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Bottled Up: Hearing the Unheard

  • Saturday 17 April 2021

Brand X, Darlinghurst

in partnership with the City of Sydney

An evening of sonic explorations will interpret and reimagine research from a criminologist and social scientist.

#1 Day at the Beach and Strange Roses – Heather Shannon
These two pieces were developed in response to Dr Christine Winter’s paper: “Does time colonise intergenerational environmental justice theory?”. Winter discusses the limitations of European ideas of time as linear, contrasting this with the grounding force of spirally bound time of the Māori people “for whom nonhuman and human are entangled within the spheres of justice.” There is a strong sense of sequential movement in the harmonic structures of classical music, of forward propulsion and linear direction. Development unfolds over time in a perfectly crafted musical world. Day at the Beach and Strange Roses resist forward motion in their ambience and stillness. They instead hang back, suspended by dislocation.

# 2 I Make What I Don’t Want to Hear – Alexis Weaver

In this performance lecture to herself, Alexis explores the motives behind her own composing process. I Make What I Don’t Want to Hear will cover the relationship between sound art, childhood fears which carry into adulthood, the sounds we make and those we hear in nature. Alexis uses words as well as electronic and performed sound to share her findings with the audience.

#3 The Dream Test

The Dream Test text draws on Dr Carolyn McKay’s criminological research into the cheap motel room as a site of crime, the subject of her draft book, The Crime Scene Motel Project. This performance is inspired by a mid-century artwork, designed by Tibor Reich, that Carolyn found hanging above the bed in one motel where a series of eerie, supernatural-inspired sexual assaults had occurred.

McKay’s text will be augmented with live improvisations by a trio of experimental soundmakers: Jim Denley, Romy Caen, and Jacques Emery, creating an immersive, mysterious atmosphere.

#4 Material Retelling – Alexandra Spence

Throughout the course of her work as a sound artist, Alexandra Spence has cultivated an obsession with the relationships between sound, material/object and texture; how feeling can inform listening, how listening is feeling, and how this felt-listening can alter our perception of things as we are taught to ‘know’ them. Via collected objects and field recordings, Material retelling reimagines the intricate relationships between the listener, the object, and the surrounding environment.”

 

This event is part of The Living Room Theatre’s Bottled Up Micro-festival curated by Michelle St Anne and Jacques Emery in partnership with the Sydney Environment Institute and City of Sydney.

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