Then Before

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.