Original photographic images by Julie Johnson
Saxophone by Noah Hampson
Other music, sounds & audio/visual editing by Marianthe Loucataris
Saxophone by Noah Hampson
Other music, sounds & audio/visual editing by Marianthe Loucataris
[3:26 am, 28/05/2023] Julie Johnson: Hello! Thank you and yes I’d love to work on it together!
Also I forgot that I wrote a rhyming poem (!) awhile back about it, which you can use or not or take bits from as you wish, I wrote it to elaborate on the ‘romantic’ aspects between blue shadow meeting the music.
[3:26 am, 28/05/2023] Julie Johnson: Here’s the poem
[3:28 am, 28/05/2023] Julie Johnson:
Also I forgot that I wrote a rhyming poem (!) awhile back about it, which you can use or not or take bits from as you wish, I wrote it to elaborate on the ‘romantic’ aspects between blue shadow meeting the music.
[3:26 am, 28/05/2023] Julie Johnson: Here’s the poem
[3:28 am, 28/05/2023] Julie Johnson:
Soft Blue Musical Dashes
by Julie Johnson
When the snow lays thick
And the sun comes out
The bare branches quiver,
The Cedar boughs shout,
The snow banks rumble
And almost topple over,
The prickly burrs shiver
The bare stems fall closer,
Because the sunshine ensures
the snow becomes golden,
Except where ‘they’ are
Then the blue shadows become swollen
Which means they can paint
They can draw, they can dance
They can outline in deep blue
All their dreams, their romance…
For there is yearning in shadow
And this longing sustains,
And burning and yearning,
Their blue shadows sway…
Towards any tendril reaching out
With a vibration, a bliss
The blue shadows stretch outwards,
Hoping one day to kiss…
That which wants to kiss back!
And then it happened one day,
it is a such a surprise,
That reaching through veins, portals and lenses
Brings forth a reprise…
Of a love long ago lost,
So long gone and forgotten
But! here comes these sounds
Seeking touch and to soften,
The blue shadows stretch out,
And now blurred and dissolved,
The warm sounds gather in closer,
Musical sweetness gets involved!
Now they mingle and swirl,
in vast earthly flashes,
So go press ‘play’ to merge in,
With these blue shadow-musical-dashes…
by Julie Johnson
about the process
Julie Johnson and I have cultivated a relationship where we invite the other-than-human into our conversation. We got to know each other and each other's landscapes in the midst of the wonderful course/festivals with Bayo Akomolafe's We Will Dance With Mountains. Since then we have continued to communicate through various digital platforms, sharing photos, videos and audio recordings of the ecologies around our homes in Australia and Canada. We are part of a culture, a group of crip friends, who share what's happening in our hearts, minds and social worlds as well as what is happening in our landscapes. Everything is welcome in our digital space, the grief of our impairments, the feelings of loss of our 'old' selves, the frustration of dealing with the meanness of the systems that requires us to continually prove our disability through ongoing, unnecessary narration of our inadequacies / coerced 'performing' of our disabilities, the joy of finding connections with other crips, weird little video's of rivers, ponds, frogs, bones, ants, bits of singing, rambling about life and the wonderful new worlds that are now open to us, because of, not despite our impairments.
I have loved Julie's images since I first spied them in the We Will Dance With Mountains online community in 2020. When she showed interest in collaborating with the What are we? project I was stoked. We began bouncing ideas, had a rare synchronous conversation and she sent me a huge folder of gorgeous images. As we shared images and sounds, her stories about the process of capturing her exquisite snow images, began to inhabit my being. A visceral sense of being inhabited by the soft blue shapes would overtake me multiple times a day.
She spoke of how her sensitivity to light, a by product of her impairment, which often caused trouble and discomfort, was soothed by the colour and form of the blue snow shadows; how her creative process was a means of using her impairment as a kind of sensory super power. We spoke of how the snow called to her, with certain forms asking to be captured. We spoke of how the camera, the snow, the computer, the internet became involved in a crip, animistic, poly-amorous, cross species, rom com. Her eyes and the camera and the snow becoming infused with desire for each other and then me and my friend Noah's instruments joining in the orgiastic animistic more-than-human romance.
In January 2023 we were part of a small online event for the Brave New Works festival. I edited the soft blue images into a trance inducing film and Noah Hampson and I improvised live over the images with frame drum and saxophone. The next morning we recorded an improvisation while watching the gorgeous images. Over the ensuing months I spent time improvising and composing more sounds over the original recording and edited it all together into the piece above (in between doctors appointments and gathering sufficient proof that the world is not in flux, that I am disabled / impaired enough and permanently enough to require care basically that I am not just faking it).
