Foil: the track or scent of a hunted animal
In this three-part experimental radio series, Beth Robertson investigates the act of recording as a site of haunting.
Framed as a series of ghostly encounters, the stories explore recording as a practice of remembering, one that isn’t unique to humans. Characters track and trace sounds as both presence and absence, reimagining what it means to listen. A museum host becomes obsessed with the silence of her building after hours, and begins recording it in an attempt to reach whatever lies behind that silence — only to find herself listening, over and over, to the sound of recording, or perhaps to the silence of being listened to. In a derelict hospital prized for its biodiversity, two recordists sneak in to capture its wildlife, but when their equipment cuts out, a strange scratching sound lures one of them up to the higher floors. And in a gallery, after an invigilator glimpses a mysterious figure in the corner of the room, the staff come together to investigate what they assume is a ghost — until they discover that more than ghosts can haunt you.
Foil Tracks follows the traces of hauntings and huntings, residues, silences, and voiceless utterance — and the unease of being caught recording. Sound as a medium blurs the boundary between things: the recorder becomes the recorded, the storyteller becomes the listener. Listeners are invited to encounter the radio not as a listening apparatus, but as a site where hauntings and huntings take shape.
Opening: Thursday 8 October, 5.30pm with refreshments from Liberty Breweries
Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12 – 4pm
Closes: Saturday 21 November
Streaming online at afm.org.nz
Artist bio
Beth Robertson is a sound artist based in London and Glasgow, and a graduate of the Sound Arts MA at LCC. Her practice traverses sound, ecology and geography, drawing on field recordings, photography and music to create sound maps and playful, interactive listening experiments that explore local ecologies and the testimonies of the more-than-human. Working through a queer feminist lens on nature, her aim is to follow the ghosts and unsettle the silences of the Anthropocene.
Her work has been shown at the Barbican, Dilston Grove and Groundwork Gallery. She was selected for the UAL Arts for the Environment Residency Programme at NAHR, and has held a residency at the Bothy Project on Eigg with support from Creative Scotland. She also hosts a monthly radio show on Resonance FM exploring the entangled urban identities of London’s local wildlife.