Sound and vision

Sam Belinfante is an artist who places sound at the heart of his output. Creating works that take in music, art, film, live performance and installations, he’s best known for his Listening exhibition that toured the UK between 2014-16. Here, we talk to him about how sound can be incorporated into art, using the solar system as a starting point for a performance and how blood circulation inspired his most recent work.

Hi Sam! How did you get started as a ‘sound artist’?
I’ve played cello all my life and can sing to a decent standard, but I went to art school to do that in the day and play music in the evening. But when I got there, my teachers suggested I make art about music. I’ve been lucky enough to make a career around these disciplines; creating works for the studio, theatre, gallery, opera house – inside and out. I work across the senses!

You came to attention with the Listening exhibition – which ‘examined the crossover between the visual and the sonic’. Tell us about it…
The idea was: “What happens when you do a show about listening?” Getting people to be led by their ears as much as their eyes. There’s a saying: “The ears have no lids” – you can’t shut them off, so curators and artists are apprehensive about sounds in exhibitions because they ‘bleed’. My approach was to choreograph the whole thing, with the show becoming a kind of musical instrument.

How?
The exhibition was ‘in time’ – you were led around by things happening in that space. There were lots of artists and musicians involved, like Laurie Anderson [writer of futuristic 1981 hit Oh Superman] and another sound artist, Janet Cardiff. Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost was also involved – we worked with theatrical lights, bringing them into the gallery, and at a certain point in the exhibition, all the lights would go off. Lighting is important: as soon as light changes, you change your behaviour.

“We used orbs as beacons that set the time for the project with lights and sounds timed exactly to create unexpected, serendipitous music”

In 2021 you produced a large exterior installation, On The Circulation Of Blood, for the Folkestone Triennial. What was that?
The starting point was the work of Folkestone’s William Harvey, who discovered blood circulation in 1648 – and proved that the heart wasn’t the ‘soul’ but nothing more than a pump. Over two years, I worked with hundreds of people – including local children and musicians – and we created compositions that played with these ideas of pulse, beats and movement. The people’s movements and ideas were the ‘circulation’.

How did you make the idea a reality?
It was an outdoor installation constructed from theatrical apparatuses, fabric netting and a lighting and audio system. The structure was the site for public performances – and you’d go there to hear the performance. We used orbs as beacons that set the time for the project with lights and sounds timed exactly (and randomly) to create unexpected, serendipitous music. In fishing communities, you had bells and lights that ‘timed’ the town – when people would go out to sea and back. It also referenced that.

You’ve got a project at the Bluecoat in Liverpool that has a planetary feel…
In 2019, I produced The Orrery for the London Contemporary Music Festival. I’m taking the energy from this into a gallery installation. An ‘orrery’ is a mechanical model of the solar system. They have their own personality – they whir, shake and move around. One thing goes fast: another goes slow – they’re idiosyncratic. The 2019 Orrery entwined performers and audience in a huge apparatus with a giant moon in the middle, testing the choreographic and cartographic possibilities of the choral machine. With support from Arts Council England, I’m working with the Bluecoat to see how we can use this approach to make gallery exhibitions.

Moving away from your work, what’s the difference between sound and music?
Music is the organisation of sound: the choreography and sounds going in and out of sync. That includes the silences, too. The composer Felix Mendelssohn said, “Music is in the silences.” It has an end and a beginning, whereas noise always goes on.

Finally, would you consider yourself a musician or artist?
I’m not throwing away the visual – it’s essential to what I do. I don’t produce music: it’s about the different senses playing with each other!

To discover more click here
sambelinfante.com