nganggurnmanha : sound dust performance

Installation: open during Liveworks opening hours, 10am-10pm and does not require bookings
Performances: These performances are FREE but require booking.

NB The installation will be closed for 30 mins either side of the performances. 

Our individual and collective notions of time are always evolving and ever-present. nganggurnmanha : sound dust is an immersive audio installation that challenges us to listen deeply to the natural world and find ways to inhabit time differently. Responding to First Nations and Western concepts of time, nganggurnmanha : sound dust is an exploration of how time intertwines with nature, the body, seasonal shifts, and how our time is valued. 

Drawing from a library of ‘sound dust’ fragments sourced from participants around Australia and the world, nganggurnmanha : sound dust is a responsive installation where the viewer’s movement and presence influences how the work unfolds. nganggurnmanha : sound dust activates ‘deep time’ and reawakens bodily memories carried across generations, like tree roots pushing and stretching through strata, or rocks compressing over millennia. This is an alternate archive of now; an invitation to separate your experience of time from notions of productivity, and realign it with internal and environmental forces.

nganggurnmanha : sound dust is a collaboration between Yamaji Wajarri, Dutch and English artist Nicole Monks and Sydney-based collective Make or Break (Connie Anthes and Rebecca Gallo). nganggurnmanha means ‘listening, hearing, thinking, remembering’ in Wajarri language. 

Artists Nicole Monks and Make or Break have invited two performers to devise choreographies for one in response to the installation.

In a series of intimate, limited-capacity sessions, watch dancers Yolanda Lowatta and Ivey Wawn respond in solo performances to the nganggurnmanha : sound dust instrument. In a minimal setting - a circle of sand, spot-lit on the twelve points of a clock - the dancers will simultaneously call up and navigate a shifting sonic field, tapping into the rhythms of deep time. A combination of audio samples and movement will be used to draw out a different understanding of time.

This performance contains low light, UV light and loud audio.