Christopher Steenson
Christopher Steenson
Christopher Steenson is an artist based between the north and south of Ireland. With a background in psychology and the sonic environment, his work uses sound, analogue photography, writing and digital media to forge ways of ‘listening to the future’.
Drawing upon the open methodologies of John Cage, and the idea of ‘correspondences’ proposed by anthropologist Tim Ingold, Steenson’s sound-based artworks attempt to operate as a collaborative process, emerging as a field of potentialities between listeners and (speculative) environments. Often taking the form of installations, public interventions and broadcasts, these artworks use the conventions of radio and transmission-based infrastructure to locate audiences within a ‘dreamtime’ – a space in which pasts, presents, and futures are negotiated on a continuum.
Recent presentations include: ‘Soft Rains Will Come’ at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art (2022), curated by Emma Lucy O’Brien and Benjamin Stafford; ‘Translations’ at Project DivFuse, London (2022), ‘Connemara Landscape’ for Sonorities sound biennale, Belfast (2022); the group exhibition ‘Urgencies’ at CCA Derry~Londonderry (2021), curated by Locky Morris and Catherine Hemelryk; and the national public sound artwork On Chorus (2020).
Soft Rains Will Come
Operating as a live radio broadcast, Soft Rains Will Come (2022) transmits itself as an ‘imaginary landscape’ within the gallery. Amongst the static and squawks of communication, an unknown voice broadcasts itself to twelve transistor radios. This acousmêtre is an eavesdropper and an oracle, outlining a speculative future of the earth, as it transforms under an erratically changing climate. Like the weather itself, this sound work exists as an entropic system, constructing and recombining itself endlessly. Past and present fragments of sound are perpetually rearranged, to make predictions of an anxious future.
Image: Christopher Steenson, Soft Rains Will Come, 2022, indeterminate sound artwork for twelve Cold War-era radios placed on stilts (to protect against eventual submersion). Infinite duration (or until the electricity stops). Bespoke algorithmic audio system, live shortwave radio signals, field recordings, voiceover and collected shortwave radio recordings. Broadcast via radio transmitters. Dimensions variable. Installation view, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland (26 February – 22 May 2022). Photo: Ros Kavanagh, courtesy of the artist.