[spectre] Podcast: Jennifer Lucy Allan talks about foghorns, 'a sound that’s lost and not lost at the same time'

Radio Web MACBA rwm2008 at gmail.com
Mon Jun 7 15:11:41 CEST 2021


*Podcast: **Jennifer Lucy Allan
<https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/jennifer-lucy-allan/capsula> *talks about
foghorns, 'a sound that’s lost and not lost at the same time', and how
foggy it gets when you are digging up sensory records in archives and oral
memory.

Link: https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/jennifer-lucy-allan/capsula

*Sound production commissioned to Tiago Pina. Produced by Matias Rossi.*

The foghorn is a sonic marker used in conditions of low visibility to alert
vessels of hidden navigational hazards. Part of the coastal landscape since
its invention in the nineteenth century, foghorns became obsolete with the
rise of automatic alert systems or simpler devices such as compressed air
horns.

In 2013, the British writer and research Jennifer Lucy Allan, co-director
of the record label Arc Light Editions, covered a performance of the
'Foghorn Requiem', a composition that marks the passing of the foghorn from
the British coastal landscape. In her review she wrote: 'The foghorn
symbolises the sound of industry, the hollering of an age of engines,
machines and power, and also a sound that is intensely nostalgic. It
suggests loneliness and isolation, but is simultaneously a wordless
reassurance to those out at sea that there’s a human presence nearby.' The
experience made such a strong impression on her that she ended up
dedicating her doctoral thesis to researching the social and cultural
history of foghorns, 'a sound that’s lost and not lost at the same time.'

*This podcast is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative
Europe programme of the European Union*.
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