Audiosketch S2 EP2

Listen to the episode here

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Credits and notes

To discover more about Justin Talplacido Shoulder/Phasmahammer’s body of work, including Carrion, The River Eats and the collectives The Glitter Militia and Club Ate visit the artist’s website here.

Hear more of composer Corin Iletto’s work on Soundcloud here.

The art crushes Justin mentioned were: musician and composer 33EMYBW, Indonesian-based sound collective Gabber Modus Operandi, and Naarm (Melbourne) artist Female Wizard.

Our Audiosketch podcast title music is by Fia Fiell. All in the Same Room, is from Fia Fiell’s 2018 album of the same name, which you can find on Bandcamp here.

Additional sound design by Roslyn Oades, using the following samples courtesy of Freesound.org: Underwater Ambience by Kinoton, Underwater Sound by Fabrizo84, Submarine Sonar by Breviceps licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License.

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Full transcript

{Signature title music by Fia Fiell}

Welcome to audio sketch, a Chamber Made podcast dedicated to innovative artists working across performance, sound and music. I’m Roslyn Oades. And today I’m joining you from the lands of the Gadigal people, also known as Sydney. It gives me great pleasure to introduce this episode’s guest artist, Justin Talplacido Shoulder, who also goes by the pseudonym Phasmahammer. Justin describes Phasmahammer as an eco-cosmology of alter personas based on queered ancestral myth. With an innovative practice that spans visual arts, performance, club culture, theatre and film, Justin’s built a body of work that is visceral, otherworldly, and spectacular…

Roslyn Oades Hi, Justin,

Justin Shoulder Hello.

Roslyn Oades Thank you so much for joining me for this art date. I’m really excited to be meeting you.

Justin Shoulder Thanks so much for having me.

Roslyn Oades One question I like to start with because the focus of this work is sound. If you were to describe yourself as a sound right now…

Justin Shoulder Oh, wow

Roslyn Oades …what sound would you choose?

Justin Shoulder It would be the types of sounds you hear under the ocean. That muffled crunching of coral and the muffling of the sounds from above. Perhaps some sonar. I’ve been spending a lot of time snorkelling and I feel quite a calling to the aquatic space at the moment. For both its generative possibility and as a kind of like creative opening. And I guess thinking about the perception of other beings, and how they might listen? Or what kind of organs they would use to interpret their surroundings, whether that’s through vibration, or, what organisms have ears? Or what other kinds of organs do they have? I guess that’s something I’ve been thinking a bit about.

{AUDIO: underwater field recording compilation}

Roslyn Oades As I touched on in my introduction, your practice straddles a lot of different art forms and contexts. What attracts you to fostering such a multifaceted approach to your art making?

Justin Shoulder I guess I’m… I’ve been working in so many different forms. Because I’m very excited about the possibility to tell stories but also to be in constant practice. I actually studied digital media, photography and sound and video. And I started working full time in retouching as a practice. But simultaneously, I was kind of entering nightlife spaces and had a real calling to them. Mostly, because I needed something very physical to kind of get me off the screen and into my body. That type of working and co-creating space and doing events has really come about because I feel a constant desire to be in collaboration. I think that’s a big part of it.

Roslyn Oades Because you work in those different contexts – like film, club culture, theatre, choreography – do they feed each other?

Justin Shoulder Oh, for sure. I like how the languages that I cultivate from all these different spaces can cross-pollinate. In many ways the club is a kind of foundational space but translating it to a space like the theatre, you have a much more focused type of attention from the audience that I really enjoy. All these different spaces and cross art forms offer different ways to go into the detail of each cosmology and each creature and each story.

Roslyn Oades Yeah, I can see that club culture leading into your creature building because I feel like clubs are sort of places where these fantastical…

Justin Shoulder Yeah, for sure.

Roslyn Oades …creatures are on show

Justin Shoulder Totally. I’ve always seen them as a kind of incubator. They really do offer a space of experimentation and play that I feel like all my best ideas have come from.

