Dr Irene Revell
- Postdoctoral Researcher (Contemporary Art Practice)
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School of Arts & Humanities
Irene is a curator, writer and researcher who works with artists across sound, text, performance and moving image.
At the RCA Irene is a researcher on Aura Satz’s Preemptive Listening project with funding from AHRC.
Much of her curatorial work over the past 20 years has been with Electra, and she is closely involved with collections including Electra’s Her Noise Archive and Cinenova: Feminist Film + Video.
In 2022 she completed her doctoral thesis, Live Materials: Womens Work, Pauline Oliveros and the Feminist Performance Score at CRiSAP where she has been the affiliated Curator/Lecturer on the MA Sound Arts since 2014.
With Sarah Shin she is currently editing a book on feminisms, sound and listening for Silver Press (2024).
More information
Research Interests
Irene has a long-standing commitment to multidisciplinary sound arts and their intersection with politics, especially feminism(s), both historically and in contemporary practice.
She has a historical focus on text instruction performance work of the 1970s, stemming from Pauline Oliveros’ paradigm shift to group listening within a wider constellation, and how to work with these historical materials as a curator.
This also extends to two closely related theoretical areas: firstly, the politics of listening, especially questions of authorship, authority and collaboration. And secondly, the legacy of text instruction in contemporary practice.
Practice
Stemming originally from DIY cultural production, Irene’s curatorial practice centres on close, often ongoing working relationships with artists, archives and collections, and the fostering of nurturing and rigorous conditions in which work(s) can be produced and become public across a variety of scales and contexts.
Her recent focus has been on the curatorial challenges posed by text instruction scores and related live ephemera, developing the workshop as a curatorial format amidst the wider notion of the embodied curator. She is interested in the development of such curatorial formats that may be iterative, extra-institutional, and of modest scale in terms of labour and other resources.
Current and recent projects
Preemptive Listening, an artist documentary feature film on emergency listening and reconceptualising the siren by Aura Satz, in parallel with a related research project. This includes an archive of over 30 new audio interviews, a major symposium and performance programme at Tate Modern, and publications including a Roundtable discussion and a special issue of Disclaimer online journal. AHRC-funded 2022 – 2024 with PI Aura Satz and Postdoctoral Researchers Francesca Laura Cavallo and Irene Revell.
Live Materials: Womens Work, Pauline Oliveros and the feminist performance score, PhD thesis, with practice-based outcomes including the re-publication of Womens Work with Primary Information (2019), an exhibition project and workshop series. Funded by TECHNE AHRC (2016-2021) with additional research funding from Terra Foundation for American Art and the Mead Fellowship (British School at Rome Residency).
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Recent book projects
Feminisms, Sound and Listening [title tbc]
Anthology for Silver Press, 2024, co-editor with Sarah Shin.
Womens Work co-edited by Alison Knowles & Annea Lockwood (1975-8)
New facsimile edition for Primary Information, 2019, managing editor with James Hoff.
Recent essays & articles
Revell, I. (2023). DIY Tape (Anecdotal Theory). In: Composing with Tape Recorders by Terence Dwyer. London: JOAN, pp. 9-13.
Revell, I. (2022). Working With Womens Work: towards the embodied curator. In: I. Nogueira and L. O’Keeffe, ed., The Body in Sound, Music and Performance. London: Routledge, pp. 78-91.
Revell, I (2022). Speculating on the ‘feminist performance score’. Contemporary Music Review 41 (2-3), pp. 281-294.
Revell, I (2022). Sharing Sound and Friendship in Three Parts. In:
C. McCormack, ed., Charlotte Prodger. Köln: König, pp. 185-190.
Revell, I (2022). Song. In: Ö. Durmuşoğlu, ed., Stages: Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz. Leipzig: Spector, pp. 148-150.
Revell, I (2020). “In Paris you have to have a formula”. In: A. Wieder, ed.
Beatrice Gibson: Deux Sœurs, London: Sternberg Press, pp. 29-41.
Lina Džuverović, L. and Revell, I. (2019). Lots of Shiny Junk at the Art Dump. Parse, 9.
Recent curatorial projects
They are all of them themselves and they repeat it and I hear it, a year-long reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans throughout 2020, co-organised with Anna Barham.
These Are Scores workshop series at Camden Arts Centre, 2019; Sounding Bodies, Danish Royal Academy of Fine Art, Copenhagen, 2018; CNEAI, Paris, 2017, amongst others.
ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE exhibition project co-curated with Karen Di Franco, Chelsea Space, London, 2018. With Beatrice Gibson, Alison Knowles, Ghislaine Leung, Annea Lockwood, Roy Claire Potter, Charlie Prodger, Carolee Schneemann, Tai Shani, Mieko Shiomi.