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Lower Levant Company (LLC)

@lowerlevantcompany

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A project by Emiddio Vasquez (@emmidiately) and Peter Eramian (@petereramian).

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Rijksakademie resident Olga Micińska @o_o.m__m presents ‘Routine Maintenance: A Tale’ together with Lower Levant Company (Emiddio Vasquez & Peter Eramian) at Thkio Ppalies in Nicosia, Cyprus.

The exhibition brings two existing works into conversation, tracing histories of military transmission and surveillance in Cyprus alongside the lives and movements of bats. Recordings range from frequencies captured near British RAF military antennae to bat calls recorded in Cyprus, Cuba and Texas. Through speakers, ceramics and sculptural forms inspired by artificial bat houses, the works explore how human and other-than-human life inhabits and crosses militarised landscapes.

‘Routine Maintenance: A Tale’ opens 16 October at 19:00 and runs through 6 November 2026.  Photos from Sonic Acts: Peter Eramian
Poster design: Olga Micińska
Photo on the poster: Haris Nicolaou

#Rijksakademie #OlgaMicinska #OlgaMicińska taken in Θκιό Ππαλιές - Thkio Ppalies by @lowerlevantcompany

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6 days ago

Routine Maintenance: A Tale
Lower Levant Company & Olga Micińska

Thkio Ppalies is pleased to present Routine Maintenance: A Tale, a sculptural sound environment by Lower Levant Company (Emiddio Vasquez & Peter Eramian) and Olga Micińska. At the core of the installation two existing works are brought into conversation: Crossover Frequency Spectrum (2024, LLC in collaboration with Gaetano di Gregorio) and Bad Luck to Every Magistrate, and Bad luck to Every Gamekeeper (2026, LLC & Olga Micińska), previously presented at the 60th Venice Biennale Cyprus Pavilion (@forever.informed) and the @sonicacts Biennial in Amsterdam, respectively.

The title of the exhibition cites the official statement by the Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) authorities regarding the ongoing developments at Akrotiri Salt Lake, where locals are protesting plans to erect as many as 68 new communications antennae, describing them as “antennae of death”. According to the statement, any work currently ongoing is “associated with routine maintenance” and not with plans to install new listening antennae. So the tale goes…

Opening: 16/10/2026, 7pm
Duration: 16/10 – 06/11/2026
Opening hours: Wednesday-Friday, 6-8pm (or by appointment)

Poster by Olga Micińska
Photo by Haris Nicolaou taken in Θκιό Ππαλιές - Thkio Ppalies by @lowerlevantcompany

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12 days ago

Stationed at the main entrance to Imperio Properties' diamond-shaped high-rise, The Icon, in Limassol, an edition of Orlinski's Wild Kong sculpture stands as "a symbol of hope." In Gaming Tower, a low-poly blue gorilla becomes a virtual character with its own volition and desires, wreaking havoc on the very edifice that brought it to life.

The work is presented in an expanded form at the Lemesos International Documentary Festival, with live music and performance interventions by the experimental music duo @coppercurios and Emiddio Vasquez.

Gaming Tower, Lower Levant Company (Emiddio Vasquez & Peter Eramian) in collaboration with Faysal Mroueh, 2024, 7'.

THE URBAN CONDITION: An Expanded Screening, curated by Androula Kafa, The Island Club, Lemesos International Documentary Festival, 7 August 2026.

Photos: Skevi Laou
Video: Peter Eramian by @lowerlevantcompany

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2 months ago

Bad luck to every magistrate, and bad luck to every gamekeeper (2026)

Lower Levant Company in collaboration with Olga Micińska (@o_o.m__m).

Wood, metal, insulation foam, transducer speakers, locking pins. Audio, Stereo, 10min loop with number intermissions.

Two wooden resonant structures – modelled on the interiors of bat houses and resembling ritual contraptions – transmit a soundscape composed of roosting bats, a fictional number station, and ELF radio recordings captured in Cyprus near the British RAF bases in Akrotiri, Limassol, and Troodos. RAF Akrotiri served as the transmission locus for a number station allegedly operated by the British Secret Intelligence Service (1960–2008) to send encoded messages across the region. Discovered by radio enthusiasts, the station opened each broadcast with a jingle from the English folk song The Lincolnshire Poacher. The project’s title reframes a couplet from this song as an omen aimed at the ‘magistrates’ and ‘gamekeepers’ active on the island and in the surrounding region, while fictionalising coded numbers through local land histories.

Bats bridge the non-human world with their environment through echolocation, embodying an ecological ‘call and response’, prompting a reconsideration of how we engage with transmission technologies and their ecological consequences. Their calls reinterpret Cyprus’s geopolitical radio history as an ‘antenna island’ shaped by surveillance and eavesdropping. These sonic abodes propose a symbolic reinhabitation of bat colonies near the bases, subverting RAF infrastructures and inviting listeners to imagine rebuilding after misfortune befalls the ‘magistrates’ and ‘gamekeepers’.

