Pink Loudspeaker • Issue #83
Weekly listings of UK and Irish sound art (19–25 May 2025)
Pink Loudspeaker is your definitive guide to contemporary sound art in the British Isles.
This edition covers all events that can be experienced across the UK and Ireland for the week of Monday 19th to Sunday 25th May 2025. Scroll down for details on eighty-four sonic artworks, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and events across the UK and Ireland taking place this week.
In Issue #83 we cover aural cartography, street hawkers, quadrophonic sub-heavy sound systems, Y2K boy racers, vocal liberation, choral holographic fields, vibrating plates, expansive listening, missing sounds, non-hierarchical listening, the reparative and meditative dimensions of sound, geolocative moorlands, fictitious sound booths, and much more…
pinkloudspeaker.substack.com
Instagram: @soundartsuk
Bluesky: @soundartsuk
María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard
📍 Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 10 March – 19 October 2025
The Matanzas Sound Map is a collaborative work between Cuban-born, Nashville-based sculptor and installation artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons and American composer, saxophonist, and artist Neil Leonard. The pair have been working together for over thirty years since meeting in the late 1980s. The Matanzas Sound Map is described by Leonard as an “aural cartography” of the Cuban city of Matanzas. The work documents the city’s contemporary soundscape whilst also speculating on possible historical sonic environments prior to human intervention.
Originally created for art festival documenta 14 in 2017, the work has now been reimagined for exhibition within Tate Modern’s monumental Tanks spaces. Tate is a particularly appropriate place to situate this work, given the institution’s historical links to sugar and the legacies of the slave trade; and Campos-Pons’ lived experience of growing up on a sugar plantation in Cuba. Campos-Pons has engaged with narratives of enslavement, labour, and resilience in her practice for many decades; and it is important that venues such as Tate house works such as these to further critical discourse on these themes. Both the sonic and sculptural elements allude to the many roles that the city of Matanzas has played in the development of Black Caribbean music, culture, and technologies.
Occupying the gallery alongside video projections and an array of metal and glass sculptural elements, is the work’s comprehensive sonic element which features a twelve-channel sound diffusion. The audio mix has been tailored to the acoustics and architecture of the cavenous gallery space. Leonard’s mix features over 350 environmental field recordings from the local area, covering oceanic, wetland, and urban sites. Recordings date from a period of over thirty years, some of which have been integrated into the work for the first time for this new iteration at Tate Modern. Street hawkers, bar ambiance, and the sounds of domino games can be heard alongside musical elements such as Afro-Cuban sacred music and chants led by rumba singer Raphael Navarro Pujada with members of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.
Matanzas Sound Map by María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard can be experienced at Tate Modern until Sunday 19th October 2025.
tate.org.uk
instagram.com/maria_magdalena_campos_pons
neilleonard.com
Feel the Sound
📍 Barbican Centre, London
🗓️ 22 May – 31 August 2025
This week London’s Barbican Centre launches Frequencies: The Sounds That Shape Us, a summer season dedicated to sound and music. The programme includes multiple exhibitions, concerts, and events taking place between May and August including In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, an immersive virtual reality acid house experience; and Rebel Radio, an exhibition exploring the legacies of UK pirate radio broadcasting, which launches in June.
At the heart of the programme is Feel the Sound a major group exhibition which presents sound in an immersive, multi-sensorial, interdisciplinary context from established and emerging UK and international artists. The show features eleven installations dispersed across the site. Many of the works are situated within its Curve gallery space but there are a handful of site-specific works staged in less conventional spaces such as the venue’s underground car parks and scenic brutalist lakeside terrace. Of the eleven installations there are four commissions created specifically for this exhibition. One new commission is Joyride, an installation by Berlin ‘rave architecture collective’ Temporary Pleasure. Their work offers a unique take on quadrophonic sound, resonating one of the venue’s car parks with four parked cars fitted with customised sub-heavy sound systems. The installation reflects on the connections between musical subcultures and car sound systems, drawing upon on specific historic synergies such as the Y2K ‘boy racer’ phenomenon.
