‘Carmen DCCIII’ is an innovative new sound-based work created by Anil Sebastian in collaboration with Japanese/Egyptian coder and modular synthesist Cherif Hashizume. By experimenting with the resonant properties of the Lar figurine, the work translates physical matter into audio waves. The title itself is a reference to the prime frequency at which natural harmonic resonances peaked when sound was channelled through this tiny metal artefact – DCCIII being the roman numerals for 703(Hz).   

On contemplating the commission and genie like qualities of the Lar, Sebastian states: “I love how much one small object can inspire and trigger off endless possibilities of creativity and thought. One little fragment, from one particular time, probably from one particular family and household, has the potential to inspire an incredible and varied richness of responses.” 

Anil Sebastian is a Folkestone-based artist, creative director and producer, a solo artist, member of Icelandic band Hrím, and the Founder and Director of London Contemporary Voices choir. Sebastian has performed with Alt-J, Manu Delago, Imogen Heap, Nitin Sawhney, Laura Mvula, Sam Smith and U2, and has toured globally.

Anil Sebastian: http://www.anilsebastian.com/

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/


ABOUT: 
Ten Songs for a Lar is a new and ambitious global artist commission inspired by an almost 2000 year old mysterious figurine, held in the collections at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester. This tiny ‘Lar’ statuette, a household god figurine, served as a protector of the home, family and domestic boundaries and dates from around AD 200.

The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Anil Sebastian - Carmen DCCIII

Ariel Chan (Linyuying Chen) is a freelance scholar, singer, and choral director from Yunnan Province, China. Chan’s work primarily focuses on the research and documentation of sounds and images from minority ethnic groups (mainly Miao and Hani) in remote South West China.

Chan’s audio-artefact for ‘Ten Songs for a Lar’ is a presentation of fieldwork she carried out whilst studying in a remote Hani village. The title ‘Gal Wu Yol Liq Noq Hhaq Zeq’ is an ancient phrase of Hani, which roughly translates to "an ancient song of thanks to the gods". In discussing the work and the songs of the Hani and Miao, Chan states:

“This is a very old form of singing. Everyone says their own things. They don't need to be standardized and unified. They pay more attention to the horizontal musical lines. The ups and downs are all caused by emotions. But the harmonic effect formed in the sound interweaving is also very shocking.”

Through these songs the Hani and Miao express their belief in animism (the attribution of energy/living souls to inanimate objects) and provide a living, direct connection with our Lar figurine, and ancient Roman beliefs.

Ariel Chan: https://www.facebook.com/sijizhichun

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/ 

ABOUT: The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Ariel Chan -  Gal Wu Yol Liq Noq Hhaq Zeq（Gesangsversion）

“With the world as it is I’ve said some prayers recently - I think most of us probably have in one way or another. Some direct to a specific god and others to something far more loosely defined. What struck me when researching the Lar, is that it represented a focus for this same energy. It’s this energy that is a constant. Acknowledging this allows us to perhaps connect with this artefact and the people who took comfort from it, more deeply.” (James Marren)

James Marren (Cyanotape) is a UK based artist and musician exploring a wide variety of media, including photographic processes, film, installation, sound and performance. He studied fine art at Chelsea College of Arts and draws on a range of tools and themes to make work. This work is equally a personal journey as it is a way to connect. Unearthing fragmented discoveries that often feel intimate, only to later reveal a more universal relevance.

“Lar II” and its infectious, mantra-like repetition, serves as an audio-work of focused contemplation which seeks to enable its listeners to connect with this mysterious ancient artefact, as well as with the people who historically took comfort from it.

James Marren (Cyanotape): https://www.cyanotape.com/

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/

ABOUT: The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

James Marren (Cyanotype) - Lar II

“The song will be a call to listen, alternating a quiet composition and moments of silence, as in a sort of "game of seduction" where the audience is drawn to listen but is also asked to be longing for the next sound. By choosing to engage in attentively listening to the Lar sound we can enable audience's curiosity towards the figurine story and what it potentially symbolises.” (Freddie Murphy & Chiara Lee) 

‘A Visit from a Lar’ is a new collaborative audio work between Italian sound artists Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee. The work acts as a type of ‘sonic liturgy’ aiming to engage with listeners on a cognitive and emotional level - shaping our thoughts and feelings, and inducing physical movement. 

Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee have been composing music together since 2003. Their natural inclination to write music for films, installations and readings derives from their peculiar approach to composition. The starting point of the process are visual imagery and concepts, followed by translation of their hidden meanings into music. With the moniker Father Murphy, they released concept albums focusing on expressing the sound of Catholic sense of guilt. They have performed extensively across Europe, UK, North America, Australia and Russia. Films with their original soundtrack were selected by Locarno Film Festival, MoMA Fortnight Doc Festival, etc.

Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee: https://murphy---lee.tumblr.com/

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/

ABOUT: The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Freddie Murphy & Chiara Lee - A Visit From A Lar

Gaz Tomlinson, also known by his artist name ‘Quiet Boy’, is an alternative electronic theatre and film composer, singer-songwriter, and performer, who resides in Margate, Kent (UK). 