Roslyn Oades Yeah, that’s exciting. So, I really wanted to speak to you about your work Carrion, which I just thinks an amazing work, and really moved me and really stayed with me.

{AUDIO: Carrion mood sample from opening of show}

Roslyn Oades So, I’ll try and describe Carrion. For people that haven’t seen it, it’s a solo work created and performed by yourself and it seems to trace the origin story of an alien creature who is part organic, part mechanical, existing somewhere between human-animal-Android. And we witness this hybrid creature’s mighty struggle to hatch and scavenge and explore and continue to evolve in this post-apocalyptic landscape, accompanied by an epic sound score by Corin Ileto… How am I going? How would you describe it?

Justin Shoulder Oh no, I feel like you’ve totally like, interpreted it so well. I guess the seed is the mask. It’s kind of a death mask. It’s a copy of my face. I made a mould with my sister and then we kind of did a plastic vac form over the mould. And I found these cords, it was very intuitive, the iPhone cables. And the figure became this kind of techno-Medusa. And I was very interested in puppetry, the body as a marionette. The mask has a kind of articulated jaw. And so, I guess the work traces the journey of this figure that is in a constant state of adaptation moving from a very western landscape into a nature simulation, in all these kinds of different realms. It’s kind of deep-time evolving, de-evolving. There still a seed of hope, even though there’s this real sense of a bleak space. You’re kind of like observing a being constantly building and pulling apart and reimagining both its body and its environment.

Roslyn Oades I’m interested that you said hope because it is bleak and scary in some ways but there’s also miraculous moments in it… And it reminded me of the, the miraculous thing that butterflies do when they liquefy their bodies, um… The pain. That must be an extremely painful thing that little insect goes through. I felt a bit like that at times, that I was witnessing this strange, private moment, that was an epic struggle for this microscopic creature.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, totally. There is definitely a violence to it. And I was feeling a lot of mourning, and I continue to feel that sense of mourning. But in the end, the final image is of a kind of like prehistoric bird, that’s also a cyborg, that’s come from all the figures before it. The way I see there’s hope, is that it does continue to adapt even in very difficult circumstances. But yeah, it’s still very sad.

Roslyn Oades Yeah, yeah. The wailing is sad. And the Frankenstein lostness of the creature.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, for sure. I think so.

Roslyn Oades Almost like an endling of a type.

Justin Shoulder And it is a solo being. And even though it’s kind of like surrounded by these mechanical birds, which are…

Roslyn Oades I love the birds!

Justin Shoulder Yeah, they’re both familiar, but also like so cold.

Roslyn Oades They’re leftovers, aren’t they?

Justin Shoulder Yeah, the leftovers. Yeah.

Roslyn Oades So, what questions were you hoping to explore in this work?

Justin Shoulder In many ways it comes down to my body. You know, I have a long history investigating these kinds of mythical creatures, born from clubs that then became stories in theatres and galleries and stuff like that. The early works are very much full body costuming and very much about spectacle. And one of the provocations for this work was how I could transform myself mostly through my body, like the primacy of the flesh. And so, I worked closely with Victoria Hunt, my mentor and dramaturge.

Roslyn Oades You’re very lucky.

Justin Shoulder Yes, she’s amazing. Very blessed, to kind of like go very deep into the choreographic ecology of the work. Then thinking about the Anthropocene, adaptation and resilience and my own relationship to nonhumans. So, I have two pet parrots that I live with. I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to got birds, but my partner loves them. And I’ve really grown to love them. Because I do feel a bit fraught about captive birds. But we’ve kind of started to build a shared language through mimicry. Different like, [bird sound] different sounds. Listening to them and sensing what they mimic me and how I mimic them. And you kind of imagine you’re building a language together. And that very much seeped into the work and my relationship to all the different avian figures. So, you’ve got the electronic bird toys that I found at Paddy’s Market, which become like a kind of key figure in work. And then, thinking about ancient bird myth and human-animal hybridity, and how that is reflected in something technological. It’s always this kind of interplay between the human the machine and the animal, and other forms…

