BY CUTCOMMON
We love new music. So when we heard about Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson’s new Clocked Out composition project, we wanted to talk to the creators involved.
Erik and Vanessa have commissioned six Queensland composers to produce short pieces of music on the theme ‘boundary rider’. They’re presenting it all as a 6-part video series on the Clocked Out YouTube channel.
Here, we chat with each composer in the Boundary Rider Commissions project. They tell us about what the theme means to them, what their work is all about, and how they feel about continuing their creative work during COVID-19.
Jodie Rottle
I work with everyday objects as a composer-performer. I often find myself lingering with sound within artistic disciplines other than music. Elements of puppetry and performance art have crept into my work, and this presents as an opportunity to include anticipation, surprise, and the absurd into my music.
With the Boundary Rider commission, I tried to further explore a visual absorption of sound. Working under the conditions of isolation meant that I had to rethink my usual methods of composing. Eventually, I worked out a way to make a cohesive piece that was a surprise to both the players and the audience.
Activity Container #1 required me to trust the performers, and I also had to trust my design of the composition. The work is time-coded, and many of the actions by each player line up visually, but this is only revealed when the three video parts are lined up together. I think I figured out a way to turn the element of surprise on to myself!
This was a really fun task that took my mind away from some of the low emotions I experienced during quarantine restrictions. It was a reminder that getting lost in creative work can be an escape from feeling hopeless about reality. I hope the resulting composition can be as uplifting for the listener.
Kristin Berardi
I was very honoured to be involved in the Boundary Riders project. Not only was I grateful to be one of the six creatives asked, but it gave me a focus and hopefulness in what was quite a distressing time, for art and art making, but also for connection with others and things in the world in general.
Allowing myself to sit with the feeling that I was one of the ‘Boundary Riders’ allowed me to feel connected again – though we would not be doing many of the performances, or activities as usual, I was a ‘Rider’ and that meant I could put my own spin on what that meant.
It also meant that I had some unexpected money coming in, which was a great gift. The commission came at such a helpful time, both financially and personally.
This opportunity gave me the chance to imagine what a Boundary Rider was, and in COVID-19, it meant I had to do it all through my imagination and research. Because of the circumstances of this COVID-19 time, I went to the ‘piano mill’ in my mind. I revisited the different parts of the property that I had experienced, the different feelings I had encountered, and I looked through my own photos from my time over the years, and also those which are found on the internet for Clocked Out, and The Piano Mill.
For me, I chose to explore this all with social distancing – taking the writing and theme to extremes, I chose to try and make my composition come from a place of distance, but through connection.
My composition is literally about a boundary rider – I tried to use a triple feel, or a slow swung feel to help depict a horse and it’s lilting walk. I wanted to explore the range of ‘walking’ the boundaries of the Piano Mill property, with improvisational aspects involved — as with Clocked Out and myself as performers, that is a huge part of what we do, but improvisation is also a huge part of nature. It is naturally occurring all the time, and so it was important to me to have sections of written material that I felt sounded like my writing style, but also hopefully sounded like ‘me riding a horse while writing the music’ and also trying to interact with the changing landscape around me.
Caleb Colledge
Boundary Riders appealed to me on a compositional, conceptual, and communal level. Conceptually, I feel as though my compositions and ideals surrounding music and life align with an actual boundary rider. Blurring lines between experimental, folk, jazz, and contemporary classical is something I do a lot and I like to hang on the fringes of all these things, much like someone fixing a fence on the far reaches of a property, being okay with being alone.
The opportunity that Bruce and Jocelyn Wolfe and Clock Out provided was immeasurably inspiring. I feel very honoured to have been commissioned to write a work for two people that have also inspired me, taught me and supported me for over eight years.
During these weird times, it’s been tough to stay motivated and inspired, so having someone ask you to write something is the push that I think many artists need at the moment.
It’s inspired me to make the most of the free time I have, and to continue making art, even in the bleakest of times, because someone is always listening and supporting, even from afar.
My piece Mending Fences was my attempt to blend three major things: my favourite album of Clocked Out’s Time Crystals, the Fleet Foxes album Crack-Up, and my love for the Australian bush.
The piece is five miniatures (Rising, Bracing, Fixing, Barking, Resting) that provide sonic windows, if you will, into the life of a boundary rider. All sections are attacca and I sort of imagined it being set inside a boundary rider’s head. Out on the far reaches of a property on Granite Belt country, a tune pops into his head; he extends on it until another task comes up and interrupts the arrangement he has made. He completes the task and another tune arises.
Brodie McAllister
What appealed most to me about Boundary Riders was the chance to explore — then create — with no expectation.
