Momentum: Chapala
Nat Grant
28 Apr–15 May 2021
Momentum: Chapala is the most recent in an ongoing series of cumulative sound works created since 2012. This particular project was conducted in residency at 360 Xochi Quetzal in Chapala, Mexico, in 2018/19. A short composition was created each day of the month-long residency, comprising field recordings and found sounds, digitally collaged. At the end of the residency all the recordings were re mixed into a 30 minute piece. The Momentum series is as a durational sonic journaling project, creating portraits of place and time through listening.
Momentum is an ongoing (2012 - present) durational sound art work, created cumulatively over each day in 2012, and over five weeks in Istanbul in 2013. Momentum became a live project for the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2013, and was continued during a three week long residency at the Testing Grounds in 2017, and a month-long residency in Chapala, Mexico, in 2018/19.
In this most recent work: Chapala, I created a short recorded composition each day for four weeks in December 2018-January 2019 comprising a mixture of field recordings, found sounds, and underwater recordings using hydrophones, digitally collaged. Each days work was be posted on the music hosting site SoundCloud as well as my blog, with descriptions of the sounds captured, research undertaken, and digital compositional tools used. The project is cumulative, with each days composition growing out of the end of the previous days. At the end of the month I re worked the recordings into a single stereo sound work 30 minutes in length.
Momentum is part sonic documentary and part sound journal: a way of sharing my experience of place with an audience through sound. I live Momentum as I create it; it becomes a part of my everyday life; the project and my lived experiences influence one another.
Momentum has been exhibited in galleries in Melbourne, Norway, and New Zealand.
Momentum: Chapala is the most recent in an ongoing series of cumulative sound works created since 2012. This particular project was conducted in residency at 360 Xochi Quetzal in Chapala, Mexico, in 2018/19.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Nat Grant is a composer and sound artist working across live performance, installation, and sound design: a percussionist and drummer who creates devised, notated, electroacoustic, and improvised works for recordings and live performance. Nat has created original music for theatre, dance, film, and live art, holds a PhD in composition from the Victorian College of the Arts, and in 2018 was the winner of The Age Music Victoria award for Best Experimental/Avant-Garde Act.
