Mira Calix

Reading:

Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other

Elena Ferrante – My Brilliant Friend

Jonathan Safran Foer – Here I am

Paul Hoover/anthology – Postmodern American Poetry

Alice Oswald – Nobody

Listening to:

Gunter Grass – The Tin Drum

Remainiacs podcast

Elizabeth Alker’s Unclassified

Paul Purgas/Late Junction

Oz Katarji – Corbynism Post-Mortem podcast

Watching:

Mafia only kills in summer

Killing eve

Unorthodox

Tjovitjo

National Theatre at Home –  Anthony and Cleopatra / Official Barber Shop Chronicles – weekly live streaming pre-recorded of excellent theatre during lockdown on youtube (free/consider donation)

Working on:

I’m working very slowly – for me… I think we have to find our own pace now.. be kind to ourselves and try not to measure ourselves against others or by previous modes. The days are strange and whilst we have versions of lockdown in common, it affects us differently. 

Code Music 
Over the last few years I’ve been working on a suite of pieces for classical instrumentation derived from the sonification of data, with a focus on binary code. I’m just busy working on the latest iteration, a piece for soprano and semaphore flags for the singer Rosie Middleton. Previous works in the series have been performed or exhibited as audio visual installations, the first was a collaboration with 16 week old foetus in utero, the second a simulated flight path over the planet Mercury. This code poem shares my fascination with the contradictory forces at play when humans perform the precise language of code. The push and pull between precision and interpretation on non repetitive forms. I’m almost finished the work, which is as much choreographed as it is composed. Originally set for live performance as part of Rosies’ program about speech and voicelessness, it may become a film. Virtual rehearsals start soon. 

We are Heard
I’m working on a project with the artist Andy Holden  for Bedford Creative Arts – a sound work for and with the residents of Queens Park. Like a lot of other projects, it’s been disrupted and so we have modified the project to include sound recordings of this highly diverse, mostly immigrant neighbourhood during lockdown as well creating art packs with work sheets to be delivered to the homes of children from for the local schools. Many of them don’t have access to digital or online tools, so it’s coming up with creative and simple ways to get children to listen, reevaluate their environment and be creative.  The initial ambition to work with participants at closequarters has had to be recalibrated for the foreseeable future. Challenging but a good use of the daily exercise time. We’re documenting and recording using both ambisonic and stereo microphones. 


Mira Calix is an award-winning artist and composer based in the United Kingdom. Music and sound, which she considers a sculptural material, are at the centre of her practice. Her work explores the manipulation of the material into visible, physical forms through multi-disciplinary installations, sculpture, video and performance works. Calix’s practice is deliberately disjunctive, allowing research, site, and subject to influence a fluid choice of materials and mediums.

Mira Calix