TRANS VOICES, the UK’s first professional trans+ vocal collective was founded by Ilā Kamalagharan and Coda Nicolaeff in 2022. At Feel the Sound the choral ensemble present a newly-commissioned interactive installation entitled UN/BOUND, a collaborative work led by Ilā with Berlin spatial sound studio MONOM. At the heart of the installation is the voice, both sonically and conceptually. The group have stated that the work is designed to challenge one’s relationship with our own voices, questioning “what is sacrificed and what is reclaimed in the pursuit of liberation and self-determination.” The work features many voices which are blended and shaped inside a ‘holographic’ field created through the three-dimensional spatial audio diffusion setup. The installation responds and harmonises in real-time in response to visitors’ movements as they navigate through the gallery. Visitors are encouraged to listen and physically explore the installation – and if comfortable, contribute to the work vocally, adding their own voices to the collective choral experience. With the recent regressive Supreme Court ruling, it is more important than ever to stand in solidarity with, and listen to the voices of the trans community.
“Our first means of individual expression is the raw instinctive sound of our voices at birth. Yet, imposed limitations silence, distort and sensationalise certain voices. In a fragmented society where progress and regression for trans communities coexist, UN/BOUND emerges to uncover deep listening as a catalyst for change.” – TRANS VOICES
Elsewhere in the show, works such as Jan St. Werner’s throbbing interactive installation Vibraceptional Plate, and Dame Evelyn Glennie’s audiovisual work Teach the World to Listen, gesture towards an expansive approach to listening; widening the conversation on sound beyond what can be detected by the ears. Poet Raymond Antrobus presents a work exploring sound from the position of deafness, reflecting his experience of navigating the spaces between the hearing and non-hearing worlds. His installation Heightened Lyric expands upon the themes of his forthcoming book, The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound, with seven sculptural kites fluttering above the Barbican’s lakeside terrace. Each kite has an extract of poetry concerning the absence of sound printed on its sail, paired with its British Sign Language equivalent.
Interdisciplinary artist and Black Obsidian Sound System founder Evan Ifekoya will exhibit two sculptural sound installations at the exhibition, both of which have been adapted from the artist’s recent solo exhibition at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich. These multi-sensory artworks embody Ifekoya’s interests in communal perception, embodied knowledge, and the creation of non-hierarchical systems, drawing inspiration from their work as a spritual practioner. The Welcome features a copper fountain emitting mists of essential oils paired with loudspeakers and tactile transducers; whilst The Central Sun (which was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2022) is a single-channel sound work installed in a carpeted vertical structure alongside decorated gourd rattles, rubber skin pellet drums, and cowrie shells.
“By drawing on ancestral wisdom and the science of entrainment, I explore the reparative and meditative dimensions of sound. Harnessing light and reflective surfaces, I explore the nuances of perception- what it means to perceive and be perceived. The architectural interventions I call portal units draw on ancestral technologies to offer a new lens of perception, one that accounts for a specifically queer, neurodivergent experience.” – Evan Ifekoya
The show also features works by Amor Muñoz, Holly Herndon, Yuri Suzuki, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daito Manabe, Max Cooper, Miyu Hosoi, Cities and Memory and many more.
Feel the Sound and In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats both open at London’s Barbican Centre on Thursday 22nd May and run until Sunday 31st August 2025.
Earth & Sky
📍 Penistone Hill Country Park, West Yorkshire
🗓️ 24 May – 12 Oct 2025
Earth & Sky is a new immersive soundwalk launching this week as part of the Bradford 2025 programme. The project has set out to create a sonic response to the moorlands of the Penistone Hill Country Park in West Yorkshire. The project has commissioned sound and music contributions from Berlin-based electronic music composer (and current Artistic Director of music at the Venice Biennale) Caterina Barbieri; Kenyan composer and sound artist Nyokabi Kariũki; and Welsh sound artist, composer, and instrument builder Gwen Siôn. The project also features field recordings made on-site by environmental sonic artist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos; lyrical responses from local poet Nabeelah Hafeez; and orchestral flourishes from Opera North who have integrated works by Bradford-born 19th Century composer Frederick Delius.
All of the the artists’ contributions have been composed and compiled into a geolocative soundwalk for self-guided journeys across the moorlands. Sounds have been mapped to specific locations, integrated into a new mobile app developed by the ECHOES platform. As visitors undertake the two-and-a-half mile trek across the land, audio samples and compositional elements will be triggered and mixed in real-time reacting to one’s location.
