I got to know Alexandra P. Spaulding, or Alex, when she did her MFA at the Glasgow School of Art, where I taught as a visiting lecturer (2003-2015), where she then also continued with her practice-based PhD. We had become close friends in her final year at the MFA, and our conversations around her work and her research naturally flowed into one of collaboration.
Working with immersive installations in which she explored the notion of the ineffable, sound was a key elements of Alex’s enquiry. Although she had worked with sound before, her composition skills evolved in the course of the series, which in the end would comprise 6 vinyl records, for which she adopted the acronym ‘a p s’ as her artist’s name.
My contribution, labelled as that of ‘producer’ (highlighting the different conventions in sound and music relative to book publishing), focused on considering the structure and flow within each individual track, and the overall structure and rhythm of each individual album. Alex often conceived the tracks in a linear fashion, and would initially present them in order of their appearance. From my perspective the albums also needed to make sense for the listener, where the construction of the narrative arc sometimes felt more productive with an entirely different order.
The records were released on a label set up especially for them, Whiteblack00, between 2008 and 2011. Alex’s website can be found here. The label is more or less dormant, although Alex has released new material since finishing the PhD for work in various exhibitions she has had.
The records are, in order of release date: this is how i want you to remember it (2008), when you take everything away, the only thing left is imperfection (2009), everything for a short time (2009), position determines perspective (2011), our velocity (2011), and slow burn (2011).
Gerrie van Noord 