Presented at @sonicacts biennial 2026: Melted for Love, curated by Angeliki Tzortzakaki (@paradise_host). taken in W139 by @lowerlevantcompany

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7 months ago

Vasquez (LLC) has been researching and recording bats for the last 6 years, specifically focusing on their ability to navigate using echolocation; a sonic metaphor of making sense of one’s locality through listening. Reflecting on their special ability to perceive the reflections of their calls, as an ecological “call and response” between the non-human and its environment, they invite us to think about the way humans implement technology. Carrying over the same logic to geopolitics, bat calls serve as an entry point to the colonial history of radio and military transmission in Cyprus. Effectively, Cyprus has served as an antenna island for British intelligence “call and response” operations in the region since the early 20th Century. ELF radio recordings captured near the British RAF bases in Akrotiri, Limassol, and Troodos, reveal these ongoing activities in the form of inaudible whistlers and cracklings from the ionosphere, not dissimilar to bat calls. There is some unverifiable speculation that bats may themselves naturally produce some form of very low frequency (VLF) radio pulses. If this is the case, particular VLF signals emitted by antennas—whose activity can cause thermal induction that increases risk of hyperthermia—may cause irritation or disorientation to nearby bats; which may explain the reduction of bat populations in some of these vicinities.

01: Bracken Cave, Comal County, Texas.
02: Bat recording near the British Troodos Signals Station radar site.
03: ELF recording near RAF Akrotiri, Limassol. by @lowerlevantcompany

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8 months ago

Mizna 02.04.2025
On Which Side Of The Screen Lies The Ghost?
Big thanks to Lamia Abukhadra (@lamiaabukhadra) & @mizna_arabart for the indepth review!
Link in bio by @lowerlevantcompany

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2 years ago

NERO 14.02.2025
Forever Informed interview on @nero_editions. Big thanks to Alessandro Cazzola (@cazzemberg) for the wonderful & generative questions. Link in bio! taken in Cyprus Pavilion - la Biennale di Venezia by @lowerlevantcompany

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NERO 23.01.2025
Big thanks to @nero_editions and @g.crispiani for the thoughtful indepth review (link in bio). The review will be followed up with an interview with Alessandro Cazzola (@cazzemberg) and Forever Informed to be published online next week! taken in Cyprus Pavilion - la Biennale di Venezia by @lowerlevantcompany

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For the month of May, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (@borderviolence) was invited by LLC (@lowerlevantcompany) on behalf of the team of the Cyprus Pavilion, as part of the Vigil Workspace, to conduct research on the use of surveillance systems and AI-informed technologies within the Cyprus maritime borderscape.

While this year's Venice Biennale exhibition is titled “Foreigners Everywhere”, the Biennale’s framework is based on nation-state representation, reinforcing borders and structurally excluding ‘foreign’ participation. Borders are at the core of restrictions to the movement of predominantly racialized people – this global regime of exclusion can be seen in Venice, where people have been illegally pushed back to Greece; in Cyprus, where we are witnessing the escalation and normalisation of both state and civilian violence against people on the move; in Palestine, where bordering practices such as the construction of walls and enforcement of blockades have upheld a system of Apartheid and are confining the people of Gaza in genocidal conditions of violence.

A researcher-in-residence, together with other members of BVMN, examined the Cyprus maritime border regime where legal, technological and operational attempts to restrict movement have led to non-assistance, illegal pushbacks and, in some tragic cases, border deaths. Such patterns of violence will likely be exacerbated by the one billion-euro deal between the EU and Lebanon, which aims to extend EU power over external territories and place greater restrictions on movement. These measures have become entangled with the increasing deployment of surveillance technologies such as radars, day and night vision cameras and drones. During their research stay, BVMN looked at how these different tools shape this border regime through an interplay between in/visibility, exploring how technologies both produce and obscure forms of oppressive state control.

One of the research outcomes will be presented as a series of collaborative posts between Forever Informed (@forever.informed), αφοα (@afoa.cy) and BVMN (@borderviolence). The posts will visualise different elements of the Cyprus maritime borderscape. taken in Cyprus Pavilion - la Biennale di Venezia by @lowerlevantcompany

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2 years ago

Gaming Tower, 2024, by LLC (@lowerlevantcompany), in collaboration with Faysal Mroueh (@wherethehasbeen).

A blue light source flickers from inside the drawer of a flipped over office desk. The light’s rhythm responds to SOUNDR’s sonic intensity. On the backside of the desk, a shattered red marble reflects a screen featuring a video game. In the game, a low poly blue gorilla wreaks havoc, turning against the very edifice that brought it to life. The more destruction it causes the larger it grows, pulverising classicist tropes and symbols of corporate lifestyle and culture that it encounters on its way out. As the gorilla breaks free, now tenfold in size, it finds itself in a field of butterflies and advances towards the shore, where its body fades out and merges with the water, facing the gleaming sunset, surrounded by a horizon of towers emerging from the sea.

Stationed at the main entrance of Imperio Properties’ diamond shaped high-rise ‘The Icon’ tower in Limassol, an edition of Orlinski’s Wild Kong sculpture stands as “a symbol of hope” representing the property development and management firm with “messages of optimism…such as the beauty that manages to defeat evil, the love that transforms humans.”* Marketing platitudes aside, the desk sculpture materialises in the space by congealing elements from the virtual space of the video game, while the blue gorilla becomes a virtual character in the screen with its own volition and desires. This double movement instigates a mode of voyeuristic pleasure that lusts for destruction while the ludic qualities of the video game ameliorates the destruction’s material implications, hinting at a certain participation in the ongoing speculation games and financial investments that attribute to the ‘ghostification’ of Limassol.

*https://www.imperioproperties.com/where-is-this-blue-gorilla-in-limassol/ (accessed: 09/04/2024)

Photography:
01-03: Ugo Carmeni 2024
@ugocarmeni_studio taken in Cyprus Pavilion - la Biennale di Venezia by @lowerlevantcompany

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2 years ago

Crossover Frequency Spectrum, 2024, by LLC (@lowerlevantcompany), in collaboration with Gaetano di Gregorio (@gaedigregorio).

Via the thoroughfare that connects the front of the pavilion to Soundr, lies Cross Frequency Spectrum, a steel truss supporting a six-channel horn speaker system. Each Iwata horn, repurposed from audiophile culture, is tuned with crossovers to specific frequencies, focusing each horn to different recordings: local bats chirping, whistlers and cracklings from the ionosphere near military antennae, field recordings from the LLC acoustic mirror in Asomatos, Limassol, in proximity to the UK SBA of Akrotiri and sounds from the Venice canal through the Organ (Rafailia Tsiridou, Emiddio Vasquez). Recordings across scales of magnitude and locations, that call for an adjustment of the senses and an attunement towards soundings that are often present, and even extremely loud, but not easily audible – not unlike the geopolitical occurings across the seemingly ‘quiet thoroughfare’ that is Cyprus.

The wave of copper slag serves as a material bedding for the mixed-clay ceramic horns by ceramicist and architect Gaetano di Gregorio, offering an alternative mode of listening reoriented to the land. Zooming out, the slag doubles down as an overused metaphor for Cyprus’ geological formation and history as a site of copper extraction. Offering a new twist to the island’s ‘emergence’ in the Levant region as an ‘antenna island’, it has led some to even speculate that the conductivity of the copper found in the soil across the island may be one of the reasons why radio transmission stations were set up in Cyprus, since it would enhance the electrical grounding of antennas. To continue and extend the metaphor, when thinking of copper slag as a byproduct of copper production, one may be provoked to speculate what the byproduct of these listening and transmitting operations – ongoing until today – might be, towards rethinking the island’s complicity in regional conflicts.

3D printing support by Alexis Charalambous (@cyens.thinkermakerspace).

Photography:
01-03, 06: Ugo Carmeni 2024
@ugocarmeni_studio
04, 05, 07: Demetris Loutsios 2024
@d_loutsios taken in Cyprus Pavilion - la Biennale di Venezia by @lowerlevantcompany

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2 years ago

On the right to be forgotten – Part One: Wayback Machine to Sun City, 2024, by LLC (@lowerlevantcompany), in collaboration with Svetlana Goncharenko (@showsandart).

Narration: Chrysso Kosmas @chryssocos
Camera: Phivos Philitas @phivosphi

I once met a traveller, at the end of the middle of the world, who embarked on a quest across the River to unlock the secrets of the Universe, and beyond.

Under the starlit sky, he set up a tent out of cloth. The cloth was dipped in black carbon ink. And from inside the tent, he poked thirteen holes.

Aligning the holes to the stars, he drew diagrams of celestial bodies and their motions to calculate the River’s tide.

Out of the trunk of an ancient olive tree, he carved out a raft, and for the sailcloth he made ropes by twisting its branches and its roots. He knew that olive trees hold history and that they foster wisdom. In this way, his travels would be blessed with remembrance guiding his way back home. Not with yesteryear’s follies of conquer, but with that of true knowledge, making true bonds and building companionship.

He learned a lot from the River, how with every new flood, land had to be divided,
time and again,
time and again,
time and again…
He learned how with every overflow, new salt deposits gather at its riverbanks, forming the first trade routes along its many salt lakes, many of which he would encounter along the way.

He sailed for 40 days and 40 nights, reaching his final destination, where now lies a new kind of salt, through which moonlight travels faster than the blink of an eye.

This is why he is sitting on this deck, vigilant, waiting for the new eclipse, keeping forever informed, as "the lone and level sands stretch far away." taken in Cyprus Pavilion - la Biennale di Venezia by @lowerlevantcompany

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2 years ago