Richard Beet

My practice is based in music, and how music increasingly is becoming a junction to other forms of media in the internet age. No longer the preserve of the avant-garde, or consigned to the margin as ‘concept’ works, audiovisual, multimedia, sound collage (and so on) is using music as a junction to new forms of expression. I'm particularly interested in how sound relates us to place and memory, and how factors such as trauma and desire relate to this. The two pieces I have linked to both explore the idea of memory but take this in two different directions.

L’Étoile de Mer Again is an audiovisual work that re-combines the Surrealist silent film L’Étoile de Mer (by Man Ray) with an original collage of music and soundscape to explore past desires. I’ve always loved music videos, where the video is created to accompany the soundtrack, rather than the other way around. With this project, I wanted to see how sound can recontextualise an existing silent film, forcing the imagery to be presented with a new meaning and narrative. I composed music, and recorded myself answering questions that force me to speak about a past desire; these together with the film itself are split apart and recombined according to a predetermined set of rules to form an improvised collage; the resulting work tells my story, but allows the audience to read into their own memories of love and want.

We Are Sorry portrays the impact of trauma on the brain’s perception of memory. In 2017 I was raped by a work colleague and was subsequently victimised by my employer; during the production of this piece it became clear that as well as functioning as a portrayal of memory, it was also fast becoming a means of therapy – the creation of the work forced me to confront deeply uncomfortable emotions and memories, but in the end I did find a form of catharsis. For this piece (like L’Étoile de Mer Again) I composed original tracks, with each song relating to a key experience during my time at my employer (immediately after the attack itself, confronting my employer and so on). I then took a soundwalk from my house to the site of my employer in central London; and also created a dramatic narrative which portrays mocking voices demanding I answer uncomfortable questions about myself and my experience. Combined together, the piece is a sound collage that shifts between audio media as I journey towards the repressed trauma, and beyond.