Sono Restrospective 2023-24-25
Solnit, R. (2009) A Paradise Built in Hell
This iteration of the retrospective asked participants three questions:
1. Your name. What has been your part in SONO?
2. What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a moment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
3. What is being left behind by SONO? What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
SONO is dedicated to change through sound-listening and invites artists and audiences alike to examine their relationship with place through hyper-local interventions that touch on broader global environmental narratives. This is a practice that requires constant interactions over time and seasons, and many of the outcomes will remain indirect and invisible, but such is sound work and sound-listening. It is at times only felt and lived. It will remain important to re-visit the project’s narrative of how perspectives upon it change over time. Stories require looking after and care-taking over time.
There are many more participants to document. A SONO-Library has always been a dream of mine as a manifestation of the shared knowledge and relationships growing from this project at a local level. I am incredibly thankful for the support of this project, visible and invisible.
James Wilkie
Creative Director, SONO.
Contributors:
Audio
Gabrielle Anderson, Ted Barrow, Mary Hooper,
Text
Ed Baxter, Georgina Cook, Isobel Anderson, Orson Coupland, Becca Rose, Caroline Gregory, Benjamin Philllips, Carl Bigmore.
Music by Ben Branagan
Ed Baxter
What has been your part in SONO?
Performer, 2025 edition.
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a moment, a sound, A memory you keep coming back to?
The memory of a crazy seat-of-the-pants performance has been distilled and objectively preserved in the form of a lathe cut teninch vinyl disc featuring Statue of Liberty. (A small object simple to display, play etc). The internal impression is more elusiveand might best be thought of in terms of a continuum with its own logic and momentum, involving numerous other people,spaces and convoluted actions. A wind-up toy whose direction of travel is haphazard. A mighty engine with obscure purposesthe functions of which are nuanced and slightly fiendish.
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root?
What is coming ahead? The germ of an idea about locale. An artistic “mob within the heart” with (touch wood) no resemblance to other, darker mobs. Hard graft, I suspect. And good luck, I hope.
Isobel Anderson
What has been your part in SONO?
I performed at the first SONO and have also contributed to subsequent iterations.
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a m oment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
I think a bringing together of lots of experiments in sound, and a place to gather and appreciate sound and sound makers
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
A stronger sense of identity regarding Hastings/St Leonard's place on the sound and experimental musicmap. A greater sense of community locally for sound and experimental music makers.
Becca Rose
What has been your part in SONO?
I ran a stylophone hacking workshops in the first SONO
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a m oment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
I have a few really lovely memories from the session:
- a listening experiment: sitting on the grassy bank opposite the space while everyone in the
session sat writing andmaking notes on what they could hear right there.
- the mess that was made.
- so much experimentation! such as one of the participants experimenting by making scratchy sounds with water
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
SONO is about the community for me - meeting like minded creative folk. Taking part in it helped me connect with so many people in the town, and that has / is taking root
Orson Coupland
What has been your part in SONO?
Orson Coupland. In 2025, I led a workshop on how to use a Stylophone synthesiser and perform with it.Decked out in clownish garbs, I danced about to the beat of a drum machine, sometimes rapping, going from one workshope to the next, holding the microphone to their synthesiser and encouraging them to shred virtuously.
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a m oment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
What stood out for me was Simon James' talk concerning his work Neolithic Cannibals. Utilising all manner of sonicsorcery, and collaborating with his local community, he sought to understand the neolithic people who, many epochsago, inhabited the area of Brighton in which he grew up. I found this exploration into deep time very inspiring.
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
My band Crunchy Bat has lain dormant for many years now, but, like the phoenix, its wings are starting to bat onceagain, breaking the crunchy batter and lifting itself and I toward the moon of success. Together, we shall tell the story of my own neighbourhood - ORE VILLAGE - perhaps not from the neolithic era onwards but a little bit more recently. VIVE LA VILLE D'ORE!
Georgina Cook
What has been your part in SONO?
