Simon Whetham’s work approach to a performance for Audio Art in Krakow was to situate himself within the city and record sounds in situ before the performance. Specifically he stayed in the Kazimierz area of Krakow, the old Jewish area that became a ghetto during the Second World War under Nazi occupation. The story of the neighbourhood during this period informs Whetman’s work as he explores a kind psycho-geography in which the work fashions sounds of the area as if they contained the residual horror of the Shoah. It is this very idea of non-linear relationships that Whetham uses to construct his work, linking the psyche of contemporary Krakow to its past and by implication its future. You could draw a long bow and make the claim that he considers time as spatial, not linear, and the resonant echoes of the period remain palpable in the environs, the architecture and fabric of the city.

The work itself is in three parts: Part First (An uncertain Distance), Part Second (Paths, crossing), Part third (The Chamber). All reside within the frame of the electro acoustic work and fashion recordings into sound and mix recordings with granular synthesis and spatial sound treatment which seems to his favoured working methodology. It starts with a kind of arrival, metallic sharpness of rails, and the hint of public address speakers, dark clouds rumbling and the patina of electro static infused throughout. A lull before the emergence of rain and a dark undercurrent amongst the jostling contorted sonic shapes elicited. A background hint melody is disrupted by growing static and sharply cut with a disjunctive crackle. Part Second introduces sharp undertones and drone like treatment of sound to begin, almost hinting at an organ like sound, acquiring a melancholic beauty, introducing the sound of birds with the intermittent electronic touch and the gentle rumble of static. It moves more towards great planes of electronic noise which acquire the suggestive sound of the train freight car. It is as if to signify the journey to the nearby Auschwitz through sound. This moves to a more industrial hum, with environmental sounds, people’s voices, the clatter of objects and then the dense hum and rumble of sound. Drones are shaped and a form of mournful chorus appears in the shapes of sound, recurring in cycles and building in effect. All the while incidental electro acoustic sounds are occurring. Part third has a more consistent form of a tone and sound shape gradually building a bleak and discomforting presence introducing minute gestures. There are brief changes in layers and the build works up to intensity as if a machine room humming, before sliding, fading into silence via a bleak section where the incidental noise of life is stripped away. A lone violin plays somewhere in the environs and recedes before silence.
While the subject matter is bleak, Wheatman approaches the sound of environs in a manner that bespeaks of the psychological endowment of periods and how they can infiltrate the spatial and life activity through time. In a sense his environmental approach interlinks the pattern of all life as a more intimate and personal the actions of distant others. Prayers Unheard suggests the absence of a response of a deity, but implicates us through the constructed narrative linking our contemporary environment with the Shoah. Thus widening our circle of care larger, beyond the self and immediate other, to the very fabric of the architecture of cities and society in and through time.
– Cyclic Defrost