'Baku in 5 Quarters' and 'The Black Sea Files'

“Baku in 5 Quarters” and “The Black Sea Files” are collaborative creative projects with Swiss artist Ursula Biemann that were premiered at the B-Zone: Becoming Europe and Beyond exhibition at Kunstwerke in Berlin, 2005 and then travelled to Zona B: Als Marges D’Europa at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona in 2007.

The B-Zone of the exhibition title refers to a peripheral Europe emerging at the margins of the “A-Zone” primarily constituted by the European Union. The thematic concerns of the exhibition relate as much to a critical inquiry into transcultural geography as they do to extending the boundaries of aesthetic realisation – and this is equally true of Cusack and Biemann’s work.

Cusack's contribution to the collaboration was to explore the potential of the artistic use of sound as an analytical and affective counterpart to the visual imagery. While sound art has developed a mature aesthetic, it is rare that it is deployed, as here, in pursuit of the complexities of geo-political realities.

“Baku in Five Quarters” navigates a critical and creative response to extensive on the ground research conducted by the researcher in Azerbaijan’s capital. Working with the Architectural University of Baku enabled the researcher to map out different urban zones within the city – each of which corresponding to a specific historical period – and to capture acoustic field-recordings that reflected the dynamics of those areas which were then sequenced into an evocative soundscape.

The “Black Sea Files” is a 34 minute 10 screen installation focusing on the contentious Baku/Tbilisi/Ceyhan pipeline for which an immersive multichannel soundtrack was created by the researcher. In addition to its inclusion in B-Zone, it has also been included in the International Biennial at Istanbul and at the Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (both 2007).

• http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/Peter_Cusack_r...