The Earth & Sky mobile app launches on Saturday May 24th. Visitors can download the app and undertake a self-guided trip across the moorlands until 12th October 2025.
bradford2025.co.uk
operanorth.co.uk
Vocalize
Hay Festival
📍 Dairy Meadows, Hay-on-Wye, Wales
🗓️ 22 May – 01 June 2025
An interactive sound installation featuring the voice of Sir Stephen Fry will premiere at Hay Festival this week. Vocalize is an immersive experience set inside a soundproof recording booth of a fictional talent agency. Visitors will spend half an hour in the booth with the task of recording their own voiceovers, guided by the AI-generated voice of Fry. However, as the process continues it will become clear that things aren’t exactly as they seem. The installation is presented by Sage & Jester, and produced by arts studio Indigo Storm, who are led by director Shehani Fernando and specialise in immersive multimedia works which utilise emerging technologies such as VR and augmented reality. Fry, who has been fairly outspoken about the risks of artificial intelligence in recent years, hinted to the critical nature of the work, stating that Vocalize reveals “both the wonders and pitfalls of AI.” Visitors who enter the booth should expect to be confronted with some of the ethical dilemmas surrounding the implementation of artificial intelligence, especially regarding the agency of our voices.
Vocalize can be experienced at Hay Festival from Thursday 22nd May until Sunday 1st June 2025.
hayfestival.com
indigostorm.co.uk
sageandjester.com
Opportunities
• The newly-launched Sound + Environment Research Group at Newcastle University is seeking papers, workshops and artwork contributions for its inaugural symposium in September 2025. Deadline: Thursday 29th May 2025. blogs.ncl.ac.uk/sound-environment
• Sound Thought are collaborating with the Glasgow Science Festival for a second year. The collective will curate another installation at the Kibble Palace in the city’s historic botanic gardens in June 2025 and are seeking audio contributions for their multi-channel soundwork. Deadline: Sunday 8th June 2025. soundthought.co.uk + instagram.com/sound_thought
• Cockpit Studios in Deptford currently have an open call for sound artists to present performances and workshops for their Dialogues of Space event series. The venue are seeking artists from south-east London (prioritising artists based in Lewisham, Greenwich, Peckham, and Camberwell). Deadline: Friday 16th June 2025. instagram.com/springcafecockpit
• The UK’s long-running Sonic Arts Forum currently has an open call for participation in an event on 15th November 2025 at the Swansea College of Art. The call is seeking individuals who are interested in presenting their work in person and receiving feedback in a friendly and supportive environment. A good opportunity to network but travel and accommodation will not be covered by the host organisation. Deadline: Friday 15th August 2025. facebook.com/groups/sonicarts/
Full listings
Everything on this week: 19th–25th May 2025
Below are eighty-four sound art exhibitions, events, performances, public lectures, and workshops taking place across the UK and Ireland this week. Events and exhibitions are sorted by closing date. Opening hours may vary so please check with venues before venturing out! All London events are grouped together at the top, scroll down for events for all other locations across the UK and Ireland.
🔊 LONDON LISTINGS 🔊
Victoria Karlsson, Emily Orley & Jon Mayse – Radical Listening: Listening, Creative Practice and Research
ResearchWorks
📍 Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London / online
🗓️ 19 May 2025
Décalé
📍 Standalone, London
🗓️ 23 May 2025
Daydreamers: Dot to dot with Paul Noble
📍 Cell Project Space, London
🗓️ 23 May 2025
Ella Wong – Drifting Clouds / Sound of Sea
Shifting Grounds
📍 Hypha Gallery 2 Sugar House Island, Newham, London
🗓️ 18 April – 24 May 2025
Specialist Machines – Mute Frequencies
📍 DIVFUSE, London
🗓️ 24–25 May 2025
Khalid Wildman – Journey Through Emotions, Transcendence, and Songs of Praise
Devon Turnbull Listening Room
📍 180 Studios, London
🗓️ 25 May 2025
Majd Abdel Hamid – Daydreamers (Music Box)
Daydreamers
📍 Cell Project Space, London
🗓️ 27 March – 25 May 2025
Pete Gomes – Does the River Listen to the Trees?
