore immersion from different audience's perspectives in the UK and international venues in 2024.