Words By Jamie Crocker
For Justin Wiggan, it is a place that he has inhabited for a long time.
But what is it that he does to bring this realm of experience to others? It is a subject, running contrary to the sound-bite world that we inhabit these days, aptly summed up in Justin’s recollection of a project he did for the National Trust, “I did some work at Trerice recently, recording the knot garden, ready for the blossom festival next year. And their very busy head programmer, who, referring to a project I’d produced for her before, said, “I trusted you. You did it, and you delivered it, and it was really good. But I don’t understand it.”” Without wishing to denigrate the head programmer, an amount of on-boarding is required. Context is all.
To ‘get’ Justin and what he does requires a modicum of genial preamble to let the dialogue gently find its course; a natural flow couched in humour, asides and an endearing sense of self-deprecation on his part. You have to allow yourself to be slowly drawn into a narrative that is coloured by trauma, the subsequent creation of an imaginary auditory landscape and amplification thereafter to a place where these experiences get harnessed for a greater purpose. It is a personal journey, one that has ultimately allowed Justin to reach out to us all, not just for self-vindication but to imbue all of our lives with a greater sense of worth and meaning. As such, he is one of this world’s explorers, who has found his niche in cutting a new pathway that we, as life’s tourists, should and will be keen to experience.
You’re probably already thinking that what is to follow will be a written odyssey, that at some point you’ll part company with and just have a cursory glance at the weird photos and move on to the next article. But you would be doing both yourself and Justin a disservice. Think of that moment in The Imitation Game when Commander Denniston is ready to have Alan Turing’s ‘computer’ taken to pieces because Denniston didn’t understand its potential and the fact that it wasn’t quantifiable within the accepted norms. What would have been the cost there?
Admittedly, it is problematic from the outset. Asked what is the motivating force behind his work Justin replies, “So, I think what defines my practice is based on the wish or desire to do something impossible.” He continues, “It all comes from Play. Being a child. And I think it arose from growing up in a volatile household, where, because of the situation, I had to force myself into an imaginary state, akin to a trance. So, to be surrounded by that sort of negative energy made me create, inside my head, a different universe where the impossible would happen.” Essentially, there was a disconnect that needed to be bridged between what Justin recognised in his own family and what he observed in the families of some of his friends. It was the fulcrum from where his need to create was born. He needed to fill that intersection between the real and imaginary worlds.
So, why become a sound artist as opposed to a visual one? That too emanated from his childhood experience. Think about how heavy words, so lightly thrown, can determine the trajectory of a whole life, especially when you’re in your most receptive and fragile state. For Justin, he remembers being told that ‘by the time you’re five you’ll be losing your sight and when you become a teenager, you’ll be blind’. The impact would have been tremendous. As a consequence, he concentrated on his hearing. Strangely, or not, this realisation of what he’d done as a child only came to Justin during lockdown, when I think we all had time to assess, adapt and change to meet and survive the discombobulation of what we were all facing. He says, “It dawned on me then, that I’d been training all my life to navigate through the potential of not being able to see anything. Ever.”
It was a moment of self-realisation, pitching him into having to accept that his inner interpretation of the world stemmed from a child’s rationalisation. On a purely functional basis, there was a recognition of the empirical evidence around him – buildings, trees, the requirement to support a family – but he also had come to a point where he understood the other driving force, an innate desire to listen, record and make available to others something which doesn’t necessarily generate sound in the way that we have come to understand. It had been a background imperative that had been softly informing his whole sonospheric life. That was why he was doing what he was doing, that was why he was engaging with technology, that was what he had to offer the world as… a sound artist.
He has used the available technology for a creative purpose to bridge the gap between the individual and the environment where no bridges were before. He endeavours to take you from one place to another. Two cases in point that we can probably understand were the installation of ‘echo point soundposts’ at places that have recorded instances of people desiring to commit suicide. The sonic emissions have the power to interrupt the would-be jumper and foster in them a resilience to resist their desperate intention. Justin has also brought his experience and expertise to people with late-stage cancer when, for 18 months, he worked in a hospice as part of the palliative care team. Justin takes up the thread, “I was making memories for people who were unlikely to be around for too much longer. I was turning their memories into sound so they could time travel. Building soundscapes made up of little incremental memories that don’t mean much to anybody else, but to the individual were milestones in their lives.” He sums up, “Again, it’s about escape connected to resilience.”
