After a long night of music, I woke up remembering what I thought had been a dream.
IRL, a.k.a. Amanda Harvey, opened with an ode to her anthropocenic listening practice: a field recording of an ocean soundscape.
Immediately, wandering thoughts dulled and narrowed into the rocking of waves. Ever so slowly, as we reached for the bottom rung of attention, ears opened in anticipation of the first notes of a warm pad. Quietly but surely, IRL began.
From deep under the water’s surface came the emergence of a drone. Then, as the patterns of her sampler wove into each other, rhythms filled the space with what seemed to be an ocean between each note. From above, a keyboard softly blew the symphony of a thousand angels with their horns. It was high and airy but also just as grounded in the space. Moving back and forth, IRL took pauses, listened, felt the crowd. The “performance” felt second to a desire to channel something greater. As time went on, the channel only became clearer, and the static rolled into a little ball of lint.
Behind her was what looked like found 16mm footage, perpetually reconfiguring its frame, giving space to imagine what life was held in those blurs of light. There was no subject or story, but the theme was very strong. It sparked pictures in the mind’s eye and, together with the music, created what Michel Chion dubbed the audiovisual illusion. We were simultaneously seeing the sound and hearing the images move on the screen. With that, what we were experiencing felt beyond both mediums -a poem of sorts, speaking to the deep recesses of memory, to some shared recurring dream we’ve yet to sleep through. Over IRL’s field recordings and deep drones, the images of seafoam breaks, deserted mountain ranges, lava trails -all became internalized as one. And there, if you listened closely, the voiceless could be heard.
From our interview last winter preparing for her Substrat show, Amanda Harvey spoke extensively about how listening has shaped her practice, and I realize I hadn’t understood what that meant until last night. Her music felt closer to a sonic meditation practice from a Pauline Oliveros prompt than to a strict live performance, and her selfless, experiential approach meant that presence was needed -something that a secondhand description often fails to convey.
EAF is a magnet that draws these unique beings. There is much to be said about this series’ growing influence, and it feels as though the chrysalis has begun to crack. Yet it is still by and for the artists. Small bubbles of surrounding subcultures regularly pop in to give some air to this now-familiar exploratory formula -that is, an engagement with the non-defined. And so, the story continues, forward into the unexplored present moment.
