Pictured from left to right: Thembi Soddell, Kim Le, Amrita Dasvarma, Melis Layik and Hassaan Memon.
Image description: A row of five separate square shaped bio photos: a white person in their early 40s with short brown hair, black top and headphones around their neck; a bespectacled, light-skinned Asian person in their 20s, fringe falling over the left side of their face, wearing a dark collared shirt and wired earphones; a brown skinned woman in her late 40s with black hair, red beret, black top, standing in front of a canopy of green leaves, smiling; a white woman in her 20s in brightly coloured clothes and clown inspired make up, hands on head staring straight into camera; a South Asian man in his early 30s with trimmed facial hair facing the camera, green foliage in the background, eyes squinting in bright daylight
UnKnowing Madness is a composition resulting from an online workshop series conceived by sound artist Thembi Soddell, designed in extensive consultation with voice artist and experiential therapist Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and media and performance artist Dr Vanessa Godden. These workshops invited four participants with complex trauma who did not have their own experimental sound art practice into Soddell’s process of composing. These participants were Amrita Dasvarma, Melis Layik, Kim Le and Hassaan Memon. They were found via an Australia wide callout for expressions of interest.
Soddell’s compositional process involves recording real-world sounds such as field recordings, played objects and voice, sampling and shaping them into acousmatic compositions that reflect on lived experiences of trauma. Rather than telling explicit narratives or details of trauma, the focus is on exploring felt-senses that remain in its aftermath, through the affective impact of abstract sound. The project aimed to translate this process to a workshop setting.
Over August-October 2022 Soddell ran seven workshops, with three co-facilitated by Mehak Sheikh, one led by Godden and another by Chang. Music producer Mufeez Al Haq also supported participants in learning sound recording technology, so recordings could be made during workshops and in people’s home environments.
The sounds and ideas developed through this period were then used by Soddell to compose UnKnowing Madness, with the aim of embodying aspects of everyone’s individual yet entangled lived experiences of trauma. The resulting composition traverses themes of grief, pain of isolation versus strength in walking alone, anxiety, mood swings, and the lingering impacts of trauma on our relationship to everyday sounds. More on what inspired the work can be found on the Inspiration and Process page.
The composition was premiered in concert at The Big Anxiety festival’s two-day lived experience forum in October 2022 in Naarm, followed by an audience discussion led by Soddell, Sheikh and Chang. More information on that can be found on the Presentations page, which also documents subsequent presentations. Biographies of participants, facilitators and consultants can be found on the People page.
Background
The idea for these workshops grew from Soddell’s practice-based PhD research, “A Dense Mass of Indecipherable Fear: The Experiential (Non)Narration of Trauma and Madness through Acousmatic Sound” (RMIT University 2019), through which they developed a novel approach to understanding their own lived experiences of mental illness using a medium (abstract sound) with a unique ability to reflect the intangibility of the inner world.
The workshops were an experiment in adapting this approach to working with people who had little or no exposure to sound art or experience using sound technology. They were developed by Soddell through extensive consultation with Dr Vanessa Godden and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang. Further input into the project’s design was also provided by racial justice and social change consultant Erfan Daliri, photographer and ex-mental health GP, Dr Kelvin Lau, and Scientia Professor Jill Bennett, founder of the Felt Experience and Empathy Lab (fEEL) at UNSW.
Researchers Dr Lydia Gitau and Rebecca Moran from fEEL are conducting research on the impact of the program on participants and facilitators. Once the research has been published it will be linked to here. They were also available during the project period to offer one-on-one support to participants and facilitators if needed.
Soddell’s PhD dissertation can be downloaded from their website.
Acknowledgement Of Country
The people belonging to the Djandak, meaning Country, where this project emerged, through bloodline and kinship, are known as the “Djaara” or people of the area.
We would like to acknowledge and extend our appreciation for the Dja Dja Wurrung people, the traditional owners of the land upon which this project was conceived.
Dja Dja Wurrung ancestors struggled to maintain their way of life.
We pay our respects to leaders and elder’s past, present and emerging for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and the hopes of all Dja Dja Wurrung people.
We express our gratitude in the sharing of this land, our sorrow for the personal, spiritual and cultural costs of that sharing and our hope that we may walk forward together in harmony and in the spirt of healing.
Courtesy of DJANDAK.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Thank you to Liquid Architecture and Yamaha for the supply of headphones for the workshops.
