An immersive sound and film installation and online portal.

Latin

Noun

Hospes m ‎(genitive hospitis); third declension

1. host

2. guest, visitor

HOSPES is an immersive, site-specific installation and online portal, which places The Cardiff Royal Infirmary in its historical and social context. I spent eleven months from October 2021 to the showing of the work in October 2022, reaching out into the surrounding streets, recording conversations and encounters, abstract soundscapes, and capturing images in an attempt to define, or at least search for a sense of what Urban Welshness might be in 2022.

Like Maindee (as seen in PARADE), the History of Tredegarville, Splott, and Adamsdown can be traced in its architecture: specifically in the change of its usage and function, whether falling into disuse, or being demolished completely and replaced with the new. But if we look more closely at this transformation, a picture emerges of change in the population, and the communities that live, and have lived here. This is particularly true of the Infirmary, and its previous incarnations as a Dispensary in this part of the City. Together, they represent a two-hundred-year history, and the origins of Cardiff as a City, forged in the Industrial Revolution and beginning with a meeting, chaired by the 2nd Marquess of Bute in Cardiff Town Hall, in 1822. So, this fascinating contrast of permanence and transience, both in the ‘hard ambience’ of the buildings themselves and their transformation in usage, also the ever evolving ‘soft ambiences’ of diasporic languages, dialects and soundworlds.

Is the ‘host’ definition therefore Cardiff itself, and all of us merely ‘guests’ passing through? After all, Cardiff’s uniqueness is rooted in a long history of diversity. Does the Infirmary represent the history of care in our City, is it a metaphor for those who embrace the wellbeing of our urban Cymry?

The online digital iteration of HOSPES is an opportunity to meet the individuals who live in these communities, including those who offer support and assistance, also those who are rooted in this sense of place, or more recently arrived. The ‘sonic cartographic’ elements of the work are combined with abstract imagery and film, inspired in part by documentary, and the ‘City Symphony’ film tradition of the 1920’s, updated to convey a sense of our City a hundred years later, in the 2020’s.

I see this collection of ‘sonic portraits’ as a ‘digital monument’ dedicated to a community, as opposed to the celebration of an individual, with all of the complex baggage that this brings.

www.hospescardiff.com