As if this wasn’t enough, he delves deeper as our discussion moves on. “Ultimately, I think all artists do work for themselves first and foremost, but I think they need to be understood, knowing that other people are likely to have issues themselves, ones that can be addressed and illuminated by art in whatever form it takes. As many have said, it’s science that allows us to live longer, but it’s art that asks questions as to what it is to be human. And if, as an artist, you have enlightenment or the courage to ask the questions, you must report back. Sometimes, an interpreter or interpretation is required, but nothing sits in a vacuum, the art before you is created by a person, and therefore, you can respond. It just requires committing to a first step and a willingness to follow the path.”
So how does Justin know which concepts to explore? Interestingly to explain this he quotes Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth fame – ‘Every band has one song. Anything else is a variation of that song.’ For him, it’s a desire to ask questions. That’s it. To do so though, you have to be in the right environment aligned to a conducive situation and use the tools that you have been ‘gifted’. “You have to create the right circumstances or be invited to the right circumstances for a concept or an idea to flow. It needs oxygen. Memories and thoughts require oxygen. However, sometimes those circumstances are wrong. I’ve turned up with a ‘spoon to a machete fight’ before. That in itself is interesting though, because it allows things to break.” I think what Justin is alluding to is that faced with a scenario that has no precedents compels you to adapt and reinvent because the rug of convention has been pulled away so there are no rules to follow. It means the art which is generated is seen as a threat because by definition it becomes a continually evolving process that produces questions. How have these things been allowed to happen? Are they right or wrong? “It is strange, that as children, we are told to grow up, to stop being silly. It’s as if the debate is being closed down before it’s even allowed to begin because awkward conversations may evolve.”
So, with this continuous journey along the road less travelled, with every step triggering more questions, what is Justin hoping to achieve? “I feel like I’m constructing emotional sonic architecture. I think that’s what the sound work I’ve tried to do is all about. Creating a space which subconsciously you can disappear into and inhabit. Like a physical building, with staircases and rooms filled with a myriad of interesting things.” In this sense Justin is a facilitator, encouraging people through his sound art to investigate their relationship with the world. He wants people to have new thoughts, and original thoughts and to be free to ask questions without the burden of guilt. He adds, “What we do is follow other people’s questions first, rather than formulate our own questions”.
A penultimate observation of Justin’s, which I believe throws light on his idea that everything should be in a state of flux, and one that inadvertently reveals something of his wish to connect and tread gently through this life as a person, arises from the closing moments of our conversation. It made me smile. He gives voice to something all of us have pondered at some point, “Is that a piece of art, or is that just a broken plug socket? And then you get news stories of cleaners taking some ‘rubbish’ out of a gallery and it turns out to be worth thousands. It just shows you that we’re not asking the right questions. Things have become moribund. We’re too fearful because there’s always going to be somebody to mock you. So, instead of condemning the poor cleaner and exposing her to the trolls out there, who are angrily jumping on the bandwagon and asking how can someone be so stupid and do this, why not interview her? Why not give her a show on the back of what she’s done? She felt the need to clean that up because she was doing her job. What is her job? And really, she’s asked the biggest question, maybe one that the artist has never been asked in his life – why has she thrown his work away.”
Finally, something which I think should be flagged up is the recognition Justin has received in the wider world. He won the prestigious Sound of The Year Award 2022 for Echo Point, which, as referred to earlier, uses sounds to influence breathing, reduce agitation and build sustained resilience in communities. He was awarded two Royal Television Society awards and elected by Aesthetica Magazine amongst the best 250 artists in the world for the Aesthetica Art Prize: “Future Now”! Showcasing ‘Sensory Beings: Internal Garden’. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally: B.O.M Birmingham, Protein Gallery London, Baltic Gallery, Citric Gallery Italy and Gigantic Art Space New York. As Karen Newman, Director of B.O.M, has observed, “Justin is one of the most important artists working across arts and health right now, his ground-breaking work has huge potential for impact across life sciences, a testament to the power of creativity in health and wellbeing.” His album Cloud Scanner was also nominated for a Grammy this year.