ENJOY!
Improvising with the-other-than-human can be a sensuous loving way of sharing care between humans, their landscapes, musical instruments and the technologies we ally ourselves with to build trans-local creative connections across the globe. We hope to continue to play together in this way and create a media arts album of soothing other-than-human-ness.
Marianthe
Julie Johnson and I have cultivated a relationship where we invite the other-than-human into our conversation. We got to know each other and each other's landscapes in the midst of the wonderful course/festivals with Bayo Akomolafe's We Will Dance With Mountains. Since then we have continued to communicate through various digital platforms, sharing photos, videos and audio recordings of the ecologies around our homes in Australia and Canada. We are part of a culture, a group of crip friends, who share what's happening in our hearts, minds and social worlds as well as what is happening in our landscapes. Everything is welcome in our digital space, the grief of our impairments, the feelings of loss of our 'old' selves, the frustration of dealing with the meanness of the systems that requires us to continually prove our disability through ongoing, unnecessary narration of our inadequacies / coerced 'performing' of our disabilities, the joy of finding connections with other crips, weird little video's of rivers, ponds, frogs, bones, ants, bits of singing, rambling about life and the wonderful new worlds that are now open to us, because of, not despite our impairments.
I have loved Julie's images since I first spied them in the We Will Dance With Mountains online community in 2020. When she showed interest in collaborating with the What are we? project I was stoked. We began bouncing ideas, had a rare synchronous conversation and she sent me a huge folder of gorgeous images. As we shared images and sounds, her stories about the process of capturing her exquisite snow images, began to inhabit my being. A visceral sense of being inhabited by the soft blue shapes would overtake me multiple times a day.
She spoke of how her sensitivity to light, a by product of her impairment, which often caused trouble and discomfort, was soothed by the colour and form of the blue snow shadows; how her creative process was a means of using her impairment as a kind of sensory super power. We spoke of how the snow called to her, with certain forms asking to be captured. We spoke of how the camera, the snow, the computer, the internet became involved in a crip, animistic, poly-amorous, cross species, rom com. Her eyes and the camera and the snow becoming infused with desire for each other and then me and my friend Noah's instruments joining in the orgiastic animistic more-than-human romance.
In January 2023 we were part of a small online event for the Brave New Works festival. I edited the soft blue images into a trance inducing film and Noah Hampson and I improvised live over the images with frame drum and saxophone. The next morning we recorded an improvisation while watching the gorgeous images. Over the ensuing months I spent time improvising and composing more sounds over the original recording and edited it all together into the piece above (in between doctors appointments and gathering sufficient proof that the world is not in flux, that I am disabled / impaired enough and permanently enough to require care basically that I am not just faking it).
ENJOY!
Improvising with the-other-than-human can be a sensuous loving way of sharing care between humans, their landscapes, musical instruments and the technologies we ally ourselves with to build trans-local creative connections across the globe. We hope to continue to play together in this way and create a media arts album of soothing other-than-human-ness.
Marianthe
Last winter (i think) I had a dream where I entered an old house, intending to visit a new friend, but they needed to address something so they asked me to wait in a waiting room beside a friend who was completing their vision board with obvious clarity and intent. Like adding puzzle pieces to a puzzle.
I was asked to do the same but I was at a loss. I could not name any goals. I could not make any decisions.
Finally I chose a colour. It was a mutable purple grey blue. That’s all I could decide on.
When I woke up I realized I knew this colour, it was right out my window. It’s the colour of shadow on snow when it’s sunny out.
Recently, this colour returned to my locale. I remembered the dream and my choice and seeing it again, in a visceral way, it was reaffirmed for me. Whatever feels like ‘shadow on snow when it’s sunny’ that’s where I want to be.
by Julie Johnson
I was asked to do the same but I was at a loss. I could not name any goals. I could not make any decisions.
Finally I chose a colour. It was a mutable purple grey blue. That’s all I could decide on.
When I woke up I realized I knew this colour, it was right out my window. It’s the colour of shadow on snow when it’s sunny out.
Recently, this colour returned to my locale. I remembered the dream and my choice and seeing it again, in a visceral way, it was reaffirmed for me. Whatever feels like ‘shadow on snow when it’s sunny’ that’s where I want to be.
by Julie Johnson