Remote Origins

Operations Director: Madelynne Cornish

Artistic Director: Philip Samartzis

Design + Development: Public Office

PO Box 456, Mount Beauty, 3699,
Victoria, Australia

The Bogong Centre for Sound Culture is a remote-regional cultural initiative situated in the foothills of Victoria’s Alpine National Park. Established by Philip Samartzis and Madelynne Cornish the B-CSC supports projects focusing on the processes and impacts of sustainable energy production; effects of climate change in wilderness areas; ethnographic studies of remote communities; the chronicling of vanishing industrial procedures; and systems of representation used to render natural and built environments.

Additionally, the B-CSC facilitates a broad cultural program comprising, festivals, exhibitions, publications, master classes and artists’ talks focusing on site-specific art practices. These programs establish a connection with place, its inhabitants, geographic space and memory. They engage a wide range of audiences, bringing together local, interstate and international artists across multiple disciplines and fields to realise ambitious works.

The B-CSC is situated at the newly restored old school at Bogong Alpine Village located 350 kilometres from Melbourne in North East Victoria.

Acknowledgment of Country

The B-CSC acknowledge the Dhudhuroa, Gunai, Taungurung, Waywurru and Yaitmathang peoples as the First Nations and Traditional Owners of the land upon which the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture is located. We pay our respects to the Elders, past, present and future for they hold the knowledge and traditions of the land and waterways upon which we depend.

About Bogong Village

Bogong Alpine Village is 325 kilometres North-East of Melbourne situated at an altitude of 800 meters in the Alpine National Park between Mount Beauty and Falls Creek. The village was established in the late 1930s to service the first hydroelectric scheme in mainland Australia. More recently it has become a popular site for alpine sports, recreation and ecotourism. Click here for directions.

A Short History

Work on the Kiewa Scheme commenced in 1938 with the construction of a road from Tawonga to the High Plains. Previously the only access was by foot or horseback along tracks that had been forged by cattlemen of a bygone era. Bogong Village was established once the road from Junction Camp was trafficable (March 1939); this paved the way for the construction of permanent buildings. Prior to that life was tough; large canvas tents and flies were used for sleeping quarters and smaller tents were set up to house the kitchens. By 1940 Bogong Township had grown considerably with a general store, staff offices, recreational mess, police station, and a variety of accommodation such as single men’s quarters and residences for married staff and families.

Bogong State School

In 1941 the Primary School at Bogong Village enrolled its first intake of students comprising nine pupils. Initially the school consisted of a large classroom, storeroom and boys and girls toilets. Extensions were carried out in 1944, which expanded the capabilities of the school. A library, storeroom, pupil’s lunchroom and shelter shed were added and rock gardens were established. By 1947 the number of students had grown to 46 all of whom were children of local SEC workers. Over the years class sizes fluctuated and the building remained unchanged. In 1980 it ceased to operate as a school and sat idle, eventually falling into disrepair. In 2004 it was sold along with many other buildings in the village.

Madelynne Cornish and Philip Samartzis bought the Old School and set about restoring it to its former glory. The rotting weatherboards and floorboards, smashed windows and flaking paint are now a distant memory. The newly refurbished building occupies it’s original footprint and bares a strong resemblance to it’s former self. Although the internals have been modernized remnants of it’s past history remain. The Old School once played a significant role in the fabric of village life. It inspired the community and helped shape the minds of those who studied there. It is our intention as custodians that the School once again functions as a place of inspiration.

Reference: Kiewa Kids School Days at Bogong & Mount Beauty by Graham Gardner

ISBN 0-646-36226-7. Published 1998

Philip Samartzis

Sounds

Cloud

Journal

Engagement

Website

bogongsound.com.au/artists/philip-samartzis

Philip Samartzis is a sound artist and curator with a specific interest in the social and environmental conditions informing remote wilderness regions and their communities. His art practice is based on deep fieldwork where he deploys complex sound recording technology to capture natural, anthropogenic and geophysical forces. The recordings are used within various exhibition, performance and publication outcomes to demonstrate the transformative effects of sound within a fine art context. He is particularly interested in concepts of perception, immersion and embodiment in order to provide audiences with sophisticated encounters of space and place.

Philip has exhibited and performed widely including presentations at The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris (2001); The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2002); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); The Mori Arts Centre, Tokyo (2003); The Sydney Opera House (2004); The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2007); The National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow (2009); The Art Gallery of South Australia (2012); The National Gallery of Victoria (2013); and The Merz Foundation, Turin (2016). Philip has received two Asialink Scholarships - Performing Arts (1999) and Arts Management (2006), which he used to research contemporary Japanese sound culture, leading to numerous transnational collaborative projects.

Philip is the recipient of three Antarctic Division Fellowships (2009, 2015 & 2020), which he is using to document the effects of extreme climate and weather events in Eastern Antarctica, Macquarie Island, and on the research vessels RSV Aurora Australis and RSV Nuyina. His Antarctic works have been incorporated into the National Archives of Australia’s Traversing Antarctica: The Australian Experience (2011-14); Polar South: Art in Antarctica, Muntref Museum in Buenos Aires (2011); the 11th International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences in Edinburgh (2011); Antarctica: Five Responses, Art Gallery of South Australia (2020); and Site and Sound: Sonic Art as ecological practice, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery (2021). In 2014 France Culture and ABC Radio National commissioned a one-hour composition titled Antarctica, An Absent Presence based on the book he produced for Thames & Hudson Australia (2016). In 2017 France Culture commissioned A Surrender to Wind in 9 Parts focusing on the geophysical effects of wind on wilderness areas including Antarctica and sub-Antarctica. Recent Antarctic exhibitions include Super Field (2018) produced in collaboration with architects Baracco+Wright for RMIT Gallery; Floe produced in collaboration with architect Roland Snooks for NGV’s Triennial Extra (2018); and Polar Force (2018), a collaboration with Speak Percussion that received a Honorary Mention in the 2019 edition of Prix Ars Electronica for the Digital Musics and Sound Art category. Philip's newest polar project The Blizzard premieres at NGV Melbourne Design Week 2021.

Philip has curated numerous performance and exhibition programs for various organisations including Variable Resistance, a series of international sound art presentations for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2001/02), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002). He co-curated The Antarctic Convergence (2012), and The Sonic City (2013), for the Liquid Architecture Festival, which were presented at various venues throughout Australia and New Zealand. Philip is the recipient of an Australia Council independent curators grant (2012) for Bogong ELECTRIC, a site-specific festival investigating the Kiewa Hydroelectric scheme set in the Australian Alps. Most recently Philip co-curated Notes from the Field (2021) for the Murray Arts Museum Albury investigating the way artists translate deep fieldwork into cultural productions.

Antarctica: An Absent Presence book review Anthropo[s]cenic Antarctica