MP Hopkins, Page 38 (language wrinkles) (2022)

 

skimming the edge of voices that can’t…

voices that can’t comprehend the conditions for mirroring…

the word as it clears itself…

 language wrinkles in an empty bed…

engraving a long exit from memory…

 a fragile memory finds a…

words simmered in three days of wind…

 transcription as an instrument of expulsion…

MP Hopkins’ Page 38 (language wrinkles) is an exercise in spatially-decentred radiophony and poetic indeterminacy. It builds an intimate architecture of Hertian space in order to interrogate and unravel ideas of the broadcast voice as one-way transmission, setting in motion a series of ellipses and feedback loops. Using radio as both medium and method, a page from an evolving text score the artist has been writing since 2018 is vocalised and sent into the aether, an open-ended process incorporating several mediating techniques that work sequentially to further multiply and distribute: live FM radio improvisations that function as feedback systems rerouting signals through multiple sources that emerge again, transfigured, within the same on-air broadcast; low power FM transmissions and spatially-located arrays of small receivers channelling playback through an echo-chamber of domestic activity, the artist recording his own listening-to and listening-with. Anna Friz, in her 2009 essay Transmission Art in the Present Tense, writes of contemporary transmission art practice’s consistent interest in polyvalent transception, stating that “a transceptive approach to transmission is not only a statement (“I am”), but also an orientation toward active, engaged listening: a question asked, however conditionally (“who’s there”)? Transmission is understood not only as a radial description of space, but a circle of relationship.” Echoing this approach, MP Hopkins writes of Page 38 (language wrinkles), that “My intention was to confuse the time and space of when the work began and when it was being heard, a blurring of transmission and reception, (…) my role as the one transmitting and receiving was meant to be somewhat collapsed into a repetitively revised action where speaking and listening to that activity was simultaneous; talking with/to/through myself via the radio whilst also listening to myself and re-recording that – a transceiving activity.”

– Sally Ann McIntyre, February 2022

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Page 38 (language wrinkles) was commissioned for the Radia network and Radio One91FM, Dunedin, New Zealand, January 2022.

MP Hopkins is an artist working on Gadigal and Wangal land in Sydney, Australia that makes audio, performance, radiophonic, and textual works. He uses voice, feedback, recording/playback devices, and verbal notation within different acoustic environments, which are deconstructed and presented to the listener in delicate and degraded ways. Hopkins has released recordings with Penultimate Press, Canti Magnetici, Tahalamos, Mappa Editions and Regional Bears. He has presented projects for the NOW now, Liquid Architecture, Avantwhatever, and The Make it Up Club. International appearances include Café Oto, UK; LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore; Les Ateliers Claus, Belgium; TUSK Festival, UK; Colour Out of Space Festival, UK; and he has produced radiophonic works for Radiophrenia, Kunstradio, and the Radia network.