This is a good time to share the ‘audio sketch’ Justin recorded. On each episode, I invite our guest to contribute a draft audio experiment or field recording that offers an insight into something they’re exploring or thinking about at the moment. In this recording, we get to eavesdrop on Justin having an interspecies conversation with a bird friend…

{AUDIO: Justin’s ‘audio sketch’ talking with bird}

Roslyn Oades I love that with your birds that you’re not just teaching them to speak your language, you’re actually attempting to learn their language.

Justin Shoulder Yeah.

Roslyn Oades I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.

Justin Shoulder Yeah. Right. Well, it’s… They mostly occupy our front room, and then in the morning we let them into the, kind of, living room and they’ll sit on my shoulder and I generally share some of my breakfast. But I get in trouble with my boyfriend because he feels like I’ve changed the hierarchy of things in the house because I feed them out of my mouth.

Roslyn Oades Wow. But that’d be quite natural for them.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, that’s how they grew up. So…

Roslyn Oades So, you’re like their, their mother?

Justin Shoulder I’m not sure [laughs]. It’s just like nuts and seeds… Or a bit of muesli.

Roslyn Oades Wow. And do they replicate the interest in learning some of your language.

Justin Shoulder Yes. So, there’s been times when they’ve flown away from the house. And they’re both female birds, and we used to call them the girls… girls. And so, when I say girls, they go, gowl. And actually, that became a call-and-response when one of them flew away. And I walked all the streets of Summer Hill, shouting that out, and she started to reply to me. And then that’s how I found her. Because often I go, Okay, what if we just let them go, would they survive? Would they be okay? But she was pretty shell-shocked. They don’t know how to fend for themselves. I mean, maybe they would learn. But she started to get attacked by Myna birds and Currawongs and stuff like that. Because they’re kind of, like a small parrot. Meant to be in the fields of Paraguay.

Roslyn Oades Wow. Well, you seem to have a real interspecies connection with your parrots.

Justin Shoulder I think so. I’m trying to give them the best life they can have.

Roslyn Oades Because I suppose that’s community. I know you think a lot about community-

Justin Shoulder Interspecies community.

Roslyn Oades Yeah. And we are part of an ecology and what’s our responsibilities to our animal friends.

Justin Shoulder For sure. My partner’s got a total green thumb and he’s transformed our home in Summer Hill from completely bare bones into almost like a rainforest. And over the last 10 years I’ve witnessed how he’s co-created a microclimate where there’s frogs and fish and lizards. And we have an Elkhorn [fern] that I put banana peels in and there’s a possum that sleeps in there and eats the banana peels. And like, all these, kind of other collaborations that start to occur through the repetition that you start to notice.

Roslyn Oades I want to talk a bit more about the birds especially now I know about your parrots. My favourite moment was with the mechanical birds. And just to let listeners know, that haven’t seen the show, there’s maybe… How many birds are onstage?

Justin Shoulder There’s about like, seven.

Roslyn Oades Seven. And they kind of look like kitsch bird ornaments. But they actually can do things, like talk and say “I see you”, and “Hello” and wolf whistle.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, totally.

Roslyn Oades And then they also have a capacity for you to record on them and they repeat back. You know, those, kind of toys that you can record into it. And then there’s one great moment where they you set up two of them, and they start talking to each other and the language completely breaks down to just static being passed back and forth. And it’s like, oh, it’s so beautiful.

