Steve Potter is a composer, researcher, performing musician, curator and educator. His work integrates critical reflections on racial segregation and class ideology, with experimental noise, speech, and movement, into complex performances. Collaboration through friendship is central to his practice, and his collaborators have included world-leading humanities scholars, instrumental improvisers, computer musicians, physicists, animators, post-dramatic actors, vocalists and dancers. His current research, begun in 2015-16 at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, looks at relationships between contemporary music-making and forms of governance.
Steve Potter contributed to the second edition of Waywords and Meansigns, recording Book II Chapter 2, “The Studies: Nightlessons” as Ollie Evans, Steve Potter & Co.
Credits: (i) Prologue (Family stroll with HCE), FW 260-266/00:00. (ii) Storiella as She is Syung (Issy knits and splits), FW 266-282/14:00. (iii) The Muddest Thick that was Ever Heard Dump (Dolph & Kev draw ALP), FW 282-304/48:40. (iv) Conclusion (ALP puts the children to bed), FW 304-308/1:33:00. Text arranged by Ollie Evans. Recomposed, recorded and edited by Ollie Evans and Steve Potter. Voices recorded at the Derek Jarman Lab, London (June & October, 2015). Read by: Leanne Bridgewater (Issy/footnote n., ii); Koshka Duff (Issy, ii); Ollie Evans (Shem/Shaun, i-iv; right margin, ii; Dolph, iii); Richard Hames (Margins, i-iv); Eleanor Massie (ALP, iv); Steve Potter (Shem/Shaun, i-iv; footnotes, ii, Kev, iii). Kate Evans (right margin, iii); Kirstin Smith (footnotes, i-iv; Issy, ii; parenthesis, iii). Music performed by Nathaniel Dye (treble and bass trombone, percussion); Ollie Evans (percussion, toys, violin, guitar, vacuum pipe, kaoss pad, synth, piano, keyboard, xylophone); Richard Hames (harmonica, glockenspiel, rulers, mud, eggs); Kate Evans (acoustic guitar, kazoo); Steve Potter (electronics, toys, rulers, mud, eggs); Leanne Bridgewater (vocal electronics). Additional voices and sounds by Nathaniel Dye; Rebecca Varley-Winter; Jane Evans; Kathi and Torsten Wieser; Students Against Cuts; Popeye the dog; Barry White; Orlando de Lassus; George Lucas & many anonymous. Various field recordings from London; Isle of Wight; Amman; Petra; the Dead Sea; Innsbruck; Vienna; Brussels, and New York. Thanks to Bartek Dziadlosz and Lawrence Dunn.