Emma Smith
Lyric Cacophony

The White House is proud to present Lyric Cacophony, a new sound artwork created by Emma Smith with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people across social care in Barking and Dagenham. 

Lyric Cacophony is a short sound work of 3 minutes. It will play outside Valence Library until 30 April 2022, at the following times:

• Fridays, 10am-6pm (on loop)

• Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturdays, once at 10am.

Lyric Cacophony is presented by the White House and New Town Culture (London Borough of Barking & Dagenham), as part of Becontree Forever, a programme of art, architecture and new infrastructure to mark 100 years of the Becontree Estate.

The work was created through a series of regular sessions, in which the group exploree the extraordinary ways in which we can connect to one another using our voices beyond language, examining the ways in which the voice can impact our emotions, and evoke feelings in ourselves and others.

Together, the group experimented with audio and digital technologies, exploring the musicality of speech, politics of voice and the physical nature of sound. Learning how sound travels through the body, what we can and can’t hear, and how this affects our physical and emotional response. 

About Emma Smith
Emma Smith is a visual artist based in the UK and works internationally. She has a social practice and creates platforms for people to share research, experiences, knowledge and no-how of human relationships to one another and the places we co-habit.

Through performances, installations, objects and actions, Smith’s work reveals the subtleties of human connectivity: relationship, communication, sense of place and entanglement. Her work looks in particular at hidden forms of connection: the tacit / the intimate / the transient / the subconscious / the remote / and the invisible. She is currently developing new work looking at extended cognition and consciousness, touch beyond the ends of the body and the body as earth.

Smith’s process is research and production based and often involves the bringing together of multi-disciplinary teams including collaborations with academics, professionals and hobbyists and drawing on the fields of anthropology, history, psychology, neurology, physics, ecology and biology. Through this co-research process her work results in published findings as well as new artwork, unearthing forgotten histories and proposing new futures.

Involving thousands of people in her projects, Smith creates ephemeral experiences particular to those who are there, scores, props and games for non-durational performance, and permanent landscapes, to be activated at any time. She creates work for the public realm and gallery ranging from intimate exchanges to large scale performances, site-specific events, installations, performance objects and permanent works. Through her work Smith utilises the gallery as a space for active research and the public space as an environment for co-habitation, experimentation, play and collective action.

Previous exhibitions and performances include Tate Modern, Barbican, Whitechapel, Bluecoat, Whitworth, ICA and Arnolfini with international projects across the globe.

Emma Smith: Lyric Cacophony is commissioned by The White House as part of New Town Culture, a programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care and curated by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Lyric Cacophony forms part of a broader programme that marks the centenary of the Becontree estate in 2021. This commission is funded by the GLA’s Young Londoners Fund, the MOPAC Violence Reduction Unit, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

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About New Town Culture
New Town Culture is a programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. We work with artists, social care staff and carers to develop creative ways to support systemic change in social care and to unlock the value of art and culture for all communities. New Town Culture celebrates the incredible stories, knowledge and skills of the residents of Barking and Dagenham through workshops, clubs, exhibitions, live performances and training for the staff and users of social care services. 

This ambitious project was piloted with the support of a Cultural Impact Award for the London Borough of Culture, a Mayor of London initiative, and is now extending its scope through further funding from the Young Londoners Fund, the GLA and the MOPAC Violence Reduction Unit.