Justin Shoulder Yes. Some of them are actually Eastern Rosellas. I found them at Paddy’s Market in Sydney. Yeah, it definitely came from having an exchange with the birds at home. And then looking at these objects and like thinking about the beauty and the attempt to replicate something natural. So, I call that scene The Nature Simulation. There’s a series of setups. But those electronic birds, I just spent a lot of time playing with them. And yeah, there’s that thing about the mimicry and them recording what you say. And then those feedback loops and the way things decay over time when you put all the birds together and they repeat each other’s things. And just some really nice uncanny moments. Like, in the final scene of the work I become this kind of like prehistoric bird. And there’s just one lone electronic bird still calling out that says, “I see you”. All those kinds of moments were very serendipitous but then became like, poignant moments within the work.

Roslyn Oades Yeah, like what seemed like a little kind of kitsch phrase in the context the first time around at the end, “I see you” just felt really powerful. One little line, to this creature.

Justin Shoulder Yeah. That was a nice happy accident.

{AUDIO: Carrion mechanical bird excerpt #1}

Roslyn Oades So, tell us about the birds. What can they do? What were their tricks that you could curate from?

Justin Shoulder These electronic birds, there’s a small microphone embedded. They’re all kind of different. So, depending on the type of the toy, some have the sound of like rushing water or electronic bird sounds or like a recording of bird sounds. I guess I was also thinking about Lyrebirds and the way that particular birds mimic the sounds around them as a kind of like, not camouflage- Like some birds do it in order to attract other birds or to pull them away from their nests and to lay their eggs in their nest. So, there’s like a kind of parasitic nature to that but there’s also like a survival nature to it. I think that for Lyrebirds, it’s like, mimicking sounds to create a kind of mating call. There’s all those videos of Lyrebirds mimicking like human intervention. Like the click of, of a camera or like a chainsaw. So, there’s that kind of like, horrible human intervention coming through that.

{AUDIO: Carrion mechanical bird excerpt #2 (vocal mimicking)}

Justin Shoulder Yeah, so I was interested both in the way that these objects had these ghosts of, of environments and beings. But also, the way that I could add an input into them. And then, I could also bring this kind of vocal language I’d cultivated with my birds that I live with, and then say it to these birds. So, there’s this constant cycling of the natural and the unnatural and these kinds of feedback loops.

Roslyn Oades Can you tell me why the name Carrion for this creature?

Justin Shoulder I chose Carrion because I was thinking about what remains. So, carrion is the flesh of dead organisms that birds tend to feed on. I was thinking about Vultures and, it was kind of like, the end of one world and then what a being extrapolates. And what kind of nutrients that that being can get from that decomposing matter and then use that energy to survive upon. It also sounded a bit heavy metal. [laughs]

Roslyn Oades And it also, if you say carry on, it also seems talk about survival. Like, keep going.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, there was some good responses based on that, but that was very unintentional.

Roslyn Oades Right. Well, that’s a nice discovery.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, no, totally.

Roslyn Oades I’d love to talk a bit more about your collaboration with composer Corin Iletto on this work? What does that process look like?

Justin Shoulder Me and Corin worked on a few events before that, through our collective, Club Ate and there was just a nice sensing of shared interests, as well as both our lineages being in the Philippines. And she has an incredible background in classical training. And there was just like so many nice threads that were really drawing us together. Working together on Carrion, there was a series of residencies where we did a lot of improvisation. We would bring the objects into the space and I would improvise movement, and at the same time she would be improvising on her keyboard or triggering different sounds. Or we would set up the electronic birds and create different situations. So, it was very much about a series of prototyping of objects, extended improvisation and then honing that into small performance sequences that felt like the most potent elements. The work is very image based. And so, I created like a mood board document with particular collages that I’d made. There were even paintings, particular paintings that inspired the choreography. So often, she would go more based on a feeling. The opening scene was about a kind of Western romantic landscape.

Roslyn Oades Like cathedral music, isn’t it? Like the birth of some miracle.

Justin Shoulder A bit Medieval. We had a placeholder in there, which was Wagner’s Parsifal and she reinterpreted the leitmotif. We were like, What’s Carrion’s theme? Because we’re both also very interested in fantasy films and sci fi and the work of Ghibli. And she kind of created a theme that we used in the beginning that recurred throughout the work, including the final scene in these different reinterpretations of Sonic phrasing.

