Visceral Fragments

By Simon Charles and John Kinsella.

First performed at Audible Edge Festival, 2024, by Simon Charles, John Kinsella, Jameson Feakes, Rebecca Lane, and Jon Heilbron.

Thank you to Marion Kickett, Tone List, and Nyoongar Ballardong Boodja.

John and I developed this piece over the course of many months through a process of collaborative exchange. The piece is based on the suspension bridge located in the townsite of York, and aims to represent it within the context of the colonial project and its ongoing destruction. It is fundamentally optimistic, representing settler positionality based in an imperative to enrich understanding of environmental context, and as an act of resistance against forces that perpetuate environmental and social injustices.

Field recordings not only represent the bridge and its surrounds, but also an intention taking something from this environment. In a sense, this intention becomes exposed and it is sincerely hoped this intention is deemed in alignment with humility and respect. Field recordings are also an auxiliary to a personal deep listening practice which informs an ethical positioning underlying the work. This practise is one of attunement between listener and place, and to this contingency of its unfolding in time. The compositional structures of the piece's instrumental parts embrace similar principles of contingency, allowing the performance acoustic, the exploration of timbre, intonation, and fragmentation of phrase structures to imprint themselves onto the phenomenal experience of the work in unanticipated ways. This is perhaps an analogue for an ethical position that sits comfortably with uncertainly and the absence of a desire to control. John’s text (to the limited extent to which I can speak to it) enriches the social and cultural contexts in which the bridge it located by telling its story in the way that only he can do. It is a privilege and a joy to join in with the telling of this story- with John and with Nyoongar Ballardong boodja itself.