'doggerLANDscape' (release, video art, 2023)

doggerLANDscape [released 15 November 2023]

doggerLANDscape is a multimedia suite comprising an album and a video art form based on Doggerland, the land that used to stretch between today’s coast of Britain and Europe. Around 8000 years ago, the river Thames was then connected to the Rhine. Doggerland was a place of human habitation - we were not always an island.

Within Doggerland lies a forceful political and environmental dimension at a time when we have deliberately extracted ourselves from the continent. On Christmas eve 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed the Brexit deal, and declared that we - the United Kingdom - are an “independent coastal state”, to then contradict himself seemingly by saying “we will remain culturally, emotionally, historically, strategically, geologically attached to Europe”. How geologically are we attached? And what are the extremities of our island?

Our insularity has emerged over centuries of sea level surging, breaking us from the continent, engulfing lives. It seems that our independent coastal state is temporary as we can expect it to be reconnected during future glacial periods: we are in a transitionary zone. By responding to the present, and the history of the site, doggerLANDscape contributes to question our connection to the continent and situate ourselves as islanders.

doggerLANDscape is the 8th studio album by Ivor Novello Award-winning composer and artist Olivia Louvel.

Previously, the generative sound mural ‘Doggerland Channels’ (2022) was presented at Phoenix Art Space for the first edition of the Sound Art Brighton festival, and is reinstalled for Middlesbrough Art Week, 28/09 to 07/10/23. The cartographic sound art installation for voice and data projection throws a net over the North Sea, revealing the rivers which used to connect us to the continent.

A series of collectible objects is available along the digital release, 10-inch vinyls and A4 artworks at https://catwerkimprint.bandcamp.com/album/doggerlandscape

PR: Ed Benndorf ed@dense.de

+

'doggerLANDscape' by Olivia Louvel

The contemplative video art accompanying the album release is based on Louvel’s search for the remnants of the submerged forest of Doggerland on the Lincolnshire coast. It is documenting her geological finds of the ancient tree’s remnants appearing at neap tide.

In July 2021, Olivia Louvel embarked on a walk to locate the remnants of the ancient trees and eventually found at low tide a series of tree trunks and stumps exposed at Cleethorpes beach, as well as fossilised trees in clay at Wolla Bank near Chapel Point. From sightseeing and placing herself in the land, she has developed ‘journey-form’ narratives on the lost world of Doggerland, experimenting with sounds, voice, and visuals.

Duration 8’30.

Featuring two tracks from the album ‘We Are One Land’ and ‘On The Shoreline On That Day’.

+

We were not always an island.

When we connected to the continent.

When the Thames flowed into the Rhine.

+

01/02/24 Karine Cnudde, Culturopoing, “C’est la question posée par un autre titre, « Where Is The Border » : où se situent les lignes de démarcation des espaces physiques mais qu’en est-il également des vastes territoires que nous-mêmes sommes ? Dans quelle mesure portons-nous les traces des lieux que nous habitons, qu’en est-il de la frontière entre elles et nous ? “

23/01/24 Groove, Motherboard January 2024, “soundpolitisch ganz weit vorne”

Featured in The Wire’s releases of the year for 2023 in Biba Kopf’s list
https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/charts/2023-rewind-contributors-charts-70155-1

12/12/23 David McKenna, Rockfort! The Best French Music Of 2023, The Quietus

10/12/23 Mat Smith, Electronic Sound, issue 108, “The latest album from sound artist Olivia Louvel is concerned with Doggerland, a landmass that existed between England and Europe until it was flooded 8000 years ago. These pieces are predominantly vehicles for Louvel’s voice, either unadorned or manipulated.(…) An accomplished exposition of what once was.”

21/11/23 Johny Lamb, The Quietus, “doggerLANDscape is a taut, charged and insightful collection that poses significant questions, at least in my mind, about political identity, ideological and material borders, and the ways in which our geological environments shape our lives and thinking. And this at a time where we should perhaps all be questioning this a great deal. Upon what rock do we stand, and what might it mean to do so?”

15/11/23 Anxious Musick Magazine, Poland

14/11/23 Richard Allen, A closer Listen, Richard Allen , “John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island.” Olivia Louvel suggests that perhaps no island is an island.”

24/10/23 African Paper, Germany

15/10/23 Utility Fog, FBI radio Sydney, Peter Hoolo

“The imagery of coastlines and occasional ghostly human figures is beautifully evocative, but the audio works beautifully by itself too - narrative spoken word, treated vocals, floating drones.”

+

The album has recently been played in the U.K on:

David McKenna’ s Rockfort show / Resonance FM

Late Junction/BBC Radio 3

'Chris Bohn presents Adventures in Sound and Music' The Wire/ Resonance FM

Melita Dennett’s Tuesday Live /Radio Reverb Brighton

Alastair Shuttleworth, Boogaloo Radio

and abroad

Doctore Xyramat, FSK 93.00, Hamburg

El Réanimator #1502 RCV Lille 99.0

Battiti, Rai Radio 3, Italy

Curved Radio, East Side 89.7FM