Two Worlds

An audio visual installation and live performance in spatial sound, with poetry and drums, tracing the River Irk. Islington Mill, 22 Oct.

About the event

Fiona Brehony and Simon Knighton are excited to share Two Worlds, first performed at the University of Oxford a year ago and now returning in a new iteration for Manchester. This time they are joined by drummer Johnny Hunter and writer Joe Shute.

Two Worlds began from a series of dawn recordings, capturing nocturnal sounds and birdsong along the River Irk in North Manchester, a waterway running through one of Britain's most historically overlooked neighbourhoods, now at the centre of a major regeneration project.

The resulting work holds two sound worlds in tension: natural rhythms of water, birds and wind against an industrial hum of cars, construction and machinery along the banks. The piece is composed for multichannel spatial sound, always in motion around the room, surrounding the audience as the river surrounds a body standing on its banks. A generative process sequences the recordings by probabilities set by the artists, so the piece is always changing and never plays the same way twice, always in flux like river, city and body.

Joe Shute joins live, reading his own poetry drawn from the River Irk, alongside Johnny Hunter on drums. Screens play cityscapes and water around the performers as voices, poetry, drums and sound move together, all improvising as one.

This performance will also be filmed and recorded. What began as a recording session has grown into something the artists wanted to open up and share live. Doors open at 7 PM - come and enjoy a relaxing drink and settle into the installation.

About the artists

Fiona Brehony is an artist and writer based in Manchester, working across moving image, sound and performance. She is interested in how cities, rivers and bodies regenerate together. This summer she undertook residencies with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research in Oslo, tracing social and environmental equity across the city's green and blue spaces, and with Ocean Alliance, working with their whale song archives to develop new Water Scores that explore the ocean as a living archive of shared memory between human and non-human lives.

Simon Knighton is an Ivor Novello nominated and Royal Musical Association Tippett Medal winning composer based in Manchester. He regularly works with the Nonclassical label and has recently completed a PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music. He has extensive experience of composing for ensembles across Europe, including Southbank Sinfonia and Nieuw Ensemble, and has had several pieces broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 6 Music. Simon is also a keen educator and has delivered workshops for organisations such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Riot Ensemble.

Joe Shute is a writer, lecturer and journalist interested in urban post-industrial landscapes and the entangled relationships between human and…