UTOOTO is an interactive instalation in which visitors colaboratively build a sonic architecture ̶ a utopian city ̶ using modular sound parts. Each participant composes their own smal structure, forming communication devices that speak through sound rather than words.

In a time of growing social division, this work offers ̶ perhaps naively ̶ the dream of a city shaped by shared experience and mutual connection. The space is filed with a continuously evolving soundscape composed from layered human voices: a choir built from a mixture of vowels and consonants across many languages. Rather than highlighting difference, these fragmented phonemes reveal the subtle similarities between global languages ̶ a kind of sonic common ground.

The name UTOOTO evokes both the dreamy state of “dozing off” ̶ a gentle, liminal moment between awareness and sleep—and the sacred Okinawan phrase utouto, used in prayer. It hovers between reverence and play, inviting reflection as well as joyful, open-ended participation.

Conceptually, UTOOTO draws inspiration from utopian architectural visions, particularly Walt Disney’s original plan for EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). EPCOT was imagined not as a theme park, but as a real, functioning city where innovation and colaboration could shape a better future. In a similar spirit, UTOOTO invites visitors to construct their own prototypes of a utopia ̶ not from concrete or steel, but from sound, structure, and collective imagination.

Yuri Suzuki (b. Tokyo, 1980; l. London/Margate)

Suzuki’s practice uses sound as a medium to shape spaces and engage the public in a dynamic social discourse. His aural and visual works are journeys delving into human interrelationships, intersecting different aspects of culture and genre to cross boundaries and celebrate idiosyncrasy. Openness and inclusivity are key to Suzuki’s practice: to be accessible to the many.

Recent public commissions are not only give physical form to sound, but explore its potential for participation. Drawing upon field research and developments in science, his installations use artificial intelligence and machine learning as autonomous generative tools. In contrast to their physical permanence, the works AI-generated sound is ever-evolving. Each viewer not only has a unique experience of the work but can contribute to and enrich the experience for others. This deliberate contrast between the sculptural and the sonic, the permanent and the evolving, suggests a tension between sanctioned narratives and the recognition of the boundless nature of time, space and humanity.

Camden Arts Projects presents Ryan Gander: I’ve Fallen Foul of My Desire

Curated by Hala Matar
Opening reception: 13 October, 6–9pm
 

Time and value are at once fleeting, elastic, distracting, and inevitable, and form the central subject of Ryan Gander’s latest exhibition, I’ve Fallen Foul of My Desire. Referencing humanity’s ongoing obsession with the accumulation of “stuff”, the exhibition brings together new and recent sculptures, animatronics, and installations, exploring how we perceive, distort, and inhabit time and how imagination can transform our relationship to it.

“The artworks remind us that we are in charge of our own destiny, our agency and our time—factors that are more important than the things that are dictated to us by society and tradition,” Gander notes. “The power is in your imagination, and you have the power to change your perception.”

At the centre of the exhibition is The Storyteller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing (2025), in which an animatronic harvest mouse emerges from a hole in the wall to deliver a philosophical monologue in the voice of the artist’s daughter. Reflecting on identity, commodification, and possibility, the mouse becomes the conscience of the exhibition, whispering to visitors about uncertainty and that imagination needs to be seen as an essential resource.

Elsewhere, the perception of time and value falters and fragments. In the courtyard, a monumental black sphere asks Why am I so distracted? (2025), perhaps invisible to passersby scrolling on their phones. In Everything is Titled, a mosquito twitches endlessly on a cake stand, suspended in the moment between life and death. Questions of value and exchange are addressed in Equivalent Economies and Equivalent Means (2018), a vending machine that once dispensed either a bundle of €100 notes totalling €10,000 or rounded stones collected by Gander and his children from a beach near their home. Presented with equal price tags until anti-money-laundering laws intervened, the work undermines systems of measurement and worth, asking how time, value, and memory become entangled. The Graphite-cast Bit Part Player (Balthazar, Merchant of Venice; Act 3, Scene 4) (2020) leans against the gallery walls, recalling the building’s former life as a drama school, where young actors waited endlessly in the wings for their fleeting lines.

The balcony becomes a quiet reflective space where Chronos Kairos, 01.01 (2025), a doubled off-set wall clock, glitches between two realities. Nearby, two stray cats, Charlie (2020) and Smoky (2020), are found asleep on the floor—squatters finding their way into the institution, oblivious to what’s going on around them and the purpose of the surrounding visitors.

Taken together, these works create an exhibition that invites visitors to reflect on distraction, mortality, value, and above all, the imaginative potential of time itself.

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