In the 2018 Hi-Viz Keynote Speech, Gail Priest discussed making sound for performance or performing sound. Gail’s practice explores the oral realm. Working across installation, composition, recording, and performance, she is interested in creating works that dwell in a liminal zone between figuration and abstraction.
This conversation stems from two different ideas. Firstly, the performativity and sometimes lack thereof that is in sound. Secondly, how meaning operates within the two modes of sound and performance. Gail investigates how these two notions are actually interrelated.
Credits
Audio Production: Bec Fary
Transcript
Tamara Saulwick: For now, I'd like to intro our keynote speaker, Gail Priest. I'll just do a little one, we’d like to avoid bios as much as we can today, but I will give you a little bit of a bio for Gail, who's a Katoomba/Sydney-based artist whose practise explores the aural realm, working across installation, composition, recording and performance. Gail is interested in creating works that dwell in a liminal zone between figuration and abstraction.
She's performed her live compositions and exhibited nationally and internationally. She has several music releases on her own label, Metal Bitch Recordings, as well as Flaming Pines. She curates events and exhibitions and writes fictively and factually about sound and media art. Gail is also the founder of Audible Women, an online directory for women working with experimental sound. So make her welcome.
Gail Priest: Thank you, Tamara. Firstly, I'd also like to reiterate my acknowledgement that we're standing on the traditional lands of the people of the Kulin Nation. And I'd also like, as I'm from New South Wales, I'd like to acknowledge that I live and dwell on the land of the Darug and the Gundungurra people. And it's an absolute honour and privilege to be able to live on this land, to which these people's spiritual connection is living and ongoing. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and future.
I'd also very much like to thank Tamara and Chamber Made for offering me the privilege of presenting my thoughts today. This is, in fact, my very first keynote in the world.
I'm painfully aware that there are many people in the room that are equally qualified to be doing this. So, I'm very honoured. And I hope that I might be able to offer some interesting perspectives on making sound for performance or performing sound.
When I talked with Tamara about this presentation, I was initially interested in discussing performativity and the sometimes lack thereof that is in sound. And she was interested in how meaning operates within the two modes of sound and performance. And so, I'm going to have a look at how these two notions are actually interrelated when it comes to the making sound for performance or performing sound.
My perspective is from being someone with a practise that has seesawed between performance and sound. And obviously that exercise up there illustrated that I'm not alone in this. I started out as a performer, training initially to be an actor through the influence of Theatre Nepean, which is the University of Western Sydney.
And it was an amazing course in the early 90s. And it was particularly amazing because of the peers. So, I think I learnt everything that I learnt in the long run from the people that I went through with.
And so, I went in wanting to become an actor and I came out wanting to be a contemporary performance maker. I just happened to have this on my laptop,...
