Mikhail Karikis and Uriel Orlow

Title: Sounds from Beneath
Directed and produced by Mikhail Karikis and Uriel Orlow
Duration: 06:47
Format: HD video
Language: English
Production date: 2011-2012
Production country: UK

Sounds from Beneath

Sounds from Beneath centers around a sound work for which the artist Mikhail Karikis asked a community of a coal miners’ choir to recall and vocalise the industrial sounds of a working coal mine. Subsequently, Karikis invited Uriel Orlow to collaborate on the video which depicts a desolate colliery in South East England brought back to life through song. The sunken mine transforms into an amphitheatre resonating sounds of underground explosions, mechanical clangs cutting the coal-face, wailing alarms and shovels scratching the earth, all sung by Snowdown Colliery Male Voice Choir grouping in formations reminiscent of picket lines. Sounds from Beneath extends Karikis’s exploration of the sculptural and political dimensions of voices and their relation to professional identity and marginalization, and connects with Orlow’s interest in landscape as a site of memory and history. The curator and writer Katerina Gregos highlights that “at once political and poetic, the film cuts through any expected conventional documentary realism and resonates with pathos dignity and emotional force. It functions as a salvaging of memory, an ode, a tribute, and a requiem all at once […] It captures the essence of the act of coal mining, while recalling the picket lines and intimating a strong sense of male identity and the solidarity of sharing a common purpose in work and song.”

BIOGRAPHIES
Mikhail Karikis is a London-based artist. His work embraces moving image, sound and other media to create immersive audio-visual installations and performances which emerge from his long-standing investigation of the voice as a sculptural material and a socio-political agent. Karikis’s works are exhibited internationally including 5th Thessaloniki Biennale, GR (2015); Art-Eco, Strombeek Cultural Centre, BE (2015); Art in the Age of Energy and Raw Material, Witte de With, NL (2015); Listening: Hayward Touring, UK (2014-2015); Inside, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2014-2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney, AU (2014); Mediacity Seoul/SeMA Biennale, Seoul, KR (2014); Assembly, TATE Britain, London, UK (2014); Aquatopia, TATE St Ives & Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2013-2014); 2nd Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, JP (2013); Art Sheffield 2013, Site Gallery, UK; Videonale 14, Bonn, DE (2013); Manifesta 9, Ghenk, BE (2012); Danish Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, IT (2011). Solo exhibitions include The Endeavour, The Gallery, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle UK (2015); Children of Unquiet, Villa Romana, Florence, IT (2014); SeaWomen, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2013). Karikis is part of the British Art Show 8 (2015-2017).

Uriel Orlow is a London-based artist known for his modular, multi-media installations that focus on specific locations and micro- histories and bring different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence. Orlow’s work is concerned with the spatial and pictorial conditions of history and memory, focusing on blind spots and forms of haunting. Orlow’s work was presented at recent survey exhibitions including the 54th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 9, Edinburgh Art Festival, Recent British Artists Film and Video at Tate Britain, London, Aichi Triennale, EVA International Limerick, Bergen Assembly and 8th Mercosul Biennial, Brazil.
Solo exhibitions include Castello di Rivoli, Turin; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Spike Island, Bristol, Jewish Museum New York. Orlow’s work has also been shown in museums, galleries and film-festivals internationally including Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA and Gasworks, London; Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Extra-City Antwerp; Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) Cairo; Casa del Lago, Mexico City; Kunsthalle Budapest, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago amongst others.

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