GALAXIES AND HEMISPHERES
Bleach* Festival August 12-22, 2020
Place, as an Aboriginal category, implies that there is no division between the observing mind and anything else: there is no ”external“ world to inhabit. There are distinctions between the physical and the spiritual, but these aspects of existence continually interpenetrate each other. There is never a barrier between the mind and the Creative; the whole repertoire of what is possible continually presents or is expressed as an infinite range of Dreamings (Elder, Aunty Mary Graham, Yugambeh Kombumerri person of the Gold Coast).
GALAXIES AND HEMISPHERES is an experimental listening program commissioned by Bleach* Festival, the Gold Coast’s annual arts festival, curated by Danni Zuvela. Held over the two festival weekends, GALAXIES AND HEMISPHERES offers a space for reflective listening in a material and psychic place of in-between-ness, Burleigh Beach.
Site/Insight
Burleigh Beach is a strip of intertidal land within the traditional saltwater Country of the Kombu-merri people of the Yugambeh language group in the Quandamooka (also known as Moreton Bay). Jabreen, the Creation Spirit, transformed what were flat sand dunes into a rocky outcrop, stretching out his arms to form the columnated headland of Jellurgal which now features his giant rocky fingers, pointing seawards. The Traditional Owners lived, swam, fished, traded, celebrated, mourned, did business and cared for the country of these lands and waters for millennia. Jellurgal is also known as Burleigh Headland, and is now home to the world’s smallest National Park, Burleigh Heads National Park, existing as an example of what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls a “polyculture of complementary knowledges”.
Across a striking black basalt boulder shoreline, a deep undersea channel runs from Jellurgal, generating one of the world’s most famous surfing point breaks. When the stars, winds and currents align, this right-hander peels around the headland and across Burleigh Beach, delivering thick, epic barrels that are the stuff of surf legend.
Sharing the water with the human wave-chasers are dolphins, sharks, turtles and fish of all shapes and sizes. Every winter (June – September), we can see (and sometimes hear) the courtship displays of tens of thousands of majestic whales traversing the “humpback highway” from the Southern Antarctic Whale Sanctuary to the Great Barrier Reef and back again.
The Burleigh shore is frequented by sunbathers, life-guards, beachcombers, lovers, party-goers and families. This north-east facing beach is protected by the cape of Burleigh Head to its immediate south, and is fringed by some 450 introduced Norfolk Island Pines (Araucaria heterophylla), including a mature stand of these trees planted by early settlers, the Justins family, after whom this busy park was named.
Just inland of the beach, against the backdrop of the Norfolk Pines, a strip of carefully manicured soft green grass and groups of pandanus palms is named Justin’s Park. One of the most popular parks on the entire Gold Coast, this site plays host to picnics, parties, joggers, illicit fire-twirlers and bongo-players, the local surf club – and the Gold Coast’s own beloved Bleach Festival. Here, underneath the stars and the iconic Norfolk pine trees, in the space between land and sea, our listeners will relax in comfy deckchairs, and immerse themselves in our program of exploratory, experimental sounds.
About the Program
GALAXIES AND HEMISPHERES is a program of 12 experiential sonic compositions to be listened to under the starlit winter sky. Listeners will experience a constellation of surround sounds produced by 12 Australian and international artists and musicians, including spoken word meditations, dark ambient soundscapes and experimental electronic music.
Key Concepts
- Place as a life force and holder of knowledges
- Unseen energies and spheres of sensed proximity
- Human/non-human entanglements in oceanic ecospheres
- Celestial and corporeal clusters, collisions, affinities and non-sequiturs
- Queering sandscapes and sharing ‘naturecultures’ (Haraway)
- The infinite in the intimate
- The implications of worlds within worlds
What: Program of experimental listening about intertidal astronomies, non-human encounters in between land and sea
When: 15 August and 22 August, 2020, 7-8pm.
Where: Justin’s Park, Burleigh Beach, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, Southern Hemisphere, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy.
The inclusion of Place in a story provides an authentic explanation of how and why something comes into the world. This in turn provides a balance between agency, whether human or spiritual, and point of origin or Place. Balance and rebalance is achieved when Place is used like an ontological compass (Mary Graham).