Date:	2008 - 2009
Artist:	Yvonne Buchheim
Location:	Cardigan Swimming pool, Cardigan, West Wales

Yvonne Buchheim brings her song archive project to
Cardigan swimming pool.

June 2009
EARWORMS EXTENDED TO 5 JUNE 2009!


April 2009
Earworms: An underwater sound installation.

Exhibition runs until Friday 29 May 2009 during all public swims.
Venue: Cardigan Swimming pool and Leisure Centre, Fairground Street, Cardigan, Ceredigion, SA43 1AT. Tel: 01239 613623.

'Earworms' is an underwater sound installation that places recordings from the Song Archive Project made earlier in the residency in the swimming pool. The sound work is audible only underwater and will imaginatively trigger the swimmer’s inner melodies. The title is a borrowed word from the German Ohrwurm and describes a part of a song that repeats within one’s mind.

Buchheim’s aim is to shift the role of singing and swimming, both commonplace acts that can create extraordinary feelings. Earworm is the second artwork to be performed as part of the Song Archive Project in the Cardigan swimming pool. Last years public performance, titled Sound Water Beat, took place as part of Holy Hiatus, a week of performance art, curated by Ruth Jones.


2008
Yvonne received one of the last ‘Good Ideas’ awards from Safle in September 2007 to take her Song Archive project to Cardigan Swimming pool, a project she initiated in 2003 based on collaborating and communicating with the public through song in response to Johann G Herder’s song collection.

Yvonne created a performance piece in the pool as part of the Holy Hiatus public art festival in May 2008 which, through a series of performances and a symposium, addressed issues of ritual and liminality in performance art.

The audience gathered around the poolside to watch as two professional singers performed a partly improvised song based on the motion and movements of two swimmers. The usually light space was blacked out and spotlights illuminated the pool and swimmers. The acoustics of the voices filling the space, the theatrical lighting and the chance thunderstorm outside all played a part in transforming the function of the pool into a very different and unique stage. The performance hinted at the relationship between ritual and spontaneity, echoed in the dialogue between the singers and swimmers.

In addition, during the week of the Holy Hiatus festival, Yvonne invited the public visiting the pool to sing single notes, which she recorded.