Kate Donovan and Ella Finer:
Holding Patterns; An Archive of Atmospheres

In aviation, a holding pattern keeps a plane moving within a defined flight path. A way of managing air traffic—large objects which cannot suspend motion in the sky—this is as close to stillness as the atmosphere above us allows. A holding pattern is an ambivalent thing, a way of keeping an object in motion while contained. What does the pattern of containment do, what moves can the object make?

In Holding Patterns; An Archive of Atmospheres artists and academics Kate Donovan and Ella Finer are interested in the metaphorical conditions within the archives and their atmospheres that they have moved through: the management and containment of objects in motion; how objects are held and how they move (or do not); how holding can be a managerial or administrative practice, one of ownership and possession, and also of tender care-taking, a desire to pass something on well enough. Maybe holding is complexly always a mix of all at once.

From the giant scale of holding a plane in repeated movement to the intimate scale of holding a stone, a seed, a bone, a tape, a living moth— how to hold on to something and attend to the holding: the patterns and intricate relations of motion and stasis; what works and what needs to break in the “holding patterns” to make way for new intent and direction. To hold as a way of allowing movement into the future, not to land but to continue the flight.

The artistic research-exchange project is realized with the support of the 4A_Lab (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut) and made in collaboration with Maurice Mengel (Ethnological Museum and Museum for Asian Art); Albrecht Wiedmann (Berlin Phonogramm Archive); Ludwig Luthardt (Natural History Museum), Berlin, as well as Richard Sabin (Natural History Museum); Dan Hall (Natural History Museum); Michele Banal (British Library Sound Archive), London. With the use of streamboxes by Soundcamp and the live technical support of Philipp Phildius.

Kate Donovan is an artist and academic whose work focuses on listening, ecological thinking and radio-making. Much of her practice is together with others and involves knowledge exchange and experimentation. She is a co-founder of Radio Otherwise, an artistic research project motivated by the many knots which art, knowledge-making and communication encounter. An Associate Scholar of the 4A_Lab, her PhD was written within the context of the research group SENSING: The Knowledge of Sensitive Media, at the University of Potsdam.

Ella Finer’s work in sound and performance spans writing, composing, and curating with a particular interest in how bodies acoustically disrupt, challenge, or change occupations of space. Her research continuously queries the ownership of cultural expression through sound; often through collaborative projects centering listening as a practice of deep attention, affiliation and reciprocity. She is working on a book of essays: Acoustic Commons and the Wild Life of Sound, while Silent Whale Letters, a correspondence project with Vibeke Mascini and edited by Kate Briggs, was published by Sternberg Press in 2023.