Following up on Steve's online workshop in 2021, CAMP is extremely excited to bring this immersive session up to the Pyrenean mountains for 2024. For five full days and nights, we'll blend presentations, listening, theory and discussion with field recording, production workshops, outdoors activities and landscape explorations.

In the midst of a podcast explosion with its glut of spoken word audio content, this course involves a timely exploration of the liminal format of the audio essay, a form and method which, at its most interesting, can hold musical abstraction, argument, narrative and sonic world building in an unholy tension. Occupying a plane of legibility composed through the montage of a full spectrum of sound, audio essays exist in the delicate tension between attention and immersion.

The sessions will revolve around close, collective listening sessions which will interrogate the potential of the format at its most speculative, and experiment with aesthetic methods drawn from essay-film, sonic fiction, documentary fiction, electro-acoustic, radiophonic drama and composition and psycho-geography.

At the end of the session, participants will create their own audio essays on themes of their choosing.

Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) is a musician, artist and writer. He is the author of the book Sonic Warfare (MIT Press, 2010) and co-edited the book Unsound: Undead (Urbanomic Press, 2019), Ø (Flatlines Press, 2021) He is founder of the record labels Hyperdub and Flatlines, producer of 5 albums, 2 with the late Spaceape (Memories of the Future, 2006 and Black Sun 2012) and 3 solo (Nothing, 2015, Escapology 2022, Astro-Darien 2022), numerous DJ mix compilations, and co-compiled and remixed the Diggin in the Carts (2018) compilation of rare Japanese video game music. In addition, among others, he has produced sound installations for the Hyundai Commision at Tate Modern (2018) and for the More than Human exhibition (2019) on artificial intelligence at the Barbican in London.



WHERE AND WHEN?

The course takes place at our residential centre in Aulus les Bains. It's two hours south of Toulouse, high in the French Pyrenees, very near the border with Spain. For detailed travel information, see the transport section. The course starts on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. We advise that you arrive the evening before (30/04/2024) - dinner and accommodation that night is included. The course runs for five days, ending on Sunday night. Accommodation on Sunday night is included, then we leave on Monday morning (06/05/2024). If you decide to take the minibus with us, you will be picked- up in Toulouse at 6pm on 30/04/2024, and will be back in Toulouse at 11am on 06/05/2024.

You'll also have the option to stay at CAMP an additional 7 nights, following the workshop, for an additional cost of €299. Hang out, do some hiking, use our facilities, work on your projects and process the content of the workshop at your own pace.

HOW TO BOOK

To book your place on the course, click the button in the green section above. You won't pay anything right now - we'll send you a booking confirmation email with everything you need to know next. Your place is reserved without payment for three days.

You'll find a payment link in the booking confirmation email - follow the link to make a payment (either in full, or the first payment of a 4 month payment plan). In the latter case, a monthly payment plan will be put in place, so your card will be charged 1/4 of the fee today, and 1/4 each month (on the same day) for an additional 3 months. All card payments are handled by Stripe, and are extremely secure. We don't store any card data ourselves - all of this is handled securely off-site by Stripe. If you have a discount or grant code, you will be able to add it when you follow the payment link in your confirmation email.

Once you've made a payment, you'll receive another email containing your receipt, links to resources, contact information and access to our group chat to discuss the workshop with other participants.