Memory + Imagination + Presence
How to be in a place that is new and old?
How do I understand this place?
How do we understand this place?
I.
When we do a soundwalk we prepare by noticing our breath, we
listen to the closest things around us. Then we walk and listen to changes
however slight. Acknowledge how we change the soundscape with each step and how
the soundscape changes within Big Marsh.
I started listening and recording as Big Marsh changed from
a superfund “brownfield” site that was once home to “Slag and Ballast Company”,
part of a network of factories, plants and mills for much of the 20th
Century to a remediated natural area and bike park. I think the condition of
the soundscape reflects the condition of the community. It was my goal to
reintroduce people to a new soundscape that is of the south side of Chicago.
Where industry, once the backbone of the economy is gone and the natural
ecology being allowed to come back. There maybe a new future with the loss of
industry. With these walk we open new paths.
II.
Sara Zalek’s movement, a living breathing palimsest, to
stand on old industry, existing between the wind and the ground. New life.
Ghosts of Industry. Native ecology remixed.
III.
Sounds from battery powered hand-made synthesizer invoking
the ghosts of industry and versioned nature. Improvised sounds navigating
between the soundscape of the emerging ecology and the remnants of an existing
industrial soundscape.
IV.
Movement / Electronics. Two realities converge and then fall
out of synch. Jellyfish leftover from the drosscape. Improvised movements and
frequencies carried by the wind over the marshland ecologies.
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