Equipment For Ecosocial Artivism

I'm Daya (aka Jeffrey) and I'm helping my friend and neighbour Martin to raise some money for a good cause. I pass him the talking stick:

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Dear world,

My name is Martin Voll, I am a Norwegian living in a small, indigenous village in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. I do my best to radically live in an ecologically sustainable way and I care deeply about the environment and a sense of community in the world. I am a multi-faceted artist and this way of life is reflected in my art - they go hand in hand - and I also help others with a similar philosophy to realise their own artistic visions.

I have suffered the misfortune of being robbed no less than four times in four years here in Mexico. I'm not at all a careless person, I've just had some really bad luck:

- 2014: My semi-professional Sony HVR A1E camcorder along with microphones (of a value of more than USD 2000) was stolen on a bus in Yucatan.

- 2017: My wallet with bank cards and a pretty big wad of cash, along with my phone, was stolen on the metro in Mexico City by an organised gang. They even managed to get money out of one of my bank cards, which my bank refused to refund. Total value lost more or less 15000 pesos. Reported to the police.

- 2017: A few days after the incident in Mexico City I came back to my house to find that it had been broken into. They had stolen a huge amount of studio equipment I have been carefully and painstakingly collecting over the years, including my new Mackie HR624 studio monitors. Total value very difficult to calculate as some items were old and others irreplaceable but surely in the region of USD 3000-4000. Reported to the police.

- 2018: Again on the Mexico City metro, this time with force, my phone was again robbed. Value 3000 pesos.

To be absolutely fair and square, my camera would have been more or less obsolete by now as technology changes quickly. My parents helped me a lot after the first 2017 incident. Some of the items from the house burglary were later found in a nearby forest, and many of my friends ganged up to buy me a new guitar! So I've already received a lot of support that I am extremely grateful for.

Even so, after the last robbery I looked up at the sky and asked “why?”. I struggled to find peace with it. I really feel I do my best for my family, my community around me and the forests around my community, so I couldn't accept "because  you deserve it" as an answer.

It's not easy to ask the world for money, it's not something I take lightly. So the decision to start a crowd-funding campaign is to try to restore a sense of universal justice in my life, to find peace with what has happened and to take a stand and shout from the rooftops “I ALSO DESERVE TO RECEIVE!”, whether it ends up being $1 or $10000.

I want to emphasise the fact that I take full responsibility for my life-choices – to live in “the most marginalised area of Mexico” and to choose a challenging (but oh so rewarding) life-path. I take full responsibility for making a living, for giving my two kids a healthy and happy upbringing, for building a house and providing home. I am not asking money for these purposes. But expensive studio equipment is out of my reach.

My family

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I am asking for help to replace the stolen artistic tools I need to continue creating my own flavour of eco-socially conscious art, sometimes for the direct benefit of others.

To replace (and, yes I admit it, upgrade) the most important items that were stolen, I need:

- A pair of professional studio monitors - $2000

- A professional SLR camera with great video features and microphones - $2000

- 2 Shure SM58 microphones for live use - $200

- 1 external hard drive - $100

- 1 bass amplifier - $200

- 1 ukulele - $100

- Bank charges - $200

Total $4800

The bass amplifier and ukulele belonged to friends of mine who stored their stuff at my house when I got robbed; I would like for them to benefit from this fund-raising campaign as well.

If I receive less than the total amount, I will only buy a few of these items or find cheaper alternatives, and if I receive more it will go towards the creation of my Sylvan Sound Temple (read on - though there will probably be a separate fund-raising campaign for the construction of the SST in perhaps two or three years from now.)

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Finally, let's talk about art and media, my history and my plans for the future, and how these items will change my life and help me to help the wider community.

First of all, you can read all about my background, listen to my music and watch some of my films at martinvoll.com. But, in brief, here's my story.

I was born in Norway but moved to London and studied at East 15 Acting School, graduating with a BA in Acting in 1999. I spent in total ten years in London working mostly in the arts and media, as an actor and voiceover artist; musician, composer and musical director; in documentary film, theatre and television production; as live continuity / network controller for TV3; as a self-taught sound engineer and video editor, and running my production company, recording studio and record label Otherwise Productions, Otherwise Studios and Otherwise Records.

That's me in the control room of Otherwise Studios in London a long time ago...


