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November 1


Stage 1 // Roncesvalles – Pamplona [41,8 Km]

So, here we go… One of the beginings of the routes of St. James in Spain. Roncesvalles has been one of the natural entrances to the Peninsula through the Pyrenees and a good option coming from Central France. Of course, it has been quite an important place along history and the role it played in the configuration of the Camino and the kingdom of Navarra has been great. Today we find several buildings that call for this history, the one here showing a refuge for pilgrims. We can also find churches and monuments of interest, but the best part of this stage (as with most of them) is the landscape.

Did you realise it is almost 42 kilometers? This is because it is the first day, we are full of energy and willing to walk a lot. If Kipchoge can easily run this in two hours, why wouldn’t we try to walk it in a day? This was originally two stages… with overnight in Zubiri, a small town in the middle of the route. Destination, Pamplona, Known not only for the San Fermines, or the art of running before bulls. But we wanted to take a moment here to remind you that this month we want you to get out and be active… #walk4CHAT and let’s see how far could you have gotten in the Camino 😉


Lara Band & Aileen Ogilvie

Abstract

Join us in a sonic mapping experience, inspired at least in part by Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening. Starting on 1 November and running each day throughout PilgrimCHAT, participants will take turns to record and share their 1-3 minute field recording of their local environment, using the app Signal, for other participants to listen to in their own chosen location.

Based on previous sound/place experiments by Aileen Ogilvie and Lara Band, Here but not Here encourages participants to tune into their environment with aural intent. Through this geographically and temporally fluid call and response, we aim to inspire thinking on how archaeology can use sound more e/affectively, extensively and creatively, to recognise the contemporaneity and coincidence of multiple pasts, and places, in the present.

There’s no output as such, the aim is just to listen and reflect on sound throughout the month. But participants are welcome to share thoughts, and to create and share* their own remixes of and responses to all sounds, building new architectures through sound and imagination. Equipment needed: Smartphone with Signal messenger app downloaded.

Ideally we’d like participants to sign up prior to the opening of PilgrimCHAT on 1st November so we’re ready to go each day, but you’ll still be able to sign up during November if you wish to do so. Please share this call onwards with any sound interested people you know.

To sign up email soundstagechat@gmail.com, we’ll send you further details including a link to the private Signal group and your day for recording and sharing.

We look forward to hearing you!

Here but not Here: Fragments // Aileen Ogilvie and Lara Band from Lara Band on Vimeo.

On 19 February 2021 just before 11am we set off to Rob Roy Town, less than a mile from our respective homes but 450 miles away from each other, to simultaneously map place through sound. The following day, we revisited the same place and listened intently to each other’s field recording. Trains approached but never appeared, crows cawed that couldn’t be seen and the voices of people who’d never walked the street floated by. In a moment of sensual confusion, the smell of a Saturday morning fry-up defied geography.

Rob Roy Town had in fact been documented before, but only once, on a map of 1855, near Lara’s home in London’s West Ham, The reason for the name is unknown, but by happenstance, Scottish folk hero Rob Roy is intimately associated with Perthshire, Aileen’s home. We continued to revisit, layering new field recordings plus sounds from multiple sources, creating a sonic map of our combined geographies, a travel document for a destinationless journey (Wrights & Sights 2006).

The aural misguide we created in February, also called Here but not here, after something we both wrote while listening, wanders a landscape haunted by the memories, histories and im/material culture of humans and non-humans. Field recordings, uncanny in their time-stamped movement of energy through matter, are electronic ghosts reactivated and re-interpreted, shaping and re-shaping experience of place (cf Paphitis 2020). Challenging the archaeological construct of the incomplete and residual record of the past, Here but not here played with unruly, persistent fragments, refusing to order them into a coherent temporal structure (cf Pettursdottir 2017).

If you want to get involved in a sonic mapping experience running throughout November 2021 for PilgrimCHAT email us, Aileen and Lara, at soundstagechat@gmail.com

Paphitis, T. (2020) ‘Haunted landscapes: place, past and presence’. Time and Mind [online]13(4), 341-349. Available  from https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2020.1835091 [15 March 2021]

Pétursdóttir, Þ. (2017) ‘Climate Change: Archaeology and Anthropocene’. Archaeological Dialogues [online] 24(2), 175- 205. Available from doi: 10.1017/S1380203817000216 [15 March 2021]


Join us in this unusual opening ceremony to know more about the month to come and gather together for a while in the spirit of classic pub CHATs … After a brief presentation of the program and the functioning of the event, we will continue socialising and sharing as a warm up for a long month of amazing events.

Being the opening un-ceremony, this link will be public, but remember to subscribe in order to receive all the updates and links of the conference!

ZOOM access:
ID: 895 1160 8277
Passcode: 609928

Did you know Estrella Galicia is a pretty good beer that became quite successfull in Spain these last years? You can even find it in some other countries (including the UK, at least before Brexit). If you do, it is a good way to celebrate this conference…

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