Artist Spotlight with Mark Anderson

At the beginning of 2022, I decided to make new work in response to the anxiety I felt concerning the climate crisis, worsening social injustice and war. In 2019, I made a piece, ‘Siren Bells Lament’, unusually for an indoor space at MOMA in Machynlleth; I took this as a starting point. The work referenced living in a Welsh valley, which is continually subjected to the terrorising sound of low-flying fighter bombers practising attacks and bombing. 

Taking the idea of a siren and bell as a warning, I started to think about other sound elements I might include in a larger but still quite intimate acoustic installation. I wanted the work to have time to unfold so that people would feel comfortable and uncomfortable. Therefore, I approached long-time collaborator Liam Walsh, and he agreed to work with me on presenting the show in September 2022.

Almost all my work has been made for, and often only, ‘works’ in darkness or semi-darkness, but from the beginning, I envisaged Warning Notes as a daytime/nighttime show. This was for two reasons: I wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible and also make showing the work in the summer months much more likely. Therefore, each element needed to have visual integrity and produce sound.

Less than 100 people experienced the 4 hr show, presented over two nights; the feedback was all positive; it helped that there was an incredible harvest moon rising as it got dark. Despite realising that playing for four hours is a long time, we enjoyed the process, becoming aware that we had only just started to learn how to ‘play’ this work.

Having secured Without Walls Creation and Touring support, with gigs at Timber Festival and Stockton International River Festival in 2024, we felt confident in the work. We toured the show in 2024 to six sites/festivals, including the two Without Walls partner festivals. It was a stark contrast from the previous year’s tour of Wales, as this was with much larger, more diverse audiences, especially at the festivals.

The audience response was overwhelmingly positive, with many people and families coming back to experience the installation at different times over the 4 hours. Many felt deeply moved, some cried, and others laughed, but most people were absorbed, sitting or moving around the sonic space that we had created.

It is difficult to gauge whether the work made any lasting difference to how people perceive the world and the social and climate crisis we are living through. What we did prove to ourselves as much as anybody else is that the work does appeal to a broad and diverse audience, that people liked spending time within the space and that while the theme is perhaps difficult and challenging, people do want to engage in broader issues and escape with others into another sonic space. Perhaps in that process, catching sight of wider possibilities for changing our world.