A REGIONAL FUTURES PROJECT, 2022-23
Exhibitions and conversations
🎧 24 June – 24 September 2023: Regional Futures: Artists in Volatile Landscapes exhibition
An artist-led conversation on the opportunities and challenges presenting regional communities at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney.
🗣 22 July 2023: Regional Futures Symposium: Artists in Volatile Landscapes
At Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney. I was part of artist-led panel events on the day, on the Listening Better panel. Panel and roundtable themes include:
- Artists as healers – Culture and Restoration
- Artists as agents of change – Interdisciplinary Collaborations
- Artists as transceivers – Listening Better
- Artists as trail-blazers – Regional – City Divide
- Artists as mediators – Community Engagement
See Writings for editorials on Vaticinor and Regional Futures
🎧 23 March – 13 May 2023: Regional Futures: Box of Possibilities exhibition
A group show by Kim V. Goldsmith, Ronnie Grammatica, Kit Kelen and Allison Reynolds at the Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree READ MORE
Embracing change starts with the act of simply listening—really listening. – Kim V. Goldsmith
Regional Futures: Box of Possibilities is proudly support by Orana Arts, Arts Mid North Coast, MidCoast Council, Manning Regional Art Gallery and NSW Government through Create NSW.
BLOG POST: Is this art? 31 March 2023
🚶🏻 24 March 2023: Wingham Brush Nature Reserve soundwalk
An active and reciprocal listening experience and an opportunity to learn about my process as an artist. With rain and thunderstorms threatening the chance of running the event on site throughout the week, I recorded the following sounds in Wingham Brush Nature Reserve in preparation for a Plan B event at the local pub. While we didn’t end up doing this, I referenced these sounds on the soundwalk, ending the walk with a show and tell of the equipment used to capture the sounds, by torchlight from the back of my car! We were distracted by the grey-headed flying foxes who performed on cue at dusk, circling above us by the river at the end of the walk.
📱 The walk recorded below takes you through the reserve to where the boardwalk reaches the river. It was recorded on a mobile phone on the October long weekend of 2022 as part of a self-directed Regional Futures residency in Wingham and in preparation for my return in 2023.
A transcription of this soundwalk will be available soon.
Above (left to right/ top to bottom): The base of massive figs, signage at one of the entrances to the reserve, the boardwalk in the early morning, canopy, the Manning River from the edge of the boardwalk, and a brush turkey. (October 2022, Kim V. Goldsmith)
This walk is catalogued on Walk. Listen. Create.
🔊 31 March 2023: BOOM! International Festival of Percussion Regional Tour, Wellington Art Space
Supporting Polymorphic Orkestra, sound artist Kim V. Goldsmith played two soundscape compositions created from field recordings from across Regional NSW over the past year, including Regional Futures work, Humi.
Left to right: Kim with members of Polymorphic Orkestra; talking to the audience before the presentation; the audience listening to the soundscapes at Wellington Art Space, 31 March
Media
Background to the project
Stage One (Concept Development)
Regional Futures is a state-wide program of creative development and conversations that places artists at the centre of a dialogue exploring a future vision for the place where they live and create. Artists from across regional NSW have been commissioned to create work that responds to the prompt ‘What does the future look like for your region?’.
Kim V. Goldsmith (Dubbo) is one of four artists in a cross-region conversation between Orana Arts and Arts Mid North Coast and project partners, including Dubbo Regional Council, who have commissioned Goldsmith for the project. The other artists are Allison Reynolds (Coonabarabran, Orana Arts), Kit Kelen (Bulahdelah, Arts Mid North Coast) and Ronnie Grammatica (Crescent Head, Arts Mid North Coast). The group are taking the Regional Futures prompt one step further by asking what does the future look like for the regions in a post-carbon world.