For this commission Tomlinson has further developed his 'SAD Audio' explorations of the positive impact that sound and words (like sunlight) can have on our health and mental wellbeing. 'Falling for the Sky' is a binaural sound composition aurally transporting listeners into homes across Kent - inviting you to eavesdrop on conversations, stories and ruminations laced with reflective, tender, and often humorous observation and insight.

The work has been specifically optimised to be listened to via headphones. 

Quiet Boy: https://quietboy.co.uk/

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/

ABOUT: 
Ten Songs for a Lar is a global artist commission inspired by an almost 2000 year old mysterious figurine, held in the collections at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester. This tiny ‘Lar’ statuette, a household god figurine, served as a protector of the home, family and domestic boundaries and dates from around AD 200.

The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Quiet Boy - Falling for the Sky (Sad Audio 3)

Household Gods is a newly composed musique concrete ‘audio-artefact’ reimagining the Lar as a receiver actively tuning into and amplifying the sounds of its natural and domestic environment. Travel back in time from the present day to AD 200 rediscovering some of the sounds that surround and define our existence, though have long resonated, dormant to our ears, awaiting eventual rediscovery and celebration.

Chambers states, “The initial spur for me was that reawakening of the domestic sound world that happened during the UK lockdown of March 2020. For me, the idea of the Lar being this object that maybe is listening in on the domestic environment and the domestic sound world and that might have done so for many hundreds of years - I thought that is a really nice conceit for a piece … When we had the initial lockdown, and our outdoor activities were limited, I think all of us had a different focus on our homes and the people we share them with, as well as the objects and the sounds found within them. Objects and things that we had available to us that suddenly were not as freely available outside of the house.”

Iain Chambers is a London-based composer and producer whose work explores specific locations and their changing sounds across time, as in The House of Sound (2017), and City of Women (2018). In 2019 Iain launched the independent record label Persistence of Sound, creating a new space for musique concrète, field recordings, and the uncategorizable sounds in between.

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity...

Iain Chambers: https://iainchambers.com/


ABOUT:
Ten Songs for a Lar is a global artist commission inspired by an almost 2000 year old mysterious figurine, held in the collections at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester. This tiny ‘Lar’ statuette, a household god figurine, served as a protector of the home, family and domestic boundaries and dates from around AD 200. 

The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Iain Chambers - Household Gods

‘Song for a Lar’ is a new collaborative audio work between poet Jan Noble and composer Donna McKevitt. Their audio-artefact for the Ten Songs for a Lar commission reimagines the journey that this treasured figurine has taken throughout time, from its creation, use, and burial, to its eventual rediscovery. 

Donna McKevitt writes music for film, contemporary dance and concert performance. She has collaborated with Nick Cave, Tricky and Michael Nyman. Her first work, Translucence, a song cycle of Derek Jarman’s poetry, began when scoring music for his final film Blue. Her work has been performed at The Tate, The Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells as well as national and international festivals and venues.

Jan Noble is a writer and a poet. He studied Fine Art at Canterbury School of Art (now UCA). His work has been broadcast on Channel 4 and BBC Radio. He has recorded at Abbey Road Studios and read at venues and festivals across Europe including the ICA, London, the Teatro Filodrammatici, Milan and Poetry on the Lake, Italy with former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

I’ve waited as the ages rolled 
And poets did their best to charm
A story from these sealed lips – 
You thought I’d come to offer love 
But silence is the spell I cast
There are no words to test 
The mute metal of my heart. 

Know only I was born red hot 
Knew fluid moves until I froze 
To this stiff pirouette. 
My dancing days are done 
Cooled off in Medway mud 
A tempered treasure dressed 
In rust like dried up blood. 

Sure, I’ve scrubbed up well 
My polished armour keeps a lid 
On secrets only gods are privy to. 
You may fall before or worship me 
Leave what store of faith you have 
Unguarded by the door, I know my place 
I’ll keep it safe and wait 
Till you come back for more.

(Words: Jan Noble) 

Jan Noble: https://jannoble.co.uk/

Donna McKevitt: https://donnamckevitt.org/

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/

ABOUT: The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Donna McKevitt & Jan Noble - Song For A Lar

‘Broken folk’ duo Lunatraktors (Clair Le Couteur and Carli Jefferson) are a Margate based partnership routed in research-led music and art experimentations. Often drawing inspiration from British folk heritage, and influences from contemporary art, theatre and music, ‘Lunatraktors search for new solutions to old problems, and old solutions to new ones.’
 
For this commission, Lunatraktors have built upon the concept of ‘sound is a form of touch’ through the creation of a new ritualistic folk song and dance: an invocation to the Guildhall Lar.

“Whether as visitors looking through a glass vitrine, artists responding to digital images during lockdown, or partially sighted or less mobile visitors experiencing primarily through tactile sound, we want the Lar to be something that we can all touch, and that can touch us.”


