In conversation: the medium of sound

This conversation explores the medium of sound in video installations with artists Cyril Lepetit and Mikhail Karikis.

Zineb Sedira’s work is the starting point for a broader discussion.

Throughout Zineb Sedira’s work sound has been an important consideration. Employed to intensify the experience of each film, in MiddleSea and Floating Coffins she has collaborated with the artist Mikhail Karikis. His practice encompasses sound art and sonic innovation, and creatively they were drawn to work together by both being concerned with difference and ‘dis-location’. In combining, Sedira brings back location sound from her film shoots, and Karikis creates a soundscape which they then work on together. Particular sounds are distorted, selected and woven into a composition which provides ambient sound of the place from which the images come, yet not specific to any appearing on screen.

Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-born and London-based artist with a background in music, architecture and visual art. His inter-disciplinary practice encompasses sound art, composition, performance, drawing and video. Karikis’s recent work explores ideas of difference and dis-articulation with a particular focus on the role of voice in addressing these notions. His sound work is dedicated to sonic innovation and spans gallery-based work to the fields of experimental vocal, electronica, avant-garde and folk music.

Cyril Lepetit was born in Cherbourg, France. He studied and at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-arts de Caen and the Ulster College of Art, Belfast. After living in Paris for several years, he spent 4 months on an art residency in Japan and Taiwan in 1999. Since 2000 he is been living and working in London.  He presented his performance “From our first caress to our last breath, will our desires have evolved” in Seduced: Sex and Art from Antiquity to Now at the Barbican 2008, and exhibited his solo show ‘Studio Visit’ at Event Gallery in 2007. Lepetit runs the International Exhibitionist alongside his practice.

Lina Dzuverovic is the co-founder and Director of Electra. She is also currently one of the two curators (with Stina Haggkvist) of Momentum, the Nordic Biennial (which will open in Moss, Norway in August 2009). Lina was named the 2006 DeciBel Mid-Career Curatorial Fellow by Arts Council England. Formerly she was New Media Curator at London’s ICA, and prior to this, she worked for The Wire magazine, Mute magazine, The Lux Centre and Pandaemonium Festival.