A conversation with artist Louise K Wilson on working with members of our community for the production of two new tracks for our ‘Encountering Survival’ audio guide.
Listen to Encountering Survival here via the browser-based app
In November 2022, Holocaust Centre North launched the audio guide Encountering Survival a compilation of 10 tracks created by sound artists Linda O’Keeffe and Louise K Wilson. The primary aim of this first artistic commission for Holocaust Centre North was to give space to that which defies archival practices and cannot be preserved for posterity, because it was either lost, destroyed, stolen, left behind; or because of it being immaterial. Encountering Survival bears witness to intimate records of remembering and honours a community of Holocaust survivors and refugees who built new lives in the North of England.
Following on from the initial 10 tracks two additional two tracks were commissioned to expand the audio guide’s breadth, incorporating experiences of second and third generation of Holocaust Survivors. Louise K Wilson interviewed Jenny Kagan for Thin Line and Chris and Avery Knill for Black Milk.
The following conversation between Louise K Wilson and Paula Kolar was recorded over Zoom on July 18th 2024 upon completion of the tracks. The artist and Holocaust Centre North’s Curator of Contemporary Practices reflect on the interviewing process and the difficulty of compression – both in terms of length and emotional intensity
Paula: So I was struck by how thematically different the recent tracks you worked on [Thin Line & Black Milk] are to the ones you worked on before. They are much less about memory and a lot more about intergenerational trauma. And I wondered how the experience of working on these tracks was different.
Louise: Yes, that’s exactly what Alessandro wanted, I think. He felt that there was a very important element missing in the first set of audio guides. So that was very much the brief to address, and Alessandro suggested a number of people to interview: Chris and Avery, Jenny, and possibly using some archival recordings from Lillian. And I think John Chillag was also mentioned. But the suggestion was that it would be one track. And as you know from working with sound and with interviews it’s really, really difficult to go into depth with multiple interviewees, to extract what you want and get it down on one track.
So I did the interviews quite a while ago. I had literally hours. With Jenny, I had about an hour and 15 minutes, and Chris probably double that, actually, I think. So there was lots of material and it just became clear that I couldn’t take on anybody else, that there was so much material there to reflect on. I was also aware that all the people I interviewed were so honest and so open and that made things quite difficult because they were quite raw, I’d say. Particularly Chris was very, very raw and very open. And I was just trying to extract something that would make sense – going between Jen and between Chris and Avery. And I had wanted to go between the two, but it just wasn’t working to juxtapose them, and to just draw out comparisons or differences between the two. The kind of sound quality was very different too, because Chris and Avery living in Norway meant interviewing on Zoom and that kind of compresses the voice. So I just realized I had to keep them quite separate.
And obviously very, very quickly you get that sense of how different they are.
Jen is kind of straight in there with how open her parents were about talking about their (Holocaust) experiences. She talks about how they would – and I didn’t include this bit – but she talks about the collective sigh when it’s brought up at the dinner table with her and her siblings. Like: ‘Not again!’ And there’s quite a lot of humour in her describing that as a phenomenon as well, about this openness and not realizing until later on, kind of how unusual that was.
Whereas Chris, Chris’s story, and Avery’s story, is perhaps more fraught. More complex and more complicated. So it didn’t feel fair to put them in the same track. I think because I would have had to edit them down so much to have them in one track. And I think 10 minutes is probably the maximum to listen to at once. I did have them as a 20 minute track, and it was too much. So I decided that they would have to be two separate tracks to give them that space and let them hopefully, kind of exist by themselves.
But also, if you listen to them side by side, what that might do? That’s a long answer.
Paula: I really appreciate that. I think you’re allowing the different perspectives to have depth by not using that comparative mode. Because if you kept going back and forth, there’d be the comparison and the contrasting of two experiences that are so very different.
Louise: Absolutely, I think that it risks getting somebody down to a point you’re trying to make, rather than letting their own narratives emerge.
Paula: Yes it’d be more didactic?