In House: Ree Bradley and Pete Gomes
📍 Studio Voltaire, London
🗓️ 02 April – 25 May 2025
Send & Receive
📍 Hypha Gallery 1 Sugar House Island, Newham, London
🗓️ 18 April – 25 May 2025
Project Stage
📍 SET Woolwich, London
🗓️ 09–30 May 2025
Isobelle Munckton - Hive
Who Runs the World
📍 The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London
🗓️ 08 May – 01 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Nora Turato – pool7
📍 ICA, London
🗓️ 09 April – 08 Jun 2025
Fari Bradley – PSA – Public Service Announcement
Fashioning Frequencies
📍 London College of Fashion, London
🗓️ 25 April – 21 June 2025
Nazanin Noori – THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST
📍 Auto Italia, London
🗓️ 10 April – 22 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #77
You Make Me Feel (Jeanie Crystal, Zein Majali & Emily Pop)
📍 Southwark Park Galleries, London
🗓️ 05 April – 29 June 2025
Nassim Azarzar – Hayat al Noujoum / La vie des Étoiles
📍 The Showroom, London
🗓️ 26 July 2024 – 07 July 2025
Black Sound London: The Story of British Black Music
📍 Barbican Library, London
🗓️ 10 March – 19 July 2025
Michaela Yearwood-Dan – No Time for Despair
📍 Hauser & Wirth, London
🗓️ 13 May – 02 August 2025
Darren Emerson – In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats
📍 Barbican, London
🗓️ 22 May – 03 Aug 2025
Ed Atkins
📍 Tate Britain, London
🗓️ 02 April – 25 August 2025
Feel the Sound
📍 Barbican, London
🗓️ 22 May – 31 August 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
Eija-Liisa Ahtila – Horizontal–Vaakasuora
The Power of Trees
📍 Kew Gardens, London
🗓️ 12 April – 14 September 2025
Marshmallow Laser Feast – Of The Oak
📍 Kew Gardens, London
🗓️ 03 May – 28 September 2025
Christine Sun Kim & Thomas Mader – 1880 THAT
📍 Wellcome Collection, London
🗓️ 17 April – 16 Nov 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #79
María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard
📍 Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 10 March – 19 October 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
Abbas Zahedi – Begin Again
Gathering Ground
📍Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 29 January 2025 – 04 January 2026
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #77
Felix Taylor - Hydraulis!
Secrets of the Thames
📍 London Museum Docklands
🗓️ 04 April 2025 – 01 March 2026
🔊 LISTINGS FOR ALL OTHER CITIES 🔊
Music of the Pan-African Revolution with Martin Evans & Nzinga Soundz
Brighton Festival
📍 Ironworks Studios, Brighton
🗓️ 19 May 2025
The Listening Group #5: Sven Anderson - Guardian Angel (1880)
📍Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland
🗓️ 20 May 2025
Composing for Spaces and Places
📍 Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle
🗓️ 21 May 2025
Fiona Brehony – Rivers, Industrial Heritage, Regeneration (session 5)
📍 Central Library, Manchester
🗓️ 21 May 2025
Matthew Shenton – Shifting Soundscapes
Spill Festival
📍 Think Tank, Ipswich
🗓️ 22 May 2025
The Light Surgeons – Atemporal 360
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
📍 Immersive Visualisation and Simulation Lab, Norwich
🗓️ 22–23 May 2025
Harriet Tarlo & Stevie Wishart – Resilient Plants, Through Poetry and Music
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
📍 GroundWork Gallery, King's Lynn
🗓️ 23 May 2025
Bleue Liverpool & Ibukun Sunday – An Unclassified Syncretism
Brighton Festival
📍 University of Sussex, Brighton
🗓️ 23 May 2025
Emma Critchley – Soundings
Brighton Festival
📍 Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Brighton
🗓️ 16–23 May 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Jaki Irvine – SHWO EM TEH WAY OT GO HMOE
📍 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
🗓️ 24 May 2025
Pattern Recognition: International Drone Day at Studio KIND.
📍 Studio KIND., Barnstaple
🗓️ 24 May 2025
Action Hero – Rebel Resistors Radio Club
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
📍 PRIMEYARC, Great Yarmouth
🗓️ 21–24 May 2025
Fragment/ing (For)ms
📍 The Flying Duck / ARC, Glasgow
🗓️ 24–25 May 2025
Tilly Ingram – The Hide
Brighton Festival
📍 Memorial Gardens, Crawley
🗓️ 24–25 May 2025
Shortwave Collective – Great Waves
Norfolk & Norwich Festival
📍 PRIMEYARC, Great Yarmouth
🗓️ 09–25 May 2025
Jaki Irvine: Ssh Ow
📍 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
🗓️ 22 Feb – 26 May 2025
Writing with Sound workshops
📍 Batley Community Centre, Batley
🗓️ 14–30 May 2025
gobscure – you have already survived [exhibition]
📍 ARC, Stockton-on-Tees
🗓️ 25 Apr – 30 May 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Mike Collier
Chroma
📍 Redcar Contemporary, Redcar
🗓️ 08–31 May 2025
Darkfield – Flight
📍 Guildhall Square, Salisbury
