(04.05.2025)
I’m writing this on day 6 of my residency at Bogong Centre for Sound Culture at Bogong Village.
Madelynne Cornish, artist and Director of Operations at the centre has been a welcoming host and lively conversationalist. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our talks and hearing about the her current and past projects, there’s a sense that, despite its relative isolation, this place is the nexus for so many far reaching creative connections.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the reciprocity of energetic currents within certain landscapes, and how they can effect the internal processes of the body, I like to think that with the requisite amount of stillness and presence this may be the start of a dialogue that goes in both directions. Of both knowing a place and being known by it in return.
Of my time in the village so far I’ve been paying attention to the mountains around this deep valley, they could have felt too imposing, too heavy but feel more like being looked down on by a circle of kind and ancient Aunts. In the presence of these Aunts, I’m struck by the deep sense of quiet, its seems unrelated to the lack of sound, which is the ever present river flow and bird song, but a stillness that comes from living on and being enclosed by rock.
In contrast, my hometown of Frankston is built on the Cranbourne Sands, a remnant dune system of the last ice age, it has soft shifting nature, full of curves and undulations and its not till I’ve come here that I realise it’s mutable ways have also written itself onto my mind and body.
I went up to the Bogong High Plains yesterday, it’s full of warmth and light that extends way beyond the village’s shortened days, from there at the top of Mount McKay the Victorian Alps can be seen in all directions, the highest of these being Mount Bogong.
As my projects seem to dictate some kind of physical, bodily contribution to their creation combined with Mount Bogong being my pick in 2021’s ‘Destination by Divination’ ritual, I’ll endeavour to do the walk up to the summit during my stay here. Coincidentally the animation I made in 2021 features a small figure walking through different landscapes one of them being a reference to this mountain so there’s a satisfying continuity and connection between the two projects.