particulars
concerning the small parts in individual items of detail as contrast to universal qualities
sound artist and experimental composer working with sound, text, video and sculpture to understand materiality of thought as it morphs in no particular order into belief systems, social anxiety, competition, closed circuits, and the loss or assertion of self and, or born 1975 saint louis, missouri .
TAURUS SUN, GEMINI MOON, SAGITTARIUS RISING, VENUS IN CANCER, MARS IN PISCES, MERCURY IN GEMINI
projects
protrusions outward, beyond something else
People Make Television
Raven Row, 28 January-26 March, 2023
People Make Television is a major exhibition of DIY and community television from the 1970s.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, hundred of campaigning and community groups including anarchists, farm workers, Black teachers, women priests, office cleaners, radical housing associations, trans women, ex-cons, situationists, film co-ops, neurodiverse people, freethinkers and channelers of the extra-terrestrial, produced their own television for the BBC, ITV and a handful of short-lived local cable channels. People Make Televisions revisits these moving image archive to piece together the story of Britain’s community broadcast history. Curated by Lori E. Allen, William Fowler, Matthew Harle and Alex Sainsbury.
Armin Lorenz Gerold: Manuel or a Hint of Evil
Text by Armin Lorenz Gerold, Shahin Zarinbal, Alejandro Alonso Díaz, Anna Barfuss, Lori E. Allen.
A sound artist’s tale of a failed flirtation
In this artist’s book, German sound artist Armin Lorenz Gerold tells the story, in text and photographs, of an unnamed protagonist visiting the Olympic swimming pool in West Berlin during the summer of 2020, and a young man who catches his attention.
MOUSSE PUBLISHING 2022
Bloxham Tapes BT29
The 29th release on Bloxham Tape is from sound artist and self-taught musician Lori E Allen, cellist and mixed media artist Katie Spafford and illustrator and prison psychotherapist Deborah Wale – improvising collective Tears|OV.
released February 28, 2021
Tears|OV: Lori E Allen, Deborah Wale, Katie Spafford with Tom Loffman and Emily Klimkiewicz
All tracks written and composed in the shadow of Pluto’s looming recrudesce
Design by Luke Drozd
WHO#14
released November 8, 2019
All tracks written and composed by Lori E Allen and Deborah Wale. Cello parts composed by Katie Spafford. Lori E Allen: vocals, samples, sequenced percussion, piano, synth, noise and arrangements. Deborah Wale: vocals, percussion, tube, synth, noise, scratching and spoken word. Katie Spafford: cello. Recorded and mixed by Andre T., April 2019. Mastered and cut by Jason Goz at Transition Mastering Studios, London, May 2019.
Artwork: Deborah Wale. Photography: Wolfgang Tillmans. Art direction and design: Don Wyrm. Executive producer for this album was the ineffable Restless Worm.
A breast-pocket-sized publication exploring the practice of coercing archeological records into a single existing narrative of our species, ‘A Wandering Taxonomy of Our Common Humanity’, is a pamphlet un-inspired by booklets once used as propaganda and issued to soldiers in the 1930s. Four characters —Nature, Behaviour, Bones and Ideology— traverse past, present and future whilst footnotes to their conversation suggest a new perspective on evolutionary biology.
Past Future Folly
13. – 27. September 2021
Arnis, Germany
Drawing from Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Foools 1494), Jérôme Chazeix transforms a sailboat and crew into an equivalent satirical allegory of the human condition and a metaphor for escaping from an immanent crisis.
Past Future Folly
13. – 27. September 2021
Arnis, Germany
Broadcast From Home Reading series during quarantine by Armin Gerold Lorenz.
IGTV, 24 March – 24 April 2020, including texts by: James Schuyler, Paul B. Preciado, Enver Hadzijaj, Samuel R. Delany, Nabarun Bhattacharya, Doireann O’Malley, Essex Hemphill, Olivia Laing, Ursula K. Le Guin, W.G Sebald, Etel Adnan, Arthur Holmes, Armin Lorenz Gerold, Brendan Cook, Frank O’Hara, Kim Addonizio, Ocean Vuong, and Lori E Allen.
View all episodes HERE
Voice, video and audio: Armin Lorenz Gerold
Text: Lori E Allen
April 2020
The story of the alchemical element of sulfur told through the open mouths of volcanoes, fumaroles and geysers in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia.
Rachel Pimm and Lori E Allen, 2019.
press
cause to move into a position of contact with others
“A new show at Raven Row, London unearths a 50-year history of community broadcasting – and reminds us of the radical potential of the archive
Exhibiting an archive is always a potentially radical act. The past either disappears, or ends up in some unlighted store, waiting for someone to come looking for it, to find its usefulness in the present. Then, it might illuminate how we got here, remind us of past struggles that have faded from memory and urge us to rethink what to do in the present. People Make Television isn’t an art exhibition, it’s an archival display. But it makes the case for how effective the ‘artworld’ can be by creating a space in which archives can be revisited.”…
01 March 2023
“It ran for a decade and infuriated the rightwing press, giving a voice to marginalised Britain. Now a new show is celebrating the extraordinarily prescient Open Door series”…
24 Jan 2023
” ‘People Make Television’ – Raven Row’s first show after a five-years hiatus – curated by Lori E. Allen, William Fowler, Matthew Harle and Alex Sainsbury, where they are presented as primary sources for a history of 1970s social movements, a substantial achievement of post-war cultural democracy and independent works of art.”…
23 FEB 23
“…should we be nostalgic about the era? “Nostalgia is always wrong,” asserts Harle. “But if there is something that is missing now, it is this sense of monoculture, the idea of there being a shared space. This was a time before media bubbles, when television was switched off, when event TV happened. It was our companion in the evenings, in a way that it is not any more.”…
28 JAN 23
Morgan Quaintance offers a critique of the exhibition on the basis of what he regards as missed opportunities and curatorial oversight.
