Constellations

Missed Connections

Do you ever feel like you’re not quite getting it? We live in a time of missed connections expressed through misunderstandings, dropped calls and glitches. In this episode of Constellations, sit with us in an attempt to express the inexpressible. Oh, and a duck sound or two. "Echoing Quack" by Natalie Kestecher and Mike Williams "poor connection" by Yardain Amron

Accumulation Over Time (Parts X,Y,Z)

I want to talk about how the accumulation of things — books or bottles or whatever - is overwhelming on different scales. Overwhelming to the environment, overwhelming to the individual home, or overwhelming to the body. I wanted to make something that was claustrophobic but also could be exhumed and heard in parts like picking through the ruins of an old factory building.

X Axis: The rationale of a body in pain

X Axis: The rationale of a body in pain -- Think about each layer existing at the same time and bleeding together. Each layer is like a different perspective to a single thing that is too massive to perceive all at once. -- Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton.

Y Axis: The hoarding habits of two manhattan heirs

Y Axis: The hoarding habits of two manhattan heirs -- imagine these pieces as parts of a whole. -- Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton.

Z Axis: The distribution of massive objects in time and space

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Accumulation over time [credits]

“There's something to me something about hoarding or accumulating or the need to own things and purchase things and have things in your life. I understand it on a lot of levels and obviously I have stuff and I have more plants than a person should have. But there's something about that impulse. It's the opposite of the impulse I have, which is to shed everything and have nothing. So I say that because, that's like where the tension is for me, right? Because I want to understand … what is this accumulation? Like, why is why is this? How is this? What is this?” [Adriene Lilly] -- Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton. 

BROOD

BROOD was composed by RUTMEAT. RUTMEAT writes: This work was created by singing with feedback, using effects pedals, playing cymbals with beadwork and some field recordings. April 30th is when I pulled "the sun, it sets on the empire" through my body by using my voice in this way. The words are from a work by Dzawada'enuxw artist, Marianne Nicholson, who has consented to me referencing her 2017 work, The Sun is Setting on the British Empire. I want to talk about the blockades that were in Vancouver this winter in support of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs (law and governance system that is older than what is now known as Canada). I want to talk about ongoing colonial violence, genocide and hope. About Black and Indigenous communities showing up for each other and demanding more than performative allyship from yt and POC settlers. Talk about how resource extraction always brings ripples of violence. I want to talk about how a generation of Indigenous youth called to shut Canada down and then covid struck. I want to talk about labour that is expected of Indigenous femme presenting people to educate those around them. And I will, with my communities.  In the words of Ta'kaiya Blaney, "We are the land protecting itself." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This work was supported by constellations' 2019 Indigenous Sound Art Fundraiser.

The Tortoise Carries its House on its Back

FEEL THE SKY Side B ~ The Burdened Land

For the first episode of Constellations’ 2020 season, we present FEEL THE SKY, a duo of sound works in conversation composed by JAYE KRANZ (Australia) and MYRA AL-RAHIM (USA). Both extend from the same starting point – a recording from 1992 made by a news reporter unfamiliar with field recording, but entranced by a chance encounter with trumpeter swans on an icy lake. Originally recorded on cassette, Constellations digitized the material and commissioned Kranz and Al-Rahim to compose their own landscapes – both real and imagined – in response. Take an interior road trip in “Are We There Yet” (Kranz), a journey across interior ecologies and mountain peaks. Then venture into “The Burdened Land” (Al-Rahim), a sprawling whorl that considers borders from the perspective of migratory bodies that cannot be contained within them. Both works take inspiration from field recordings by HEATHER EVANS on the ancestral and traditional territories of the HAISLA NATION. From the mind of Myra Al-Rahim: When I began developing “The Burdened Land”, I knew I wanted to create an environmentally-conscious piece, though not in the traditional sense of the term. I wanted the work to have a distinct feeling of space and scale. I sought to explore the thematic interconnectedness between the migratory paths of birds and the sprawling supply chains of capital. Heather's original tape appears close to the beginning of my piece and continues throughout Act 1. I imagined she was taking a new journey through the sonic landscape I created for her to explore.

FEEL THE SKY Side A ~ Are We There Yet?

For the first episode of Constellations’ 2020 season, we present FEEL THE SKY, a duo of sound works in conversation composed by JAYE KRANZ (Australia) and MYRA AL-RAHIM (USA). Both extend from the same starting point – a recording from 1992 made by a news reporter unfamiliar with field recording, but entranced by a chance encounter with trumpeter swans on an icy lake. Originally recorded on cassette, Constellations digitized the material and commissioned Kranz and Al-Rahim to compose their own landscapes – both real and imagined – in response. Take an interior road trip in “Are We There Yet” (Kranz), a journey across interior ecologies and mountain peaks. Then venture into “The Burdened Land” (Al-Rahim), a sprawling whorl that considers borders from the perspective of migratory bodies that cannot be contained within them. Both works take inspiration from field recordings by HEATHER EVANS on the ancestral and traditional territories of the HAISLA NATION. From the mind of Jaye Kranz: “Are We There Yet?”  is a strange, recurring road-trip towards home. A home we can never really find or retrieve; while at the same time, being a home we have already found: the one that is already ours. Like a circular roadmap for finding our way there. We hear the same driving tape over and over, but we move through different landscapes, across vast spans of time and place, in a dreamscape where the laws of separation and structure, boundary and contour, do not apply.