Sound of the Sun, Volume I is the weird, entrancing, celebratory, sometimes gloomy, and somewhat euphoric summer mixtape of planetary travel, solar interventions, story telling, and frog choruses you didn’t know you needed for summer 2023.

As UNIT/PITT's first iteration of a multi-part project of sonic-celestial explorations connecting with the seasons, the Sound of the Sun project asks participants to consider their relationship to cycles of solar movement as the days lengthen on this half of the planet—to observe, respond, record, and retell through music, poetry, field recordings, storytelling, and any other audio-based methods in order to speak to this important time of the solar year.

Featuring sound works by 10 artists, Sound of the Sun, Volume I beckons the promise of sun-worship, long beach days, A/C, forest fires, and excess levels of Vitamin D.

Curated by Catherine de Montreuil and Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes
Recording (tracks 1 & 4), mastering, and project support from Nick Short
Artwork collab by Martin Steuck, Catherine de Montreuil, and Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes

Read the artists' bios and track descriptions on our website: https://www.unitpitt.ca/portfolio/sun-2/

Sound of the Sun, Volume I

Sound of the Sun, Volume II is here to accompany you through the darkest day of the year. Created for the Winter Solstice of 2024, this compilation features an eclectic mix of tracks responding to this notable time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere—a time of slowness and sleep which simultaneously harbours the promise of an increase in light and the renewed progression towards brighter days. Building on our first iteration of this project which launched with the Summer Solstice of June of 2023, a new slate of artists have responded to these planetary movements on the shortest day of the year through song, storytelling, and experimental audio recordings in this second instalment of the Sound of the Sun project.

Curated by Catherine de Montreuil and Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes.

Album artwork and design by Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes. All tracks were recorded by the individual artists except for the following, which were recorded with additional help from CHOMS in Vancouver, BC:

Tracks 1 + 5 are partially recorded by Nick Short
Tracks 3 + 8 have additional mixing by Nick Short

Read more about the artists and tracks at: https://www.unitpitt.ca/portfolio/sound-of-the-sun-volume-ii/

Sound of the Sun, Volume II

UNIT/PITT Society for Art + Critical Awareness is excited to present the third and final iteration of our seasonal, solar, sonic project Sound of the Sun, guest curated by Jefferson Alade. Sound of the Sun Volume Three meditates on the cyclical nature of solar movements, and our relationship with the sun; again in flux as the days lengthen. 

The project invited 10 artists to observe, respond, record, and retell their experiences through music, poetry, field recordings, synthesis, storytelling, or any other audio-based method. Together, the playlist reverberates around and through a densely populous world—culminating in a noisy and ambient introspection on the oddity of the sun’s singular presence.

Released as both a limited-edition cassette and SoundCloud playlist, Sound of the Sun Volume Three features tracks from Immix (Robyn Jacobs), Matt Nish-Lapidus, Thomas Evdokimoff, Anju Singh, Marianne Thodas, Hân Phạm, Edith Skeard, Jen Yakamovich & Inkydew the Companion, Sam Meadahl, and Joel DeStefano.

Cassettes are available for purchase at our Khatsalano gallery or via UNIT/PITT’s online shop.

This project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Shumka Centre’s Artist Apprenticeship Network 2024 Program.

Sound of the Sun, Volume III

La Commune 2021 is a virtual free school created by Roxanne Panchasi, and hosted by UNIT/PITT Society for Art and Critical Awareness, a charitable non-profit artist-run organization based in Vancouver, Canada.

Each week of La Commune 2021 is anchored around an episode of radio 1871, an audio series made by Roxanne Panchasi for a seminar in History at Simon Fraser University in the spring term of 2021.

Did women have a Paris Commune? What roles did women play during this moment of revolutionary upheaval in nineteenth-century Paris? How does gender help us to think about the Commune? In this week’s episode, Dr. Carolyn Eichner, an Associate Professor in History & Women's & Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee shares her research on gender and feminism in 1871.

episode 3: women in the commune (with special guest dr. carolyn eichner)

La Commune 2021 is a virtual free school created by Roxanne Panchasi, and hosted by UNIT/PITT Society for Art and Critical Awareness, a charitable non-profit artist-run organization based in Vancouver, Canada.

Each week of La Commune 2021 is anchored around an episode of radio 1871, an audio series made by Roxanne Panchasi for a seminar in History at Simon Fraser University in the spring term of 2021.

