8–10 September 2022
We invite you to come to Hospitalfield this September to tune into the more-than-human rhythms and frequencies of bats and dance together at dusk amongst the sounds and movements of Hanna Tuulikki’s Echo in the Dark.
A love letter to dance music, this newly commissioned art work is a series of ‘silent’ bat raves taking place at Hospitalfield on the 8th, 9th and 10th September 2022. This work has been inspired by and drawn from the bat sounds collected by communities in Arbroath and Angus for the Echo Location Library in 2021-22 with support from Tayside Bat Group.
Echo in the Dark is a major new collaborative music and performance project by artist, musician and vocalist Hanna Tuulikki that explores the interconnections of raving and bat echolocating as a model for ecological coexistence. To compose the music, Tuulikki has worked collaboratively with artist and music producer Tommy Perman.
In the Echo in the Dark ‘silent raves’ Tuulikki and Perman will DJ their new set of dance music tracks, inspired by and featuring bat echo-location sounds collected with communities in Arbroath, Angus, and across the UK through the Echo Location library.
Since 2020, Hospitalfield, Hanna Tuulikki and Dr David Martin of Tayside Bat Group have been working with communities in Arbroath and Angus to collect the sounds of bats local to the UK including Soprano Pipistrelles, Common Pipistrelles, Daubenton’s bats and Brown Long Eared bats for the Echo Location Library.
The beats and melodies of the music are made entirely from recordings of bat echolocation calls, including those gathered by Scottish communities in Angus, fused with the sounds of Tuulikki’s voice. Prior to the silent raves, two tracks from Echo in the Dark will be released on 28 July as a new 7″ lathe-cut vinyl EP and digital download with record label Blackford Hill.
The raves include choreography from movement director Will Dickie with a cast of dancers based in Tayside and Scotland and the music features a special guest appearance from renowned philosopher Timothy Morton who has written extensively about ecological awareness.
Silent Raves at Dusk:
Thursday 8 September 7.30pm until 10pm
Friday 9 September 7.30pm until 10pm
Saturday 10 September 7.30pm until 10pm
Daylight events:
Listening with the Bat DJs, Saturday 10 September 2-4pm
Funding: Echo in the Dark is a project commissioned by Hospitalfield with support from Creative Scotland and the National Heritage Lottery Fund. The project is supported by PRS for Music Foundation and the Silvia Waddilove Trust.
Photos by Laurence Winram with make-up and SFX by MV Brown
Tickets & Access
The Raves at Dusk were ticketed. Buy your tickets
We devised the ticket prices to enable everyone who would like to attend to decide how much they can pay for their participation. Choose what suits you best –
Bursary Ticket: £6
Standard Ticket: £12
Pay it forward Ticket: £24
(includes a £2 donation to the Bat Conservation Trust and helps use to enable free and bursary tickets)
Free Tickets are available to Angus based Community Groups. Please get in touch for more information to volunteer@hospitalfield.org.uk
Camping: £5
An overnight camping stay at Hospitalfield. You can buy breakfast in the Café on Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning. We’ll be doing a simple breakfast on Sunday morning for campers.
There are 70 places at each Rave. The first ticket release is from 4 July when half the tickets will be released.
With your ticket you will get:
The Live Performances of Echo in the Dark
An item of limited edition rave wear designed by Hanna Tuulikki
A bat inspired drink
All daytime events for Echo in the Dark are free.
There will be a pay bar at Hospitalfield Garden Café
Access:
The events will happen in the Paddock at Hospitalfield, which is a grassy field area at the back of the grounds. The raves will involve each attendee receiving a set of headphones for listening to the music and will include flashing lights.
A daytime version of the performances has been devised to support people to attend together in a different format.
Hanna Tuulikki
Hanna Tuulikki is an artist, composer and performer based in Glasgow. Her practice spans performance, film and multi-channel audio-visual installation, blending together vocal music, choreography, costume and drawing. Her multi-disciplinary projects investigate the ways in which the body communicates beyond and before words, to tell stories through imitation, vocalisation and gesture. She is particularly interested in how bodily relationships and folk histories are encoded within specific environments and places, often drawing on embodied vernacular knowledges to offer alternative approaches to making kin, both with one other, and across multi-species entanglements.
Current and forthcoming exhibitions include British Art Show 9 (2021-22) and National Galleries of Scotland: Modern One (2021-23). She was Magnetic North Theatre’s first Artist Attachment supported by Jerwood Arts (2017-19) and shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2020). She was a finalist in the Arts Foundation Music for Change Award (2022), won a Scottish Award for New Music in Sonic Arts (2017), and was twice shortlisted for a British Composer Award (2015, 2017).
Her critically acclaimed work has been commissioned and presented by organisations across visual, musical and performing arts in the UK, Europe, USA, India and Australia. Recent multi-artform projects include Seals’kin commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney (2022); Under Forest Cover commissioned by Helsinki Biennial (2021); Deer Dancer (2019/2021); cloud-cuckoo-island (2016); SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY commissioned by Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016); SING SIGN: a close duet commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival (2015); Women of the Hill commissioned by ATLAS (2015); Away with the Birds commissioned for Glasgow 2014’s Cultural Programme and the SPACE (2014-2015). Her musical compositions have been commissioned and presented by Scottish Sculpture Workshop, BBC Radio 4, Capella Nova choir, Tectonics Festival and Red Note Ensemble.
Tommy Perman
Tommy Perman is an artist, designer and musician with an interest in the spaces where these three disciplines meet. He has exhibited widely and released many records. His visual work has been projected onto the Sydney Opera House and permanently installed in Edinburgh World Heritage Site historic closes and the National Museum of Scotland.
His recent projects include Emergent Slow Arcs (2019), an audio-visual reimagining of Modern Studies’ Welcome Strangers LP for Fire Records, Sing The Gloaming (2020), a collaborative project by Simon Kirby, Tommy Perman and Rob St John and Positive Interactions, an album made entirely from happy sounds sent to Tommy by 50 friends from all over the world.
Echo in the Dark Team
Director: Hanna Tuulikki
Music: Hanna Tuulikki and Tommy Perman
Movement Director: Will Dickie
Dance Cast:
Niamh O’Loughlin
Abbey Adams
Nicole Tait
Romany Dear
Laser lighting design: Jack Wrigley
Costumes & Visuals: Hanna Tuulikki with animation by Tommy Perman.
Production Manager & Set: Nick Millar
Produced by Hospitalfield
Press Relations: O’Leary Jeffs
Hospitalfield Angus Bat Walks led by Dr. David Martin of Tayside Bat Group.