Goldsmith’s project, Vaticinor (The Augur) seeks to (re)imagine what a post-carbon regional landscape might sound like from the perspective of more-than-human species, and how the hopes and fears of regional communities might be shaping a future where human needs continue to dominate. While considering these questions, Goldsmith gathered recordings from sites of renewable energy generation and end use (both rural and urban) and natural environments across the Central West and Mid North Coast regions. Utilising processes developed on ecoPULSE.art projects, she also undertook extensive reading, consulting experts in the field, gathered audio stories, and documented the project through her blog posts and sample soundtracks, as it developed.
As part of the commission with Dubbo Regional Council, Goldsmith piloted a 10-day residency at Wellington Caves over several long weekends in May and June 2022. She also spent 4 days on the Mid North Coast and attended the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference in Albury on 18 August. She returned to the Mid North Coast for another field trip over the October long weekend of 2022.
Stage Two (The Works)
To date, Goldsmith has produced a 15-minute composition of multiple field recordings, several 9-line texts, and a collection of 18 audio stories for use in different presentation formats. This video presents a sample of the soundscape composition with a waveform—a hint at further developments in planning to make the work more immersive and accessible. Also included is one of the several texts she has written over the past few months. The soundtrack is best listened to with earbuds or headphones.
Humi (pronounced oo-me, Latin for ‘in/on/to the ground’) is the multi-track soundscape developed during the concept development stage (Stage 1) of the Regional Futures project. A further stage of development would see this soundscape be more accessible and immersive. The composition is based on conversations, gathered stories, and field recordings about the impact our large-scale, manmade renewable structures and even smaller scale, off-the-grid lifestyle choices have on the acoustic ecology of regional landscapes.
Production notes: The Humi soundtrack includes field recordings of a solar inverter (domestic solar power), wind turbine blades (wind power) and rumblings deep inside Burrendong Dam wall near Wellington (hydro power), mixed with subsurface sounds of earthworms in rich soil, crackling grasses, metallic tinkling floodwaters of the Wambuul/Macquarie River, and small vibrations below a wind turbine, along with atmospheric sounds of soaring birdsong in the Goolawah Forest (Mid North Coast), Gould’s Wattled Bat calls (one of the bat species at Wellington Caves), and rattling wind through the fencing wire that carves up regional Australia into productive parcels of land, additional studio made sound effects also used. The field recordings were made with an eco-acoustic logger, contact mics, a geophone, hydrophones, and a range of condenser microphones.
Stage Three (Exhibition Preparation)
The four Regional Futures artists involved in the inland/coastal conversation—Kim V. Goldsmith (Dubbo Regional Council/ Orana Arts), Allison Reynolds (Orana Arts), Ronnie Grammatica (Mid-North Coast Arts), and Kit Kelen (Mid-North Coast Arts) are showing their work developed over the life of the project at the Manning Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) in Taree, 23 March – 14 May, 2023. A guided sound walk of nearby Wingham Brush Nature Reserve and the Manning River will be conducted the evening before the MRAG official opening on 25 March at 2pm.
The final selection of Vaticinor exhibition works include a 15 minute soundscape composition and haptic experience – Humi; a suitcase of community stories of thoughts about the future with an invitation to share your own story – Vaticinor Stories, and; one free verse poem titled Vaticinor, including an audio version available online of me reading the poem. Accessibility elements have been included to allow as many people as possible to experience these works with the support of the NSW Government through a Create NSW Quick Response grant.
The wider Regional Futures project will be exhibiting works from those artists who have been involved in the project at Casula Powerhouse from 24 June – 24 September, as well as through contributions to a Regional Futures Symposium at Casula on 22 July, 2023.
Thanks to the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference for their interest and support in the work undertaken in the Vaticinor project.
More about the development of the works
SELF-DIRECTED RESIDENCY BLOG POSTS
Exploring regional creative collaboration, 5 June 2022
Whatever we do has impact, 20 June 2022
What the past tells us about our future, 28 June 2022
The outsider’s lens, 24 July 2022
Compromise and trade-offs, 28 August 2022
Swimming in a clean ocean, 5 October 2022
Sitting with the discomfort, 27 November 2022
🎥 WATCH THE COLLABORATING ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION
kvgoldsmithart.com 