Sonic Interventions…an essay by Gallery Bagging
Continuing our association with the innovative art writing platform Gallery Bagging, we invited founders A-J Reynolds and Eliza Coulson to create a response to Time Based: SONIC INTERVENTIONS — a festival featuring Ukrainian and UK artists that we co-curated and presented with Ukrainian organisation Time Based.
After five inspiring days of experimental collaborations, world premieres of live performances and installations, sonic walks, talks, writing and listening sessions, we are pleased to publish Gallery Bagging’s latest words — and some sketches — about our latest project.
-oOo-
Time Based: SONIC INTERVENTIONS, an experimental festival to be engaged with using not only the eyes but our ears. From 11 to 15 June 2025, two curatorial platforms Time Based (Olha Bekenshtein) and Arts & Parts (Martel Ollerenshaw) invited us to observe and absorb the phenomenon that is sound.
By attending all programmes within the festival, both as a duo or solo, we were able to open our ears to new sounds and stories told by UK and Ukrainian artists. The audio included captured sounds that ranged from birds chirping to guns firing, as well as repurposed missile sounds to act as instruments. Listening to the harmonisation — or rather harrow-isation — of sirens and weapons purposed for mass destruction was an anxious experience. To be momentarily pulled into the Ukrainian world, to live these sounds that only grow louder and louder, longer and longer.
On launch night at Civic House, Genevieve Murphy (UK) and alice haspyd’s (UA) phonics created a space to resonate and attempt to align with the sound as a story. Closing our eyes even helped us attune to the frisson-ing frequencies, allowing the acoustics to be the psychoacoustics they were intended to be. Murphy’s words swam through the air, almost beseeching a seance-like wave of the body, ebbing and flowing with her as we snuck in, climbed into her pockets, and up her sleeves.
Behind Murphy’s words were recordings released into the air: a harp whose edge was like a chainsaw, birds whose tweets resemble screams, explosive beeps fading in and out, feeling our bodies surfacing and resurfacing. Trapped in the waves that have lost their beginning and ending, a riptide without its rip, nothing to hold onto, as if trying to swim in aerated water. The performance ended with bagpipes to demonstrate the roar of plead “I beg you”, Murphy circled the room blaring the hill-top instrument, to this, one of us responded in short breathy sentences:
No matter how far
how they break the barrier
there is no end
voices are loud
they carry across even
the universe
the sonic Icarus
The launch had launched us into a physiological world, using a phonic lens (ear) to hear their world, their friend’s world, their family’s world, their neighbour’s world, Ukraine’s world.
Day 3 of the festival at David Dale Gallery was packed with intimate programmed sessions starting with our [synonym] writing workshop focusing on the installation Closed Caption Silences by Photinus Studio (UA) and Zoë Irvine (UK). Here we focused on acoustics sourced from experiences and memories, tying ourselves physiologically to deep psychoacoustics and regurgitating them into visual aids. This was followed by a Listening Session, Some Sounds May Be Triggering presented by Time Based’s Olha Bekenshtein. It was during this presentation that she presented vast genres of music, both classical and experimental, even music made in russian war zones with musician John Object — now deployed to the front line.
Having just completed a [synonym] session and revitalising our art writing spirits, we wanted to create a visual of the sonic architecture.
Visualising the sound as an event that could be described and identified textually.
Lastly, was the panel discussion Be All Ears chaired by Arts & Parts’s Martel Ollerenshaw with academic and composer Raymond MacDonald, exhibiting artists Dmytro Tentiuk & Daria Maiier, and curator and researcher Abie Soroño. The individuals and group presented a conversation into the questions “what is it like to listen to today?” and “how might environments sound in the future?”. Artificial Intelligence was a deep source for this panel, discussing found sounds and “collaborations” with AI as a source of inspiration. It was an interesting dialogue to open; we wondered and still wonder about AI and the cultural and social architecture it currently dominates. We listened to the positivity, and we listened to the reality of our future of data farms and the noisy whirs of cooling fans and dangerous swishes of fresh water fighting to keep AI running. Although AI is used, a panel member openly acknowledged the dangers that it possesses we hope that the artists and users reflect on moderation and the value of human collaboration.
Moving swiftly on to day 4, we partook in a sound walk with Ukrainian sound artist and composer Anna Khvyl in collaboration with Piotr Armianovski who was simultaneously leading a parallel walk in Ukraine. Back in Scotland, starting at the Glasgow Women’s Library, we accessed the English indicated audio broadcast on 20ft Radio. F rom here we were able to synchronise locally and internationally; creating a sense of collective belonging, ‘turning participants into a part of a temporary nomadic acoustic community.’ (extract from event description).
Sound walks intersected with environmental sound art have long been explored to channel community and belonging; enabling one to process experiences as well as create a connection to the environment. There is slow intention with walking, this was evident during this interactive performance as we were gently guided along neighbouring streets towards the park. The voice that emanated from our headphones provided an encouraging space to lean in or against our natural way of walking in public. In urban areas, being drawn to green spaces within, these moments help us to ground our being in noise stimulated areas. Integrating the aspect of a parallel walk in Ukraine brought a unique shared experience in knowing we are at one, in different countries, different time zones, different landscapes, but here we walk together — as solidarity, as we remember restrictions faced through controlled land and devices to hinder the very nature of walking. As we did this walk as a group here in Glasgow, we all experienced our own human nature which was to follow and to move as one. Walking in that moment became communication. With freedom to use the audio walk in any way we intuitively felt, we observed how we folded together, there was something comforting in our need to stick together, a reassurance in others presence, particularly when moving out of our comfort zone.
Like any Scottish summer, the heavens opened urging us to retreat to the library for shelter. After drying up from the downpour, we gathered to discuss the walk with Khvyl and Armianovski––we speculated how environments are experienced differently through guided walks, particularly when we are asked to dissect intimate parts of what we see: the moss clinging to trees, touching wet grass, and exploring playful acts of movement. We also wondered how different the walk would be if experienced alone: would we feel more concerned or less concerned with our directional pull? We explored how guided walks like this can enable us to learn more about a new place, as Khvyl recalls her first on-foot experience of Glasgow and using this as a form of exploration and connection with her own city in Ukraine.
What was learnt during the festival was Ukraine's connection with music, through deep crevices of the culture music has played a big part of the resistance against occupation. Music, the force of the people, helps to remain resilient during war times, through sound and music it retains great strength and power.
Image written and drawn in response to Alla Zahaikevych’s performance, Glasgow Women’s Library, 14 June.
Visualisation of the Improvising Chamber Ensemble led by Yuriy Seredin (UA) and Raymond MacDonald (UK), Civic House, 15 June.
Exhibiting art, performances and workshops of experimental music, sound art and cross-cultural collaborations between Ukrainian and UK artists, the festival was packed with auditory exploration of joy, resistance and russian aggression. Absorbing the festival as well as hosting the [synonym] session x SONIC INTERVENTION saw knowledge exchanges, deep thinking of our relationships with sound, environmentally, culturally and personally.
Thank you to Time Based and Arts & Parts for inviting us to join along using our creative lenses to observe, absorb and respond to SONIC INTERVENTIONS.
A-J Reynolds & Eliza Coulson (Gallery Bagging), July 2025