{AUDIO: short excerpt of Carrion theme music}

Roslyn Oades And when you work together, once you’ve kind of got the mood board and you’ve got a palette of sound, when you’re actually constructing the work, is there a sense of the movement leading the sound or the sound leading the movement.

Justin Shoulder Actually, many years ago, I did a work at Nextwave Festival, The River Eats, and it was alongside a collective Dewey Dell. And they talk about this kind of like simultaneous birth of light and sound and movement and all the kind of dramaturgical elements. And that had such a profound effect on me because I found that their work so powerful. So, for Carrion we really tried to let everything kind of simultaneously lead. The development of say, the costume elements, was a back and forth that happened at the same time as the movement and the sound and the choreography, as well as the lighting design from Ben Cisterne. I never predetermine a script. It’s very much made as it comes.

Roslyn Oades But there must be process where you have to lock it down.

Justin Shoulder Oh, yeah, totally. But it wasn’t that far from the end.

Roslyn Oades Oh, wow.

Justin Shoulder Yep. It’s nice to revisit this actually because, I go, Oh yeah, that’s how you make work. It’s been a while since I’ve done a theatre work.

Roslyn Oades And every birth is kind of different too, do you find? Like, so you think you’ve learned all these lessons, and then you start again and it’s like, Ah, what kind of birthing process is this one going to have?

Justin Shoulder Oh, for sure. And I think that that work felt so good. But you can’t… you can replicate elements, but you have to go listen to where you are at now. And what is the world now. And kind of continue to hybridize it through being present.

Roslyn Oades Just going back to Carrion. As lead artist on that project, what was your vision for the sound world?

Justin Shoulder Gosh, I guess it’s like a multiple thing. We imagined the sound thinking about as an ecology. How every element has a story and is like a cell that replicates in other ways, and is all interlocking. So, we were like, Okay, how do we connect to Filipino lineage through particularly instrumentation? So, she started to work with electronic kulintang, but also like, tap into like, our clubland practice, so we were looking at trance music in the science fiction… and it was very much a sea of ideas. But then you try to refine it, so that then there’s like, an overarching feeling, which probably was that leitmotif of the Carrion theme, that kind of held it together. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know how we did it, actually.

Roslyn Oades Because it felt quite epic. Like, when you mentioned Sci-Fi, it does feel like it had this stirring kind of moments, and then these macro juicy sounds? And then a big stretch of silence as well, after Carrion‘s birthed essentially. Like it has this real silence where it takes us right into the detail of putting their bones together.

Justin Shoulder Yes, totally. It’s very different to previous works. In the past I’ve worked with a, another composer, Nick Wales, but the whole work was very much scored. There wasn’t those, kind of, diegetic sounds that come from objects in space. Or vocalisation. Those all became provocations to bring more liveness to a world. There are some elements of foley. So Corin trigger sounds live. Most of its live actually.

Roslyn Oades Really?

Justin Shoulder Yes. So, say with the Belching Glacier, which is the big inflatable being, she has a pallet of sounds, like the magma and the bones crushing and the squelchy sounds, and she was cueing them on a timeline, based on things growing and expanding…

{AUDIO: short excerpt from ‘belching glacier’ scene in Carrion}

Roslyn Oades I think that really added to the liveness.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, for sure.

Roslyn Oades It’s quite cinematic sound, but it feels so present.

Justin Shoulder Well, there’s that being at the end, which I puppet the mask, that’s present in the whole work, that then becomes this kind of prehistoric bird and it wails. And so, she had to…

Roslyn Oades Ah, she was lip-synching to your mask-mouth.

Justin Shoulder Yeah. That’s the only way to bring that sense of the uncanny.

Roslyn Oades And the wail is sort of like a mechanical sound, isn’t it? Like a white noise? What is that sound?