I was a SONO artist in 2025, and a SONO documentary photographer in 2025 and 2026.
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a m oment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
I think sitting and singing in the boat that we brought into the gallery for my performance of Row Your Boat, will always stay with me. Falling into an almost trance like state and hitting the side of the boat to give myself a beat tosing to, plus hearing children walking into the space, and knowing they were watching and listening.
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
I hope my performance added to the understanding of the creative work that artist-mothers can produce.
Also, ideasrelated to the domestic sonic environment unique to parents. For me, the whole experience gave me confidence infollowing through on the seed of an idea and gave me a great example of how working with a curator can be sosupportive and collaborative. I hadn't ever publicly performed work so it was an amazing opportunity. What is comingahead for me is the usual experience of trying to create new work while mothering.
Carl Bigmore
What has been your part in SONO?
artist-in-residence
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a m oment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
Sono is defined by lots of small moments. Perhaps most importantly is all the people around the event working to create a supportive and communal atmosphere. This translated into the space and made for some memorable performances.
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
Sono has fundamentally changed how I see my creative practice. It has taken away the restraints that I thought I needed to have on the kind of art I can make. In short it was liberating and transformative.
Benjamin Phillips
What has been your part in SONO?
I'm an illustrator and I designed the logo and a bunch of visual assets for SONO. This was back in 2023 when James was trying to work out what this thing was going to be.
What defines SONO for you? A particular session, a m oment, a sound. A memory you keep coming back to?
I've truly enjoyed seeing SONO develop and grow from early conversations to real events that with meaningful interactions, communication, education, joy, shared experiences between a diverse range of people.
I completed a short residency as part of the festival back in 2024 where I shared recordings and compositions alongside drawings made directly onto the walls of the gallery. It was a time of vulnerability for mesharing works in a medium (sound) that I never usually do.
Curating an evening and then having the walk works present for the rest of the festival where other artist thencreated and interacted with the public was very poignant for me.
What is being left behind by SONO. What is taking root? What is coming ahead?
Encouraging the community to engage in new ways, challenging what we think about.
Caroline Gregory
I've been percolating spirals.
The continuous spiralling of my practice (and life) and how things come in and out of a frequency and
movement. Something that SONO really resonates both outwards and inwards for me.
My connection with Hannah White and Stephen Sheill came back around after experiencing 'Orbit' at Electro
for SONO Electro.
I had been a participant in Hannah White's 'Healing Voice' sessions, and what came out of that was a low level
transmission of the tradition of Keening. I invited her to bring keening as part of a triptych of live
performances for curator Kevin Quigley.
At a similar time, I was developing extraordinary Odyssey stage 1 for Electro Studios and the opening lament
and performance of '7 Whirling Women'.
Somehow Hattie Hambridge's Cynotype whirling girl footage found me, and brought us around to each other;
Then SONO came along, and after experiencing 'Orbit ', I also approached Hannah and Stephen to invite a
collaboration of sound and performance at the second SONO. Sadly, they weren't available at the time. I'd love
to come back around to this, perhaps through SONO.
Last year Hattie and I went to Bulverhythe beach at West St Leonards, and I danced under the Lunar Eclipse.
Hattie then made cyanotype footage from the images she made of me whirling for my Mother on the beach,
trying out myprototype whirling garment.
Somewhere in that space we heard about the campaigners for the Save the Old Bathing Pool site, coming back
round to performing a tribute to the old bathing pool site at Southwark Park in 2017, in SE London and
remembering that this had led me to my first whirling performance, in honour of my Anglo Indian Mother and
her, and therefore my, suppressed heritage.
With all of these elements waiting to be invited into the dance, I then proposed bringing the 7 whirling
women back to the site as part of the opening of the second SONO at Electro Studios.
Since SONO, my interest in bringing sounds into my live practice has taken root, and I am currently in
conversation with local artists, including Mary Hooper and Calcutta-born sound artist Shreyans Iyer. I don't
have anything concrete or defined, just a strong sense of spinning and spiralling