I always look forward to working with Clocked Out and Greg Harm as they are creatives you can trust to bring integrity, energy, and care to any work. The idea of a boundary rider is interesting in its creative meaning: those working on the fringe of it all. Although I’d consider what I do intersectional rather than on the fringe, I think the essence of boundary riders is present in my work.
I didn’t see this commission related to or affected by COVID-19. The commission helped make space for a new work to be created, performed and documented — what else could one ask for? Boundary Riders offered direction and accountability at a time when I, like many artists, felt fatigued, vulnerable, and lost. Having the motivation and the space to approach new work in this time is a luxury I know most aren’t provided and I don’t take that lightly.
Through the process I found some creative energy, and now there’s a piece in the world that wouldn’t have existed otherwise — with more works on the way!
Being able to create these kinds of opportunities is very special and something Clocked Out, Bruce, and Jocelyn Wolfe do on a regular basis. I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity.
I feel compositions change once they’re put through the process of collaboration, and in the end all we have to go off is the final cut. I’d encourage those interested to listen to it and decide what it means to them.
Samuel Pankhurst
I am thrilled to have been asked to partake in the Boundary Riders commission. During my many trips out to Harrigan’s Lane, I’ve spent many hours contemplating the inspirational structures Jocelyn and Bruce have created and, of course, experiencing the land itself.
Bookookoorara, the ‘fast running creek’, is just nearby and feels to me to be a kind of boundary etched by time. What I’ve tried to evoke in some way with this piece is a sense of the many streams and torrents that have passed down that creek bed and out to ‘I don’t know where’.
I’m not sure what the relevant academic parlance would be right now, so at the risk of sounding a bit dated, the piece relies quite heavily on what I’d call a kind of ‘macro’ version of phasing where the vibraharp and piano are repeating arpeggios of differing lengths in rhythmic unison. As the arpeggios run their course, you get what I guess is a fairly hypnotic and calming brand of minimalism.
I feel a great sense of privilege in being afforded this opportunity to create a new work from the comfort of my home during this pandemic.
Hannah Reardon-Smith
The invitation to be a Boundary Rider came at the moment when I had moved back to my parents’ farm for a stint away from the city and from a life that had suffered a few too many changes for me to take easily in my stride.
I grew up riding horses and exploring the edges of that little farm, and now I was there again, for the longest stay since I was 17. This time, my non-human companion wasn’t a horse — rather, I was accompanied by my cat, my unfinished PhD manuscript, and my less-than-perfect mental health.
The three months I spent on the farm were a chance to explore the boundaries of my capacities; to take a deep breath and admit to myself how difficult I was finding it to hold it all together. I ventured into a new level of honesty with myself, and discovered some of the boundaries between my identity and the work I was doing. I spent some time mending this fence, and my sense of self and my ability to make art — and to write about it — are better for it.
The Boundary Rider commission represents an important opportunity in place of the annual ritual that Easter at the Piano Mill has become, and so I would have gladly said yes even without the welcome bonuses of a fee and the chance to artistically express something about my experience in this unique moment in our world.
In my mind, as I was writing, I was riding along the boundaries of three fences: my parents’ farm southwest of Toowoomba, the lines of my mind and my Brisbane life/farm life, and Jocelyn and Bruce’s Harrigan’s Lane property that hosts the Piano Mill with its incredible valley view and stunning forests and hungry leeches.
Getting to write a work that evokes these edges was a particularly special experience for me at this time.
My piece executive dysfunction is about things seeming to fall apart but actually holding together, or things seeming to be maintained but actually falling to pieces. This is a psychological term often used in relation to ADHD and related ‘disorders’ that refers to the experience of being generally unable to process the little day-to-day requirements, expectations, and minor stressors.
It also strikes me as a good description for a point in time when so many of our world leaders, and in fact the very system under which they operate–‘executives’ of another order — are strikingly dysfunctional. The whole world is in a state of executive dysfunction. We could all do with a few months or maybe years of ‘stress leave from life’ — what I have come to call my farm stay — and maybe in that time we could start to dream up other worlds together; worlds that don’t brutally over-police Indigenous and Black people or leave refugees in prisons for seven long years with no end in sight; that value arts and creativity and critical thought and history and education; that support our most vulnerable and marginalised people and communities and environments; that value the knowledge of the Traditional Owners of this land and learn from them how best to take care of it; that encourage people to live lives in service of their passions and compassions and not in service of someone else’s profit margin.
Clocked Out’s Boundary Riders Commission project is produced in partnership with Bruce and Jocelyn Wolfe (of the Piano Mill at Harrigan’s Lane), and videographer Greg Harm. Check out the first video on the Clocked Out YouTube channel below.
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