The 15th Gwangju Biennale
breath (n)
the air taken into or expelled from the lungs:
from the Old English bræðe, with meanings related to smell, scent, spoken sound, the air blown into musical instruments, sharing the same Germanic root as brood (n),
a group with qualities in common.
Today we are confronting global problems that are causing suffering on an epic scale: war, forced migration, the climate change disaster. These issues demand resolution through collective actions that transcend the framework of geopolitical polarisation and the arms race.
Olfactory acoustic composition for wind and dust and breath immerses participants in sound, smell and touch, using these senses to engage instinct before reason.
T.S. Eliot said of the poet Dante that “genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood,” and this immersive space is created to bring people together under one roof for collective, multi-sensory, instinctive thinking. It is a space to reflect on our past, our present and possible futures and to focus on what we share—a space where new questions can be posed, perhaps leading to new answers or different conclusions.
The acoustic sculpture is a multi-channel composition composed from the sounds of migratory winds recorded on five continents. So far I have collected recordings in the Chihuahua Desert straddling the US/Mexico border, Bisti/DeNa-Zin Wilderness and White Sands in New Mexico, the Great Sand Dunes in the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado, the tundra of Svalbard in the Arctic, and most recently the Atacama Desert in Chile. The next recording will be made in the Namib Desert in Namibia. To me, the ripples on the desert surface are like musical scores printed on the sand by the wind. The patterns are created when the wind is strong enough to trap and pick up tiny, individual grains of sand, which then hop and leap across the surface in a process called saltation. The ripples reflect the mood and direction of the wind and I use its score, inscribed in the dust which can be read as the beginning and end of everything on our planet, to guide me to the locations of wind activity where I can place my microphones.
The olfactory elements are infused into the visual elements. A series of large sketches on paper of local Lepidoptera, representing the genus rather than the species, will be made on site. The paper, prepared with beeswax, oil and red iron oxide pigment will be impregnated with the scent of birch tar so that the sketches stimulate the sense of smell as a backdrop to the sound composition of wind and dust.
Presented at:
The 15th Gwangju Biennale