LAUNCH NIGHT, FRIDAY 25 SEPTEMBER
Jacob Kirkegaard with Call & Response present: London Subterraneous

Friday 25th September 6pm—9pm

Artist Jacob Kirkegaard and the UK’s only independent sound art space Call & Response have collaborated to create a sound installation that invites the audience to experience the hidden underworld of London’s water system.

The project takes the work of seventeenth century alchemist and scientist Athanasius Kircher as inspiration. Kircher created a collection of so called speaking statues whose spiral mouths would lead out into the streets of Rome like giant trumpets. London Subterraneous links Kircher’s ‘speaking trumpets’ to his fascination with geology and underground reverberations and explore London’s mundus subterraneous.

For this project, special microphones were used to access sounds from a series of towering, hollow pipes that connect the city’s familiar terrestrial environment to a lesser-known complex network of sewers and rivers below. These “stink pipes”, erected as safety valves to vent toxic gases from the Victorian sewer network in the 1860s, allow us to connect to our past and eavesdrop on the capital’s underground world.  More info

Call &Response
Enclave, Unit 9
50 Resolution Way
London
SE8 4NT