If you were to ask us when we first started out with Overhear what current social issues the platform had the potential to address the decline of the high street would have been one them.
Empty space, the formless and void, a mark of pure potential. By tapping into their divine inner spark, can the artists commissioned for Offsite 9 speak things in to existence through their geolocated recordings?
This is the provocation put forward by Asylum Art Gallery and Creative Black Country as part of their British Arts Show 9 fringe event Offsite9. What can we imagine for these places, what ideas can we share?
All over Wolverhampton empty shopfronts, churches, hospitals, pubs, even underpasses and ancient springs have the chance to speak forth and say "If we had this space..." this location, these co-ordinates, this real estate, this unknown this is what could we form out of the chaos.
The first signs of life spring from 9 Wolverhampton artists each responding to a different unused space, using Overhear to plant a creative seed to set the imagination running. From the 22nd of Jan 2022 you will be able to walk to any one of the Offsite 9 Pins on the map and listen to a specially commissioned piece produced exclusively for that location in response to its current state. You will also find a chalk facia on which you will be able to write your own ideas of what to do with the increasing amount of empty spaces found on the UK's high streets.
The participating Sound Artists include Emma Purshouse, Steve Pottinger, NEONE, Nathaniel Grant, Ni Singh, Rebecca Mayhay, The Calamity, BONES, Sian Mcfarlane.
As well as the 9 pieces commissioned by Wolverhapton artists you can find some pieces submitted by students from Chelsea Collage of Art and Design. These are responses from afar by artists outside and offsite both physically and culturally to provide a different take on the potential held by unused space.
