Ben Swaby Selig

Sound Clash

what happens when you are forced to remember something you cannot bear to endure. what happens when the only way to endure is by not remembering. what happens when one day remembering becomes the only way to survive. the good news is he is still alive.
… and so one day he does say what happened. and we listen.

–Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Sound Clash is an ongoing collaboration between Ben Swaby Selig and filmmaker Hannah Oliver, first commissioned for Frieze London 2024. Comprising three sound stations mapped across Frieze London, Sound Clash draws from Jamaican sonic practices to consider our relationship to land amidst ongoing gentrification, dislocation and submerged local stories in East London.

Throughout Jamaica’s fight for independence in the 1960s, sounds from speakers placed high in treetops signalled that a neighbourhood was having a ‘party’. People travelled from one town to the next, crossing Parish boundaries, following the sound. The emergence of Dub, a Jamaican musical technique and style, saw engineers use mixing as an instrument of spontaneous composition and improvisation, de- and re-constructing the original structure of a song. Contouring between sonic anticipation through glimpses of familiar song (echo) and a sense of longing induced by the sound’s decay (reverb), dub engineers created perpetual moments of repair, where the dispossessed reconnect with ancestral ways of being with the land.

Sound Clash roots the two sites of V&A East in Hackney Wick and Stratford at the centre of this sonic investigation. Lifting oral testimonies and archival recordings to field recordings that unsettlingly shift between East London and Jamaica, Sound Clash draws our attention to the land, its capacity to hold memory and strategies of reconnecting.

Sound Clash has exhibited at Frieze London 2024, (London, 2024), Ormside Projects (London, 2024) and Orleans House Gallery (London, 2024).

Station 2: Hackney + Timber

This station refers to the tributaries connecting timber trades in Jamaica, London Docklands and Hackney Wick – the location of V&A East Storehouse – layering them with oral testimonies from family members and local residents that unsettlingly shift between East London and Jamaica.

Soundscape featuring interviews from East Bank Voices Oral History Project:

Michael (interviewed by Lynette, Badu Digital Hub) (18:50)
Terrence (interviewed by Tinkle, Deep Boroughs) (23:30)
Des (interviewed by Althea, Badu Digital Hub) (27:08; 43:45; 55:01)
Althea (interviewed by Lynette, Badu Digital Hub) (28:34)
Alison and Jen (interviewed by Alison, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) (34:16)
Eden (interviewed by Althea, Badu Digital Hub) (48:05)]

Station 3: Stratford + Electrostatic

This station draws from oral testimonies recorded in Stratford and Jamaica that have been raised to electromagnetic field recording signals that unsettlingly shift between East London and Jamaica. This refers to early submarine telecommunications cabling laid between UK and Jamaica in 1870s, and its manufacturing roots in the India Rubber Gutta Percha Company in London Docklands.

Soundscape featuring interviews from East Bank Voices Oral History Project:

Paul N (interviewed by Rozina, Newham Community Project) (14:08)
Kathy (interviewed by Johnny, Newham Community Project) (18:51)
Paul C (interviewed by Eileen, Carpenter’s Estate Community) (38:30)
Linda (interviewed by Deborah, Our Parklife) (46:45)
Marcus (interviewed by Alexis, Deep Boroughs) (52:06)
Hardial (interviewed by Suresh aka The Cockney Singh) (56:03)]

Full exhibition credits:

Ben Swaby Selig, Curator, Sound Design, Exhibition Text
Hannah Oliver, Photographer, Filmmaker

Gary Stewart (Dubmorphology), Consultant
Trevor Mathison (Dubmorphology), Consultant
Phoenix Yemi, Poetry Pamphlet
Dark Energy Studios, Sound Production Studio
Joseph Bond Studio, Exhibition Design
Ronald “Uncle Ronnie” Jarret (8 Mile Sounds)
Tony Myers (Jamaica Sound System Federation)
East Bank Voices, Oral History Project
Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
National Library of Scotland
Black Curatorial
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries