loiner or is a sculptural sound work by Japanese-born, Huddersfield-based composer and artist Ryoko Akama. Using sound, light, movement, museum objects and oral testimonies, Akama’s installation is a delicately balanced response to the memory of migrant textiles and garment workers in Leeds.

Akama’s minimalistic compositions magnify silence, time and space. Working with fragile materials, everyday objects and electronics, her work produces spontaneous light and sound events at a micro scale. The installation was produced as part of Pavilion’s Interwoven Histories exhibition at Leeds Industrial Museum, and the organisation’s ongoing work to capture and re-present the lives and experiences of migrant workers in Leeds over the last century.

loiner or is the result of Akama’s encounters with refugees, asylum seekers and ex-textiles and garment workers in the city, and research into objects held at Leeds Industrial Museum.