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ANDY GRAYDON

GREAT REFRACTOR LISTENING STATION(Breathing Room St. Petersburg)

(Minneapolis, MN, USA)

 

Great Refractor Listening Station (Breathing Room St. Petersburg) is a site- specific video installation that maps into the artist’s studio and windows facing the street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Still interior spaces and their quiet ambient sounds begin the video: empty halls and stairways, water dripping, lamps buzzing.  A lone microphone stands in a hallway, pointed at the floor as if hunting for a lost echo or waiting to catch an action about to erupt. Instead, a seated listener is revealed in each space, silently attending to the room’s microphones, then listening in solitude out beyond to other spaces, scrutinizing them for clues, cues, tiny details, signs of life. Slowly, the sound track reveals its secrets: the ambiences are in fact voiced by the listeners themselves: whispered, hummed and mimicked by a network of voices that become a delicate chorus of haunted spaces, active absences and shared breath. This project, which began as an exploration of international cooperation in the sciences, language and art, has taken a turn since covid-19, becoming more interested in the solitude of listening, in the forbidden treasure of shared breath and space, and a search for glimmers of connection, hope, and truth when they seem more hidden than ever.

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Andy Graydon is an artist and filmmaker originally from Maui, Hawai’i. His work is concerned with natural and social ecologies, and with sound and listening as creative practices. Recent projects have focused on island ecologies and the imaginal and narrative forms employed by the natural sciences. His work has been presented internationally including shows at the New Museum, New York; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; MassMoCA; Wroclaw Media Arts Bienniale, Poland; and the Honolulu Biennial.

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