Where we reflect back on the 12 weeks of residency, review whats been done, offer thanks, and review objectives, and round it off with some plum porn

I reside, now, post-residency.
Is the past tense of Residency, Residensed???

What an opportunity it has been, to have twelve weeks funded, supported, and committed, to the exploration and development of this project. A dedicated time to explore ideas, sounds, and thoughts, to make new connections and networks, to further hone technical skills in recording processes, editing and mixing, image-making, and presentation. To play fast and slow, to play solo, to collaborate, to demonstrate, and discuss this flight of fancy of mine.

When I applied for this residency I provided some goals and examples of evidence of work, that I would develop during this time. Gathering recordings was one of these outputs. And since late September, when the position started, these recordings grew into a substantial two-fold project.

Firstly, I made numerous solo recordings, exploring various ideas like suspended guitar, plant-driven percussive mechanisms, and the good old-fashioned banging away on my trusty drum kit. It has been great to have extended time to experiment. I’m yet to start editing, but I hold an excited anticipation of what will be discovered.

Secondly I held weekly recording sessions for collaborations. This was an opportunity to invite some very inspired performers (Chrissie Butler, Gemma Thompson, Bill Wood, Andy Wright, Tim Morrell, Sophia Frudd, Baxter Grey, Ruby Solly, David Long, Andrew Faleatua, Issac Smith, Kedron Parker and Nico Buhne) who I felt would enjoy playing plant and fungal electronic sounds. Each session was dramatically different from the next and collaborators worked with a wide range of instrumentation including electric guitar, drums, percussion of all sorts, trumpet, cello, electronics, taonga puoro, violin, fagufagu, drums, electric piano, and voice. I also got to collaborate with Mo Zareei who worked with live-mixed bio-signals from VMA, in his own studio setting. I feel lucky to have had the time to interact and play with these extraordinarily talented musicians and sound makers and I look forward to listening back to these session in early 2025.

Another continuous aspect of the residency has been image-making. This visual component helps me anchor learnings from readings in a way I can easily reference. They help me to hold multiple ideas and points of view in eyesight simultaneously. I will include the images in the exhibition at Toi Pōneke in June. Twelve of the images have just taken a little excursion to Queenstown, where they have been included in the Use Your Words exhibition at Te Atamira Gallery, which is pretty cool.

The last component of this residency and a commitment from the outset has been documenting this residency. I proposed to write online weekly to express thoughts and ideas that were of interest at the time. Although I have blogged in this way many times in the past, one joyful evolution was the inclusion of soundbites, which have concluded each post in a section called Soundbitten. These soundbites started as a whim in the second week and grew quickly into 55 miniature stories that circulate around a key sound source or reference. Over the weeks, I became more conscious of needing to listen to notice the sound stories in the present, alongside trawling memory for meaningful sound memories from the past. The compilation of writings has now been complied with the page ARCHIVE: 2024 Creative New Zealand/NZSM/Toi Pōneke Sonic Artist-in-Residence. The text is currently being arranged into a limited edition print version, available on the opening night of the exhibition in June 2025. I hope it has been something that you have enjoyed.

So here I am newly residenced and it is interesting to reflect on what I expected to do and what I actually did. I suggested I would explore the idea of “a sonic practice for the Anthropocene”. I wanted to explore and develop a sonic practice that: 

●  places the ‘human’ not at the centre, but as an active ‘collaborator’ in a trio of non-human/tech/human. 

●  insists the voice of the ‘Other’ is amplified and essential to the voice of the ‘Whole’. 

On reflection, I think I have achieved what I set out to do, but the journey is continuous. Decentering the ‘human’ from the centre of the performance and investigating the ideas of a horizontal, interactive, and interspecies framework has been a shared experience. Collaborators frequently stated that it was both novel, and musically exciting, to listen to and respond to ‘other’ in the room. And from my perspective, though I was facilitating these meetings, I did not feel that the spotlight was mine.

As this project continues to develop, I realise the more I become reliant, dependent, on the ‘Other’.  There is no way to make this happen without ‘them’. It’s less about ME and more about THIS. Publicly, we are becoming inseparable.

In these crisis times, many would argue that we were never separate, and that reestablishing a re-connectivity to the natural world is essential for any version of future viability. It is not my intention to sound grandiose, but I hope this project is a contribution towards that future-focused mindset. A future that welcomes both diversity and uniqueness, makes space where the needs of the individual are respected but do not trump, dominate, or compromise the needs of the myriad cohabiting communities.

Soundbitten:

1. These days, I only ever see you at the supermarket. In other times, it was at gigs. I’d just brought an ice cream for moko, you were bus-waiting with hubby. Always, we hug. You tell me “ I’ve been reading your writing”. Recount back to me the stories I wrote. Those little bits of sound, experiences that could have been yours. I listen back. Bitten, it’s life after the bite.
   
2. Margaret Sparrow, song bird, vasectomy queen. I’m on a slab, voluntarily. Shaved, prepared, anesthetized with local. It’s simple; revel, snip, seal. Twice. She works, cautery device in hand, singing with her sidekick, to work songs of Gilbert and Sullivan emanating from a tape deck on the shelf, “I am the very model of a modern…”… Hello mr sterile!
   
3. These hills were quiet when we arrived. Denuded of green by farming and fire. Then it was gorse, blackberry, weed. Once upon a time, here would hear the heat, the sound of ‘progress’, the colonialist act of razing. But if abandoned, the wilds return. Hushed at first. Now, the dawn valley’s boisterous with chatter, choir, clarion call, chimed bell, clacked gong.
   
4. From a distance, a whisper this way comes. Hush turns to hiss. Like the persistent sound of approaching train, but not. It falls, dancing. One thing meets another thing, times multiple. The raindrops play the leaves like drums, the percussion of wet onto leaf litter. Then the downpour hits the roof, a curtain, a wall, a wave of water, tap-dancing.
   
5. How does the plum sound? Do branches hear pollinators in blossom? Do flowers sigh in post-coital germination? The bees gleeful buzz when dusted in pollen? Who hears petals fall? Or the nutrients, fluids, directed to the swelling buddings? Does the Sun sing lewd songs to make the fruit blush? It’s unknown, but I know how the light tastes. Hear my delight as juices burst free.

Thank you to the following:
●To the collaborators who came along, shared their skills, talents, and willingness to play with this project
●The staff of the New Zealand School of Music who supported my explorations and requests
●All the staff at WCC Tōi Pōneke Arts Centre for making me feel welcome and sharing lunch time banter
●CreativeNZ for the funding
●To all those people who stopped by and shared their curiosity
●To the other art workers in residence at Tōi Pōneke
●Thank you to you for reading this far!
●And the most massivist! Thanks! always, always, always to Chrissie for everything!!