March 20223
Review of Tears | OV and The Howling at the Horse Hospital
by Jo Hutton
March 2023
“Tears|OV’s aural concoctions float between music and sound art; songs and collages; literal meaning and impressionistic abstraction. Pluto’s Return’s closest parallel is Negativland’s mix of samples and loops…”
December 22, 2021
Part 1
Name: Tears|Ov
Members: Lori E Allen, Katie Spafford, Deborah Wale
Nationality: British
Occupation: Improvisers, Sound Artists, Composers
Current Release: A Hopeless Place on The Wormhole
Recommendations: L: The Oracle, Maggie Nelson; Reverse Child Psychology, Strangulated Beatoffs. No wait! Mozart’s Requiem.
D: I’m gonna be very mindful about this question and tell you what’s getting me going right now.
1.Narok the hell gardens of Thailand www.timeless-shop.com/product/narok
2. Chastity belt – “ Different Now”
K: 1. Faure’s requiem 2: Antonín Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor
Review of A Hopeless Place
“Allen’s signature broadcast excavations are cut-up and re-assembled along distorted synth lines…echoes the eerie no wave and post-indusstrial sound the likes of Einstürnzende Neubauten and Lydia Lunch.”…
by Steph Kretowicz
January 2020
Review of Xworm: 10 year Anniversary of The Tapeworm
“Two evenings celebrating ten years of The Tapeworm label are full of twists and turns.”…
by Adam Harper
December 2019
Review of Plates, on exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery
“Allen’s sounds pervade the space…creating an immersive, ever-changing soundscape of gutteral crumbling and and scrping sounds”…
by Robert Barry
May 2020
curriculum vitae
VISITING PRACTIONER, UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON (CHELSEA), JANUARY 2022 – PRESENT
CURATORIAL RESEARCHER & CO-CURATOR, RAVENS ROW. OCTOBER 2021- MARCH 2023
VIDEO MIXER/CAMERA OPERATOR, ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, LONDON, FREELANCE 2021-PRESENT
UI/UX DESIGN, REVERBERATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS CHELSEA. APRIL 2021 https://www.ualmacc.com/reverberations/
SONIC IDENT DESIGN, RADIO ARTS CATALYST, APRIL 2021
EDITOR, UNTITILED HEIROGLYPHS by TAI SHANI, COMISSIONED BY SERPENTINE GALLERIES and POMPEII COMMITMENT, ARCHAOLOGICAL MATTERS 2021
UI/UX DESIGN, OUR HAUNTED FUTURES, UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON (CHELSEA). APRIL 2021 https://www.ualmacc.com/map/
BROADCASTER, THE SHAPE OF A CIRLCE IN THE MIND OF A FISH: THE UNDERSTORY OF THE UNDERSTORY, SERPENTINE GALLERIES. 2020
PRODUCER, TRANSMISSIONS TV. 2020, APRIL- PRESENT
PODCAST PRODUCER, From a Whisper to a Roar OPENING DOORS LONDON, SUPPORTED BY HERITAGE FUND UK AUGUST 2019-SEPTEMBER 2020
A/V TECHNICIAN, TATE BRITAIN, TATE MODERN, GOETHE INSTITUT, AND BARBICAN DECEMBER 2014-PRESENT
VIDEO MIXER/CAMERA OPERATOR, BLOOMBERG TV, BLOOMBERG LONDON, FREELANCE 2018-PRESENT
LECTURER, MUSIC THEORY/EXPERIMENTAL COMPOSITION, SSR LONDON SEPTEMBER 2016 – JANUARY 2018
SOUND ENGINEER, RESONANCE FM 104.4, JUNE 2015- AUGUST 2016
TECHNICAL MANAGER, BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE. LONDON AUGUST 2008 – JULY 2015
PROJECTOR INSTALLATION & FILM PROJECTION, BMW TEN DAYS SIX NIGHTS, TATE MODERN SOUTH TANKS 2017
PROJECTOR INSTALLATION & FILM PROJECTION, QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL. LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ARCHIVE GALA 2010, 2011, & 2012
DIGITAL CINEMA SOLUTIONS ADVISOR, WOLFGANG TILLMANS – BOOK FOR ARCHITECTS: TWO CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION, 14TH ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE, VENICE 2014
CHIEF PROJECTIONIST, RITZY CINEMA. LONDON 2003-2008
ART TEACHER, CITY & COUNTRY SCHOOL OF MANHATTAN. NEW YORK, NY 2000-2002
EXCAVATION & LAB TECHNICIAN, ABRI CASTANET, FRANCE 1996-1999: COLLAPSED PALAEOLITHIC ROCK SHELTER FUNDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SORBONNE AND NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.
EXCAVATION TECHNICIAN, FORT BELL FONTAINE, ST. LOUIS, MO 1994-1995: FORT CA. 1810 FUNDED BY UMSL, THE MISSOURI HISTORICAL
MA ARCHAEOLOGY, IINSTITUTE of ARCHAEOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON, 1999
BA (Hons) ANTHROPOLOGY & CLASSICAL STUDIES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1997
MSC in MUSIC MIND BRAIN, GOLDSMITHS UNIVERSITY 2018-2019 (Partial Completion)
ARNIS RESIDENCY. 2021
SOUND UK: SOUND GENERATOR RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT GRANT. 2021
FREEDLANDS FOUNDATION GRANT. 2020
NTS WIP (shortlisted) 2019
STUK, UP IN THE AIR RESIDENCY, BELGIUM. 2018
SOUND & MUSIC: EMBEDDED CAFÉ OTO (shortlisted). 2016