Justin Shoulder It was, it comes from the beings from before. So, we were thinking about a kind of an electronic, prehistoric dinosaur bird. So, it’s kind of a hybrid of all those things.

{AUDIO: short sample of ‘wailing prehistoric bird’ audio in Carrion}

Justin Shoulder There’s another scene in The Nature Simulation where there’s like a vessel of water, a kind of perspex box, that a light is reflecting into and then that creates these kinds of ripples of light on the backdrop. But I play with it with my fingers and she gives a sonic quality to it. As I tap the water, she’s on her synth and it kind of makes this gurgling sound.

{AUDIO: Carrion excerpt of gurgling water audio plays underneath}

Justin Shoulder And I think those types of moments really confuse people because they’re uncertain what’s driving what and what’s creating the sound, and-

Roslyn Oades Yeah, I was wondering, is there like a hydrophone in there, amplifying the water somehow?

Justin Shoulder It was Corin at the back. Watching my fingers and playing live on her keyboard.

Roslyn Oades Wow. Sounds like a very satisfying collaboration.

Justin Shoulder Yeah. It’s so, so sublime.

Roslyn Oades And sometimes it’s, I find it really exciting to bring artists from another form into the theatre. It’s like, you know, they’re really pioneer new ways of working.

Justin Shoulder I think so. There was definitely blood, sweat and tears in that work.

Roslyn Oades It feels really honed and sophisticated.

Justin Shoulder Thank you.

Roslyn Oades Yeah, congratulations.

Justin Shoulder I feel like. Now I’m trying to make a new one, and I was like, How did we do it?

Roslyn Oades Oh, have faith, have faith. Now you presented Carrion around Australia, as well as in the UK, Canada, Germany. Have I missed anywhere else?

Justin Shoulder And then like elements in different places, so I kind of broke it apart to make it more accessible for me to tour. So, I took it to Museum of Glass in China in Indonesia and Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Roslyn Oades And in terms of meaning making, did you notice any differences in the way the work was read in those different cultural contexts.

Justin Shoulder Mm. When I brought the work to Montreal, which was in this very old theatre, underground, underneath the theatre was like, used to be a, like a sideshow or something. Had weird energy. But I think I did the best performance of my life there. I had all these people coming up to me crying afterwards, and like, young people from local theatre school were like writing poetic responses. And, I do return to that feeling because I was like, that was the time that I felt so embodied in my story. There was a generous form of exchange between audience, and um… There was a lot of connections to Sydney actually, Victoria Hunt’s girlfriend’s community. So, the queer community and indigenous community over there, some of them came. And you can feel that kind of international Indigiqueer language that we can all tap into. Not- Yeah, there’s, there’s something there, that’s intangible. And you feel connection through storytelling and movement and these types of hybrid languages. And that was really special.

Roslyn Oades Sounds magical.

Justin Shoulder But then like some places it- Like, I did it at the Warwick Arts Centre in this very, like traditional proscenium arch theatre and had like a curtain that lifts up [laughs]

Roslyn Oades Oh, very different.

Justin Shoulder And it, sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s so much about how if you’re present enough, or if you’re embodied. But yeah, it also, it’s very much about what that performance community have been exposed to, and whether they’re willing to engage with other types of hybrid languages. But then like doing the kind of club-based work or the, our installation work, I did a version in Museum Macan in Indonesia, that really grounded me. I was talking to this older Indonesian artist, Arahmaiani, and she was saying that she could see how my mask-based practice felt very culturally relevant to my lineage. And it was one of the first times I could really understand and comprehend how it is something really old, as well as contemporary and connected to all these different worlds.

{AUDIO: Last notes of the show Carrion}

Roslyn Oades And so, are you able to say a little bit about what’s occupying your creative headspace now?

Justin Shoulder What am I thinking about?

Roslyn Oades Because it looks very full.