Lyrics:
Plucked from the vine in Tolosa
Shipped about in a box of straw
Poured on the earth in Cantium
Vinum vernas vincit!

What would they do without the ones
Who do every thing for them?
Worked to the bone but never broken
Vernæ are the household

Enos Lases iuuate,
Enos Lases iuuate,
Enos Lases iuuate,
Limen sali, sta berber!

How do we know who stands without
If they’re turned away at the door?
How do we know who lives within
The spirit of the household?

The past is a foreign country, our own
Ancestors weren’t like us,
Speaking and dressing differently, we
Welcome in the stranger!

Enos Lases iuuate,
Enos Lases iuuate,
Enos Lases iuuate,
Limen sali, sta berber!

Lunatraktors: https://www.lunatraktors.space/

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/

ABOUT: The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Lunatraktors -  Larentalia

Stergin is an Austrian multi-instrumentalist, composer/producer & songwriter based in London. 2018 he was awarded the highly competitive “Do It Differently Award” by Help Musicians UK. His projects have received support by the Arts Council England & The Austrian Cultural Forum London. As a performing artist his most recent cross-arts project is called “12 Photos 12 Tracks” – the global journey of a Polaroid turned into music, developed with his band “Ode To Lucius”.

For this commission Stergin has collaborated with poet Louise Fazackerley, winner of BBC Radio 3 ‘New Voice’ award, European slam finalist and support artist for Dr. John Cooper Clarke. Their piece ‘Unwritten’ is focusing on a Lar silently observing everything that happened within a home. “If only this Lar could talk. What stories would it tell? Unwritten tells the story of a Roman woman and the thoughts she had while preparing dinner for the family.

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity/kent-medway-national-portfolio-organisation-partnership/ten-songs-for-a-lar-2/

Stergin: http://www.stergin.com/new/
Louise Fazackerley: https://www.louisethepoet.co.uk/


ABOUT:
Ten Songs for a Lar is a global artist commission inspired by an almost 2000 year old mysterious figurine, held in the collections at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester. This tiny ‘Lar’ statuette, a household god figurine, served as a protector of the home, family and domestic boundaries and dates from around AD 200. 

The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

Stergin & Louise Fazackerley - Unwritten

Yeji Yeon is a multi-disciplinary artist of music, dance, visual and performing arts. Trained in classical singing, ballet and theatre acting- she is a performer as well as a producer to her creations including musical compositions, theatre, dance films and narrative cinema. Yeon’s music is a lullaby for lovers and dreamers, as singing is her prayer and meditation. Born in South Korea, she moved to England at a young age and is currently based in Seoul, South Korea. Much of her inspiration comes from nature, love and spirituality; she writes, sings, and records her songs often on the road in her travels around the world.

Yeon has composed a haunting and hypnotic traditional based folk song in Latin entitled Veni Lares Veni” – “I have chosen…to sing lyrics of praise; I envisioned the melody to be chant-like and simple- as how the people of the ancient times would have sang their love and praise for the Lares. I decided to accompany the singing with an Autoharp; to sound familiar to a Roman lyre. I wish to evoke the feelings, the atmosphere, and the Spirits of those times through my song.”

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity...

Yeji Yeon: https://www.yejiyeon.com/

ABOUT:
Ten Songs for a Lar is a new and ambitious global artist commission inspired by an almost 2000 year old mysterious figurine, held in the collections at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester. This tiny ‘Lar’ statuette, a household god figurine, served as a protector of the home, family and domestic boundaries and dates from around AD 200. 

Yeji Yeon is a multi-disciplinary artist of music, dance, visual and performing arts. Trained in classical singing, ballet and theatre acting- she is a performer as well as a producer to her creations including musical compositions, theatre, dance films and narrative cinema. Yeon’s music is a lullaby for lovers and dreamers, as singing is her prayer and meditation. Born in South Korea, she moved to England at a young age and is currently based in Seoul, South Korea. Much of her inspiration comes from nature, love and spirituality; she writes, sings, and records her songs often on the road in her travels around the world.

Yeon has composed a haunting and hypnotic traditional based folk song in Latin entitled Veni Lares Veni” – “I have chosen…to sing lyrics of praise; I envisioned the melody to be chant-like and simple- as how the people of the ancient times would have sang their love and praise for the Lares. I decided to accompany the singing with an Autoharp; to sound familiar to a Roman lyre. I wish to evoke the feelings, the atmosphere, and the Spirits of those times through my song.”

Ten Songs for a Lar: https://thedockyard.co.uk/our-charity...

Yeji Yeon: https://www.yejiyeon.com/



ABOUT:
The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

The Kent-Medway Museum Partnership NPO is a group of four museums (The Historic Dockyard Chatham, Canterbury Museums & Galleries, Guildhall Museum Rochester and The Collections of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to work together to deliver excellence in the use of collections and to inspire learning, creativity, and well-being to existing and new audiences in their communities.

KMMP NPO

Popular tracks