SHELL LIKE Listening Hour #5: Our Fuming Lips Make A New Mirage

Amy Pettifer & Jennifer Boyd (SHELL LIKE) present a programme of new sound commissions exploring themes of extreme temperature, industry and sociality. Artists include Penny Goring, Alice Channer & Jennifer Boyd, Matilda Tjäder, Madeleine Stack, Samira Saidi, Mikatsiu, and Leyla Pillai.

During an hour of collective listening, a revolving body fabricates its own kaleidoscopic pitch. Constrained by social anxiety, cramped flats, and windowless corridors, lips start to glisten with sweat and teeth refract sunlight as the mind begins to soar. Steel beams turn molten, milk spills and the air whip-cracks with intimate chemistries. Together, the works in this programme occupy a duality of spaces – the ultra hot and ultra cool – the bristling energy before the burst and the hazy, heady fluorescence of communal, euphoric release.

SHELL LIKE is a collaboration between writers Amy Pettifer and Jennifer Boyd, which takes the form of an ongoing series of hour-long listening events featuring existing and newly commissioned audio works by UK-based and international artists and writers. To date they have programmed events at Guest Projects, Artsadmin and LUX in London, and Sidney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury, and worked with artists and writers including Larry Achiampong, Ain Bailey, Grace Schwindt, Jade Montserrat, Heather Phillipson and Tai Shani. SHELL LIKE creates a dedicated space for sound work and focuses on the importance of listening – particularly as a group – as a vital social and political act.