This episode's conversation is with Dr. Laura O’Brien. Laura is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne who works on popular culture, revolution, religion, and commemoration in nineteenth-century France. She is the author of The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity, 1830-1852 (Manchester University Press, 2015). Touching on a range of issues, the episode focuses on the Commune and its “Outsiders.”

episode 4: outsiders (with special guest dr. laura o'brien)

Each week of LA COMMUNE 2021 is anchored around an episode of radio 1871, an audio series created for a seminar in History at Simon Fraser University in 2021 with subsequent release via this free school in mind.

RP’s guest this week is Mike Gouldhawke is a Métis and Cree writer and community organizer whose family is from Kistapinanihk (City of Prince Albert) and nêwo-nâkîwin (Mont Nebo) in Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Redwire and Briarpatch. He is based out of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, and Sel̓íl̓witulh territories (known as “Vancouver, British Columbia) and has been part of Indigenous and
anti-poverty movements in the city. 

Mike and I spoke about the Commune and colonialism, moving from Paris to the exile of Communards like Louise Michel in “New Caledonia,” to the Red River Resistance of 1869-70 in what would eventually become a part of “Canada.”

episode 9: colonialism (with special guest mike gouldhawke)

This is Strategies for Survival (1986), an archives project produced by UNIT/PITT, re-presenting the partial proceedings of Strategies for Survival, an international conference for artists organized by the Vancouver Artists’ League, June 9, 10, and 11, 1986.

This recording documents Position: suspended (11), a performance by Mona Hatoum, an artist from Beirut and London, starting on the afternoon of third day and continuing to the end of the conference.

You can find the transcripts for this recording linked here: https://tinyurl.com/556a6hbu

Find the rest of the project linked at: https://www.unitpitt.ca/portfolio/strategiesforsurvival1986/

14: Position: suspended (11), a performance by Mona Hatoum (Beirut/London)

Sound of the Sun, Volume I is the weird, entrancing, celebratory, sometimes gloomy, and somewhat euphoric summer mixtape of planetary travel, solar interventions, story telling, and frog choruses you didn’t know you needed for summer 2023.

As UNIT/PITT's first iteration of a multi-part project of sonic-celestial explorations, the Sound of the Sun project asks participants to consider their relationship to cycles of solar movement as the days lengthen on this half of the planet—to observe, respond, record, and retell through music, poetry, field recordings, storytelling, and any other audio-based methods in order to speak to this important time of the solar year.

Featuring sound works by 10 artists, Sound of the Sun, Volume I beckons the promise of sun-worship, long beach days, A/C, forest fires, and excess levels of Vitamin D.

Curated by Catherine de Montreuil and Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes Recording, mastering, and project support from Nick Short
Artwork by Martin Steuck, Catherine de Montreuil, and Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes

Jami Reimer - Lost in the antiphon

Stefana Fratila - Feat. Tess Degenstein - “I Want To Leave This Earth Behind” (Short Story)

Absolute Value Of Noise - Circuits That Wake Up With The Sun

Lida Pawliuk - Feat. B. WEST - Cruel Summer

Jane Harms - The Weekend of the Year

Ogheneofegor Obuwoma - Feat. Onosholema Ikhwolegbe - In conversation with time

B.Michaael - 21/21

Atama Itai - Osaka Sun

Pari - A radiant resonance

Sound of the Sun, Volume II is here to accompany you through the darkest day of the year. Created with the winter solstice in mind, this compilation features an eclectic mix of tracks responding to the darkest point of the year—a time of slowness, sleep, but also the promise of increasing light and a slow progression towards summer.

Olivia Valenza - Egress

May Flower - Winter Song

Tiffany Muñoz - The Sun Frowns/Ang Adlaw Gakusmod

J Ward The - Light Goes Out

Spiral Remix - Goodbye to Everything

goddaughter - listen to me (inhale/exhale)

In The Are - Cosmic Goblets

Joel DeStefano - Sun Song

Sam Meadahl - Regenerative Bloom

Jen Yakamovich & Inkydew the Companion - a rainbow arches over flamingos wading in a lagoon

Edith Skeard - Prairie Shifting

Hân Phạm - At the very diffracting point, crisscrossed and boiled

Marianne Thodas - Cimarron Way

Anju Singh - Heat

Thomas Evdokimoff - Aeolian Harps

Matt Nish-Lapidus - prepare to stop

Immix - Forever In The Eye Of a Dreamer

Artist-run center on unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples

UNIT/PITT

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