Justin Shoulder I think it’s like continuing all the threads of the previous work, and I am making a new work for theatre that will come out in 2023, that will also be working with other performing bodies. And [to] be inside and outside a work is a challenge. I’ve been, I mean, I guess it’s like, being in a pandemic, and thinking about, how do you make a work in a time that’s so violent and scary, and when you have like, hope for the future but simultaneously terrified? And, you kind of have a sense of completely different experiences globally. Sometimes I can feel really heavy and feel like I need to speak to so many things. But what I’m most drawn to at the moment, are visions of the future and of possibility and of new ways of being. And I think I’ll continue to investigate the hybridity of my body but very much about like how my body interacts. How I am in community. How do I describe an ecology on a stage? Where in the past, it’s very much been a solo practice, how can that be translated into the interaction between multiple beings? That’s, that’s going to be a challenge. And you know, so much coming from two years of trying to listen more to my surroundings and being present with the interspecies languages. How do I cultivate that type of language in a work? I’ve been thinking a lot about Animism, the spirit in all living things. Recently, that’s something I’ve been naming more. And thinking about it in a cultural sense as well. Because in pre-colonial Philippines, or pre-Hispanic, they called it Anitism as opposed to animism. And there’s this whole practice of Anito. So, it’s the worship of these idols and the spirits in rocks and trees and in everything. And once I was able to name and feel that connection, I was like, Oh, it’s always been there in the practice. But it’s something we’re more focused on in the work now. And how to kind of tease that out.

Roslyn Oades Well, I can’t wait to see what you’re cooking up.

Justin Shoulder Yes, no, for sure. Me too.

Roslyn Oades And so, my last question I wanted to ask you, in terms of sound-based artists that you find inspiring, who do you have an art crush on in that space at the moment?

Justin Shoulder There’s a few… Electronic musician and composer 33EMYBW, who’s based in Shanghai. It’s a very psychedelic type of electronic music. A lot of the imagery she works with is replications of her form into like caterpillars, and insects and self-adornment. She creates all these types of headdresses and textiles, and I think it’s something I really can connect to.

Roslyn Oades So visually and sonically exciting.

Justin Shoulder Yes. Yeah, no, exactly. There’s also Gabber Modus Operandi, the Indonesian-based sound collective that tap into a lot of, like, histories of shamanism within their culture but then refract it through dance music, and craft and… I was thinking about, why am I drawn to all of these things? But I think it’s that… It’s community-based, its future folkloric and it’s also like, often comes from a DIY space, so… There’s another artist, Female Wizard based in Melbourne, in Naarm, and I really love her new compositions she’s creating. It comes from like dance party language but it taps into something ancient. All these people tap into all their own signs and symbols and cultural languages, and I find it very inspiring. Yeah.

Roslyn Oades Great. Well, I look forward to checking those out. And I’ll put links in our notes so that people can people can discover those.

Justin Shoulder Yeah, for sure.

Roslyn Oades Thank you. Well, it’s been so nice talking to you.

Justin Shoulder Such a pleasure.

Roslyn Oades Thank you for your time and.

Justin Shoulder It’s so nice to revisit the construction and the themes. And, it kind of feels like very grounding in lots of ways.

Roslyn Oades Oh, good, good. Well, I appreciate you sharing. Thanks.

You’ve been listening to Audiosketch, a Chamber Made podcast hosted and produced by Roslyn Oades, with title music by Fia Fiell. This episode’s art date with Justin Talplacido Shoulder was recorded in Sydney, on the lands of the Gadigal people. Musical excerpts from Carrion created by Justin and composed by Corin Ileto are provided courtesy of the artist. Audiosketch has been made possible by the Australia Council and was commissioned as part of Chamber Made’s Hi-Viz Practice Exchange. Hi-Viz is supported by the Helen Macpherson-Smith Trust and The Substation. Chamber Made receives multi-year funding from Creative Victoria. Thanks for listening.

{Signature outro music by Fia Fiell till end}