Shadbolt Fellow: prOphecy sun

Sonic and Walking Processes 

In January of 2021, I started a Shadbolt Fellowship at Simon Fraser University in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies (GSWS). As an interdisciplinary artist,  I work in a variety of mediums, expressions and shape pieces theough individual and collaboratively shaped productions.

Over the coming months, I am working on Intertidal: Compositions for the Fraser Lowlands (2021), which is situated in the unceded territories of the Tsawwassen, Union Bar, Xaxli'p, and Yale Nations in Fraser Delta salt marshes and tidal flats from Sturgeon Bank, Roberts Bank, Boundary Bay, and beyond. The project is in-process, and invokes ideas of feminist stewardship, through the practice of Embodied Carriance. The artwork is part of a larger research agenda that focuses on ecological imperatives using a variety of research-creation processes and somatic, visual, and sonic embodied practices.

The folowing presents outlines my in-process work and experiences. If you are interested in learning more please contact me at prophecy_sun@sfu.ca.

Updates

• Artist Talk – Sonic and Materia Poetics 

On April 23rd, from 12-1 pm Dr. Nadine and I will be chatting over food about my in-proces research.

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/gsws-acts-artist-workshop-prophecy-sun-tickets-148845425675?aff=erelpanelorg&fbclid=IwAR1aAhcdFhyaLOTCQR9sVjYMljdkWREnVUK_cKcdaaxvo-oVJU4SXh7dgbY

• New Publication – Sonic Poetics of the Tidal Flats, 2021.

I just submitted a co-authored book chapter for an edited volume on Music and Sound Design for Routledge Press. In the piece, co-authors Freya Zinovieff, Kristen Carlson, Reese Muntean and I, exlore notions of decolonial listening, embodied carriance, walking methodologies, creative process and field recordings captured in the Fraser lowland areas. The book is slated to be out in the Fall of 2021.

• Sound workshop

On May 14th, I will be hosting a sound workshop to explore filed recordings and other material collected over the last few months. 

In January of 2021, I  started exploring locations in the marshlands and tidal flats and collecting audio samples with handheld devices. 

In March of 2021, I traveserved with my family through various marshland regions surrounding the Fraser River. I captured the sounds of moving waters, birds, wind and other atmospheric textures using a handheld potable devices. 

As I begin to revisit the same sites repeatedly, I am noticing geographic and migration changes and patterns such as the rise and fall of the tidal waters, the ever moving trains, tranport vehicles and bird species.

I am starting to create a series of works that consider the artistic movements between the historical, the fictional, and the figurative, in response to the ever-changing landscape of the Fraser River Basin on the west coast of British Columbia. The Basin is large and complex with a vast set of intersecting histories, social geographies, and contested landscapes. These include upland, canyon, fauna, and flora, riverine, bog and marine ecosystems, and wildlife habitats that are increasingly threatened by urban, and industrial developments.

After many visits to this area, I have been drawn to three specific locations which include Roberts Bank, marshland walks such as McNeely’s Trail and the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

As I am developing this research, I am trying to articulate how acts of walking are a process through which I might tune into the detailed expressions of the sonic and the ways that they interact with my embodied response to each location.