Patrick Farmer

Cyffro mawr i Gapel y Graig yw croesawu Patrick Farmer fel Artist Preswyl.
Capel y Graig is excited to welcome Patrick Farmer as Artist in Residence.

24/06/19 – 29/06/19

Patrick looks forward to filming, thinking, being with(in) the Dyfi Estuary and aims to develop a response to a score by Joseph Clayton Mills that explores language, orientation and radical psychiatry in France in the 1950’s, to be exhibited in Oxford this July.
During his time here at y capel, Patrick will offer a talk about disembodied listening and aural diversity using his recently published book Azimuth, the Ecology of an Ear, as a point of reference…with further thoughts as to the time that has passed since its completion.

Azimuth, the Ecology of an Ear TALK :  Friday 28th June, 7pm. (Pay as you

Azimuth, the ecology of an ear, is a new book by Patrick Farmer in collaboration with twenty one other artists. Azimuth revolves around fifteen attempts to locate and rend the human/non-human ear into fragments, isolating and being with its forms and natures outside of their conventional relations. It asks…what is the ear; where is the ear; who is the ear; what are we to our ears; are we listeners or listening; does the ear hear? It considers the ear as interlocutor, as equivalence, as synergy, as eros (hear us).

“ I don’t see this as a matter of archaeological passion, nor romantic sentiment, but a desire to live within the body like an environment, to move in and out of it-oneself or another-not to break into it” Patrick Farmer

This August, Patrick will be returning to y capel accompanied by David Lacey. They aim to make field recordings with performative interventions, attempting to sound ‘ like we were always already there, part of the environment, before the recordings began. Considering in particular the relationship that humans have with nature, as intrinsic and interwoven, not separate and antagonistic.’

Mae Patrick yn edrych ymlaen at ffilmio, hel meddyliau, bod yn [ac ynghyd ag] ardal aber afon Ddyfi gan fwriadu datblygu ymateb i sgôr gan Joseph Clayton Mills sy’n edrych ar iaith, ymgynefino a seiciatreg radicalaidd yn Ffrainc yn y 1950au, i’w arddangos yn Rhydychen ym mis Gorffennaf eleni.

Yn ystod ei amser yma yn y capel, bydd Patrick yn cynnig sgwrs am wrando anghorfforol ac amrywiaeth glywedol gan ddefnyddio ei gyfrol ddiweddar, “Azimuth, the Ecology of an Ear”, fel cyfeirbwynt… gyda meddyliau pellach ynglŷn â’r amser sydd wedi mynd heibio ers ei chwblhau.

Azimuth, the Ecology of an Ear. Sgwrs Friday 28th June, 7pm  (Talwch fel y mynnoch)

Llyfr newydd gan Patrick Farmer yw Azimuth, the ecology of an ear, ar y cyd ag un ar hugain o artistiaid eraill. Mae Azimuth yn troi o gwmpas pymtheg ymgais i gael hyd i a dryllio’r glust ddynol/annynol gan ynysu a bod gyda’i ffurfiau a’i thymherau y tu allan i’w cysylltiadau confensiynol. Mae’n gofyn… beth yw’r glust; ble mae’r glust; pwy’r glust; beth ydyn ni i’n clustiau; ai gwrandawyr neu wrando ydyn ni; a yw’r glust yn clywed? Mae’n ystyried y glust fel cyd-sgwrsiwr, fel cyfwerthedd, fel synergedd, fel eros (hear us yn Saesneg efallai?).

“Dw i ddim yn gweld hwn fel rhyw ysfa archeolegol na rhyw deimlad rhamantus, ond yn hytrach fel awydd i fyw oddi mewn i’r corff fel amgylchedd, i fudo i mewn neu allan ohono – eich hun neu rywun arall – ddim i dorri i mewn iddo.” Patrick Farmer

Ym mis Awst eleni, bydd Patrick yn dychwelyd i’r capel yng nghwmni David Lacey. Eu bwriad yw gwneud recordiadau maes gydag ymyriadau perfformiadol, gan roi cynnig ar swnio ‘fel pe baen ni yno erioed, yn rhan o’r amgylchedd, cyn i’r recordiadau ddechrau. Gan ystyried yn benodol y berthynas sydd gan fodau dynol â natur, fel rhywbeth cynhenid a chydblethedig ac nid ar wahân a gelyniaethus.’

 

 

‘I was just cleaning my kitchen, and something about the silent patina of the gas hob took me back to Y Capel. It’s been 10 months now since Avi kindly allowed me to visit. Placing rocks on the windowsills, sleeping under the sound of a waterfall, closing ventilation shafts so I could hear the birds and breathe a pilgrimage of air. The current need to structure my days, it’s April 21st, reveals layered and correspondent significance in my encounters with such ubiquitous domestic gods.

Growing up in Wales, I unknowingly drove past Y Capel hundreds of times. It’s one of those buildings that’s like a portal, so clear and structurally simple as to be almost weightless. Like a thread of Gossamer seen refracting, or a bat in the entangled whinnying of its repast.

There’s quartz at the door of the house, a mantic ward as bright as the flowers of hawthorn, itself an ancient charm that stems back to the ancient Roman conception of Cardea, goddess of the hinge (Ovid seemed to have confused–or sublimated her–with Carna, the guide of the internal organs). This seems enthusiastically apt, as one of the first conversations I had with Avi concerned the animistic and vital life of the building.

The living stone is delicately embedded in a split ebony log encrusted with ribbed bog moss, littered with the imaginary exuviae of small insects. I remember its pitch seemed to be slowly petrifying the mineral.

I laugh as I write that I believe in the notion that every sound we have ever heard is somehow inscribed in the spiralling labyrinths of our ears, but there it is. I imagine most of these sounds to be agglutinated, their edges clumped in blinking successions of place and frequency like a lobe of long tailed tits huddling for warmth.

The atmosphere of Y Capel, both lighter and thicker than air, for me is part of the conductive nature of such auditory metaphysics, the endolymph of its own deeply resonant organs. The Hammershøi light (that one might imagine built the place), is as old as the dust motes it mothers. It’s an energy one could comb, like hexagonal weaves of knitted flax, far flung particles of turbidite and mudstone that, under closer scrutiny, would surely resemble mountains.

Unbeknownst to me, I began to write a book there, To Suckle a Field of Monsters. I went and sat with the Capel every day, and listened to the walls. Sat on a beautiful wooden chair, which, from above, was the lurching black tongue of a bull. I thought about Milton Avery’s birds, drank coffee, conducted ill-fated augural experiments in the salinity of Ynys-Hir’s estuaries, read Alejandra Pizarnik, spoke often with Avi, rested my hands above the olive stream behind the house.

I’ve been putting off writing this flitting missive, as I knew that it would instill in me a deep desire to return. Y Capel is not simply a place you can write with, or listen to, just the once.’

Patrick Farmer