Ladbury PR

Send a ‘Beacon of Love’ playing love songs recorded by people across the EU

From 1^st February 2021 artist duo Action Hero will offer 150 people the opportunity to send a loved one a free digital ‘beacon’ playing 24 hours of love songs gathered from across the EU directly to their phone

With so many unable to be with the ones they love this Valentine’s Day, artists Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse, aka Action Hero, are inviting 150 people to share their love across the airways via audio artwork Beacons of Love, a 24-hour stream of love songs that can be transmitted to GPS co-ordinates anywhere in the UK.   

The songs have been collected by Action Hero as part of two-year international audio project Oh Europa, developed out of Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, that saw them travel across Europe in a motorhome converted into a recording studio, gathering songs from people they met along the way, in their own language. The result is a rich, eclectic archive of over 1000 love songs sung in 46 different languages by people aged between 1 to 100, bringing sentiments of passion, poignancy, union and heartbreak.

From 10am on Monday 1^st February 2021, the first 150 people to register for Beacons of Love on the Action Hero website will be invited to enter the GPS location of where they would like their temporary digital ‘beacon’ to be sited on Sunday 14 February, Valentine’s Day. On that day, the beacon will be accessible for 24 hours via the free Oh Europa app, which is available for both IoS and Android. Each will also receive a digital version of the Oh Europa book Postcards from the Edge and invited to share a photo of their personal beacon on social media #Beaconsoflove

Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse say; “Whilst COVID restrictions are keeping us apart from loved ones this Valentine's Day, we want to give people the opportunity to share the love remotely, via their very own location specific audio hotspot. What better way to find a beacon of hope in the dark than tuning into a chorus of love songs sung by ordinary people, who're also under lockdown.”

Since 2018 the ever evolving Oh Europa archive has played 24/7 from 42 digital ‘beacons’ on the borders, invisible boundaries, margins, cultural junctures and geological ‘edge lands’ of Europe, accessible to anyone via the Oh Europa app which guides listeners to their nearest ‘beacon.’

Action Hero are a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England. Oh Europa was co-produced with Farnham Maltings (UK), and co-commissioned by Transform (UK), Matchbox (DE), Farnham Maltings (UK), and supported by British council, Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio (UK), Vooruit (BE), Latitudes Contemporaines (FR), Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre (GR), Anti Festival (FI), Ordogkatlen Festival (HU), Interdisciplinarte (IT), Romanian Association for Performing Arts (RU) and Bristol Old Vic Ferment (UK).

Register for Beacons of Love here: actionhero.org.uk/projects/valentine

#Beaconsoflove

For more info about Oh Europa check out the website: http://oheuropa.com

More info about the brilliant Action Hero here: www.actionhero.org.uk