In 2006 I set off on a round-the-world trip that was far from a holiday – with video and sound equipment in my backpack, I created or participated in numerous projects of a humanitarian or charitable nature, such as an information film to fight female genital cutting in Mali, a documentary and concert recording of a youth string orchestra from a Brazilian favela, and, as an example of my work, a documentary about a Permaculture community farm and rainforest regeneration project in Australia to save it from the bulldozers of the local authorities:

"Jasper Hall" - this is my own footage mixed with images and video from their 20-year history, edited together by myself. This film also gives you an idea of what I mean by "intentional community".

I'm now settled in a remote mountainous region of Mexico where I have rebuilt a simple version of my studio to finish the old projects from my journey and to create new ones. I have recently recorded two albums, one for myself and the other for Ananse Y La Luna, which will be released in October 2018 through my brand new record label Sylvan Sound. The record label is aimed at a certain kind of artist rather than a certain kind of music – I want to create a musical family of artivists who take radical steps towards ecosocial sustainability in their lives. Working professionally without professional speaker monitors is like walking around a jungle without a light on a moonless night. The monitors are the cornerstone of my all my work that I simply can't do without, they are sorely missed.

I have the strong intention to co-create a sustainable, intentional community and a “rewilding” retreat centre, focussed on a high degree of self-sufficiency of water, energy and organic food, and then on sharing this in creative ways with the world, from meditation retreats to sound healing to community immersion programmes - sometimes as a business, sometimes for donation, sometimes for nothing. The small group I am a part of have already financed the purchase of the land with our own money.

The Sylvan Sound Temple is one of my personal visions for this land. I imagine a huge domed space built with natural building materials and running on renewable energy. Not just a recording studio with live rooms, dead rooms and control rooms, it will also be a one-of-a-kind multi-dimensional Sound Immersion Experience where sound journey programmes ranging from meditative insight to ecstatic dance can be experienced through recorded 3D playback from, perhaps, 16 speakers built into the walls, through live performance or a mixture of both. We will hopefully be able to offer our visitors art retreats, recording retreats and music therapy / sound healing.

A sound healing session at a festival in Hungary.


In addition to being my personal work space, I envision the Sylvan Sound Temple as the heart of a local musicians' collective, gathering artists from around the Sierra Sur and sharing resources, knowledge and equipment, creating various musical projects in infinite configurations, having the opportunity to release our work through Sylvan Sound, and even offering jam nights and free music workshops to kids and adults from the surrounding communities. 

Our collective configuration "We Are Juan" playing for kids in my village


And then there is the very ambitious forest regeneration project which is just about to start up. We have already teamed up with an NGO to be able to legally raise funds. The Sierra Sur mountains, where I live, is covered in pine, the local cash crop, which dries out water sources, degrades the soil, invites pine plague and is the cause of erosion and perhaps even climatic change. With this project we wish to make a strong ecosocial impact in these mountains. We want to:

- Recreate something akin to the original mixed forest to create a much more sustainable and resilient ecosystem

- To employ locals to help us to achieve that, and thereby create a more sustainable local economy and lessening the need for the cutting down of forests

- To work with local communities around our protected forests to enlist them as guardians; we may use a small percentage of the land surrounding the forests for farm land for organic produce in order to support local rancheros

Which brings me to the need for having a professional camera:

- I think it is very important to share the story of the creation of our sustainable community with the world, right from the beginning; work will start in earnest in October and I would like to be ready with a new camera.

- We will probably also make a fund-raising film for the communal parts of the community at some point.

- We want to make a fund-raising film for the forest regeneration project soon.

- Beyond that, the potential list of community-based information film or creative film-making projects are quite literally endless. I see our land and community as a film set, a backdrop for any number of artistic endeavours.

It would be a big lie to say that all my projects have a communal or charitable edge and that I won't benefit personally from the equipment I am fund-raising for, but I always try to strike a healthy feel-good balance between business / service and communal / personal in my life and work.

I have presented many ideas in this text but I hesitate to make big promises as you never know how life might change. But my intention at this moment in time is crystal clear.

Right now I am handicapped as a music and film producer, I am a painter without a paint brush. To acquire these items would change my artistic life completely, and hopefully the lives of many others and even the forest. I am eternally grateful for any donation, big or small.

In return for every donation, I will offer a free download of a track from my new album Norge På Langs (Norway Lengthwise), an album of traditional Norwegian music presented in all kinds of styles, along with a few originals. When giving your donation, please add a comment choosing the style of your track of choice:

- Flamenco (traditional)
- Hard rock (traditional)
- Mouth harp rock (original)
- Blues (traditional)
- Vocal (original)
- Sami (traditional from the northern Sami people)

...and let's see what ends up in your inbox!

Thank you for all your support!

Martin