A unique space that stops the audience from being an inactive observer of the landscape and enables them to actively engage with what is essentially a little room of Australia.
Sam Gilles, Resonate Magazine
Image description: Soundcloud player of “Artefact Performance (2009)” by Thembi Soddell, showing an audio waveform that is 21:01 in length. The background image is a close-up of three photos lying on a wooden floor covered in dirt. The photos are in a vertical line on the left side of the frame. The first is a close up of a rock formation, the second from a WW2 storage bunker and the third is too hard to make out.
Artefact was a tour of (mostly) regional Australia by sound and field recording artists Camilla Hannan, Thembi Soddell, and Tarab (Eamon Sprod), traversing Adelaide, Alice Springs, Darwin, Perth, Melbourne, and Bendigo. They performed live solo sets in each location, collecting field recordings along the way and incorporating these into each new performance. At their last location, Perth, they also presented a six-speaker sound, junk and photography installation using ‘artefacts’ collected on their journey. Each artist composed 30-60 minutes of sound material from field recordings made on the tour, which were then played on random through six-speakers scattered throughout the exhibition space, alongside photographs and found junk collected during the tour. This work was commissioned by the Totally Huge New Music Festival.
The recording above was taken of Thembi’s performance in Perth at the ABC studios.