🗓️ 24 May - 01 Jun 2025
Leap Then Look – Play Interact Explore
📍 BALTIC, Gateshead
🗓️ 12 Oct 2024 – 01 Jun 2025
Vocalize
Hay Festival
📍 Dairy Meadows, Hay-on-Wye, Wales
🗓️ 22 May – 01 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
Andy Cluer – Moorland
📍 Kingsgate Project Space, London
🗓️ 16 May – 07 Jun 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
See Here Now: Art in a Time of Urgency
📍 Grizedale, Lake District
🗓️ 04 April – 08 June 2025
Imran Perretta – A Riot In Three Acts
📍 HOME, Manchester
🗓️ 22 Feb – 08 June 2025
Sound and Silence: An Exhibition of Contemporary Bells
📍 MAKE Southwest, Bovey Tracey
🗓️ 22 March – 14 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #74
Prototypes for Cyborgs – A Space Opera
📍 Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland
🗓️ 12 April – 14 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Tape Letters
Bradford 2025
📍 Loading Bay, Bradford
🗓️ 22 May – 15 June 2025
Karen Heald & Susan Matthews – Tsuyu / Plum Rain
In Progress
📍 Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham
🗓️ 09 May – 21 June 2025
Phil Coy – Sixty Beats Per Minute
📍 St. George's Church, Ramsgate
🗓️ 02 May – 29 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
In Between Time – BIRD
📍 Tyntesfield, Bristol
🗓️ 02 May –29 June 2025
Paul Nataraj – Blue and White Through Thick and Thin
Rovers – 150 Years
📍 Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Blackburn
🗓️ 09 April – June 2025
Colin Woods - I Just Called
📍 Belfast (various libraries)
🗓️ Oct 2024 – June 2025
Glasgow Requiem: The Walk – communal walks
📍 St. Mungo’s RC Church, Glasgow
🗓️ 03 May – 28 June 2025 (every Saturday at 2pm)
James Bulley – The Mother Goose Series
📍 The Glasshouse, Gateshead
🗓️ 23 April – July 2025
Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds: Archives of Music, Resistance and Community
📍 The NewBridge Project, Newcastle
🗓️ 10 May – 19 July 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
Mishka Henner & Emily Speed – Energy House 2.0
📍 Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
🗓️ 04 May – 20 July 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
Martin Barraud – Echoes – Halo of the South
📍 Marina Curve, Dover
🗓️ 16 April – summer 2025
Mary Hooper – The Sun Feeds the Wind
📍 Hastings Contemporary, Hastings
🗓️ 29 March – 14 Sept 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #75
Emma Critchley – Soundings
📍 Tate St Ives, St Ives
🗓️ 24 May – 21 Sept 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen📍 MIMA, Middlesbrough
🗓️ 14 March – 05 October 2025
Earth & Sky immersive sound walks
📍 Penistone Hill Country Park
🗓️ 24 May – 12 Oct 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
Maureen Jordan – On The Lookout
📍 The Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park, Yorkshire
🗓️ 08 April – 02 November 2025
Ann Hamilton - We Will Sing
Bradford 2025
📍 Salts Mill, Bradford
🗓️ 03 May – 02 Nov 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
ORIGIN
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
A Field Hospital for Eco-Anxiety
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
Sophie Cooper & Babs Smith – Immersive Greenbooth
📍 Greenbooth Reservoir, Rochdale
🗓️ 03 May – 04 Nov 2025
Lizzie King – Connecting the Tree and the Foot
Fragments of Time
📍 Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Salford
🗓️ 22 March – 21 Dec 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #74
Heather Mullender-Ross – All the Better to Hear You With
📍 Allan Bank, Grasmere, Lake District
🗓️ 01 April – 21 Dec 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Resonant Forms
📍 The Hepworth, Wakefield
🗓️ 08 March 2025 – January 2026
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #73
Marshmallow Laser Feast – You:Matter
📍 National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
🗓️ 03 April 2025 – 22 February 2026
Soundmarks York
📍 DIG, York
🗓️ on-going
Jamie Jenkinson – Nattering
📍 Millom Library, Cumbria
🗓️ on-going
Susan Philipsz - By Sound Near Seawall
📍 Whitehaven Harbour, Cumbria
🗓️ on-going
SoundEscapes
📍 Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
🗓️ 06 Dec 2024 – on-going
Justin Wiggin – Echo Point
📍 Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro
🗓️ 20 January 2025 – on-going
Glasgow Requiem: The Walk
📍 St. Mungo’s RC Church, Glasgow
🗓️ 17 April 2025 – 2028
These listings are created by the Sound Arts UK team in an effort to support the UK sonic arts community and to help bring the artform to a wider audience. Our focus is to cover the work of under-represented artists. If you find these listings useful please share!
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Thank you for reading! 🔊