Following her acclaimed installations at the National Trust’s Speke Hall and The Hepworth Wakefield, award-winning artist Serena Korda joins Somerset House’s Earth Day 2019 programme with a new, site-responsive work exploring our relationship with the natural elements. Inspired by the Greek primordial goddess of air and mother of birds, Khaos, Korda raises a new flag above the Somerset House courtyard, with the flag design paying homage to a history of maritime warning flags.
Accompanying the flag is an audio piece formed using a handcrafted aeolian harp, a musical instrument named after the ancient Greek god of wind, Aeolus. Korda recorded the harp, which produces sound when a current of air passes through it, during an afternoon spent in and around the dome that holds Somerset House’s flag. Combined with additional field recordings of the flag, the resonance of the flagpole and wind data taken from an anenometer which records wind speed, the resulting audio installation captures the voice of the air.