Louise: Yes they’d exist as a kind of cipher for an idea, rather than for what they’re trying to say. But obviously it was extremely difficult. So if we talk about Jen, that was, say about an hour and 16 minutes. There’s a lot of discussion about her, so the spotlight really is on her and that sort of helped when editing. So I thought it’s not about the parents’ story, unlike the previous audio guides, this really is about how you read the current generation through those stories. So that kind of helped make some decisions about the editing. Obviously, there was a lot about Jenny and her career as an artist, and the various works that she’s made, but in the end, I decided not to use all of that. I think because you would sort of need to have seen the exhibition, and this needs to exist just through listening, rather than having to then go and follow up with links to sort of contextualize it. It just needs to be the voice telling you something, and you kind of working with that.
Paula: The panning is so striking right from the beginning in Black Milk. You would have also lost that ability to play with the back-and-forth in the dialogue between Chris and Avery.
Louise: Yes, I mean, that was quite late on. I did have them quite separate and that wasn’t really working. Because they’re very different – how they talk, is very different – and then I thought, actually, they need to be together. Obviously Chris was difficult, because he’s such an extraordinary person and so open and so honest. He was sharing a huge amount of stuff, which felt very precious, but quite fraught. So I had to be really clear, kind of ethically, what I was going to use. Perhaps there’s things where he goes into more detail. But I thought that actually, I’ll just let things be hinted at, rather than be too explicit.
Paula: Having also interviewed Chris, I understand the experience a little, because it really feels like it’s an incredible honour to have listened and that Chris has this incredible gift of being able to express these nuances and the depth of feelings. But also you have to then go to the little snippets that you can fit into a 10-minute track. It’s a very difficult task and I think you’ve done it beautifully. And I think it’s very interesting having spoken to Jen so much, realizing that what Jen does so beautifully is sort of to leave space in between things, where the humour comes in. They have a very different way of expressing themselves.
Louise: In relation to this: Yes. I mean, Jen has the ability to take something which is utterly horrendous, like taking the photograph into school, just so horrendous to think about – you know, what happened to her grandfather – and to make it quite funny. This sort of absurdity of taking the photograph and being more scared about her mother, knowing that she left homework too late. It’s very human. And again, it’s just a little hint at the relationship between her and her mother. That was, obviously why I also decided I just concentrate on the relationship between her and her mother, rather than her and her father, because that came out as well in the interview: how different her mum and dad were, in terms of how they processed events and so on. But yes, they’re very different tonally. And also, as you say, it was an incredible honour. Did you interview Chris in person? Or was it-
Paula: It was over, Zoom, yes. And then I met Chris in person after that, which was really lovely. But the interviewing- you have this human experience of this emotion and the way you want to respond. And then because you’re in that role you’re looking at it also from this artistic point of view. And I guess [given the topic] it’s like working with the most saturated image, the loudest noise, the highest emotion. You’re given this material that is so intense, and then you sort of have to edit, and that’s a very strange transition to have to make.
Louise: Yes, because it’s not like being a journalist. And I mean it’s funny, because it was done on Zoom, I think it just felt very strange. Because it concentrates vision, when you’re looking at somebody on Zoom, even though you know you’re probably, you’re not really looking into their eyes, but, but it feels somehow more invasive than if you’re face to face, weirdly, because it feels like it should be the opposite. But I don’t, I don’t remember, I don’t remember kind of what they look like.
My first experience with Holocaust Centre North was coming to that event of the launch of your zine. I think it must have been the first time I visited. So coming to that event and not knowing quite what it would involve. And I think I was a bit awestruck. Going into that event, it was just so intense, you know, it was. You could kind of feel the electricity in the air when Chris was on the screen, talking about his mum. And his mum, sort of not facing the screen, but facing the audience. It just felt utterly extraordinary. I’d never been to anything like that. And kind of being- becoming really aware of what was at stake, and what had needed to be processed over a long period of time. So, I suppose, when I interviewed Chris, having awareness of that was really helpful. I think that was the starting point when I first started talking to him, I told him that I’d been at that event, because obviously he would not have not known, because he was on Zoom. And, yes, it was a really, a deep dive into trauma. And I remember somebody saying in the audience [at that event] afterwards, they were saying ‘I want to interview my aunt (I can’t remember what family member it was), but she won’t talk about it.’ And somebody said ‘Well, she doesn’t have to.’ That really stuck with me as well – when and why people should open up about their experiences.
Paula: I remember. I’m both sort of sad that we didn’t record it, but I also don’t think a recording would have ever captured it. It was an intense happening. I’m wondering, did the ability to use sound to respond or to reflect these big emotions, did that help? Did that help give you the chance to express some of that emotion, or some of what you’d heard that you wouldn’t have wanted to put in, literally?
Louise: Yes, a little bit. I mean, obviously you always have to take care not to use sound to illustrate. So when Jen’s talking about making the box if this was a BBC thing, there’d be drilling,
Paula: -hammering
Louise: Exactly! So I kind of parked that one. Then I did think whether I could change the acoustics, so you got the sense of being in different rooms and spaces. But that was not working either. Because I kept thinking: this is meant to be sound. But because there’s a huge amount of speech, and that needs to be really clear. You need to not have it be too whizzy with the sound design. It just needs to be quite clear. So that was a sort of self-imposed boundary.
I’ve got a friend who’s a violinist and she listened to a little bit of the interview and improvised to it. She sent me some recordings that she’d done because I wanted something which was a little more musical for Chris and Avery. Then I had to play with manipulation: slow it down and sort of work with it. There’s just a bit where she was bowing on the violin, and you get this nice musical tension. And then just slowing that down so it’s not too distracting, but just modulates a little bit underneath.
Paula: It feels like there’s a space that either opens or closes in around the person speaking. That was my experience. I felt like you could sort of feel the expansion or something.
Louise: Yes, yes. I mean, gosh. I mean, it’s so difficult with editing, because you think of all the bits that you’d love to have used. I suppose with Jen I was interested in her parents’ perception of time when they’re in the box. Just how moments can stretch out. Hopefully, the sound works as a reference to experiences being stretched or drawn out. And hopefully, the editing can give listeners access to certain moments. Moments you would not have heard if you were just hearing the whole recording.
Paula: I guess that’s where you’re using the capacity to listen attentively and to edit in a way that allows different elements to come out and layer on top of each other. With Jen you’ve really allowed the warmth in her tone and you have – well I know, Jen – but I can hear her smile, you know, when she tells a story. Those nuances, the edits and how they fit together – I think that’s where the sound art methodology comes in. Your capacity to work with this material.
Louise: With Jen, well she needed to be quite spare because she is a brilliant storyteller. And she’s- you know, I was going to say performer, but it’s not. She’s not performing. But she is. She’s incredibly articulate. And you know, when I was looking back at the transcript, it’s so crafted, how she articulates her thinking. And I suppose, she obviously, as an artist – she’s kind of living it, she’s sort of in it. But it becomes her work as well at various points. So she’s seeing it slightly distanced as well, maybe. But yes, I thought you just need to listen to her voice. And I think with Chris, it’s more about catching the emotion. And it’s very difficult with Zoom, because it kind of compresses [the sound], and it was very difficult, and it’s still not quite right.
Paula: I think perhaps it’s me coming from a generation that is so used to hearing that compression in my day-to-day life. But it’s true to the mode that it was made in, true to the means that you had at your disposal. But also, I guess that it’s sort of an element that Chris and Iby’s relationship, and Avery and Iby’s relationship would have had because they would have communicated over video calls. There would have been a geographical distance that you hear in the compression.
Louise: Yeah, that’s true. And I mean, also, obviously, I’m sure you know that it is also a complex relationship – that between Chris and Avery. Or at least it was then, it [the interview] was a while ago, so maybe things are different now. And Avery was great and very open and direct, but it was almost like between themselves –
Paula: Like you’re sort of in the middle, working with their voices?
Louise: I mean, they’re so different. And it was so different because Chris would just speak. With Avery I didn’t have lots and lots, I had about probably 20 minutes. And it was more spare. It was fascinating to hear about Avery as a person, as an artist. And Avery says that they can’t – I forgot there’s a name for where you can’t visualize things, I have a friend who has this as well, where you don’t have mental images. So in a way, Avery draws all the time as a way to do that. They can see concepts, but not images. So that was interesting. But then that’s off on a different tangent and about their art. There were lots of strands.
Paula: Well, thank you so much. I’m going to stop recording now. Yes?
It was really, really lovely to hear you speak.