Polyphonic Social is an annual Liquid Architecture project taking place at Melbourne’s Abbotsford Convent. It is framed by the proposition that artists practice polyphony in vastly expanded and experimental ways.

Polyphony is a state in which we hear many different voices, in their full texture, simultaneously. (Poly/many + phonos/voices). It is a sonic concept with much artistic and social potential; to make difference audible, ‘sound’ disobedience, choreograph dissonance, and explore the harmonies produced when we bring voices together (and apart) in shared space.

Polyphonic Social 2019 unfolds across three events, occupying the Convent’s historic, recently restored Magdalen Laundry with experimental sound, performance, and installation. While the program’s heart beats conceptually, its skeleton structure is a powerful multi speaker-stack sound system, which will be deployed by artists to articulate the cavernous space of the industrial building in uncanny, immersive, and unexpected ways.

PHEW
ANTHONY PATERAS
& ERIKM
SAGE PBBBT
8–11pm
Fri, 18. Oct 2019
$20–30

Friday’s evening concert features legendary Japanese electro-punk auteur PHEW, whose warped vocal exclamations over pulsating electronics have been described as ‘Yoko Ono meets Suicide’ making her Australian debut more than 40 years after arriving on the Osaka scene as the singer in avant-noise band Aunt Sally. Australian composer, pianist and electronic musician ANTHONY PATERAS and French experimentalist ERIKM will collaborate on an analogue/digital set of ‘free concrète music inscribed firmly in the present’. And finally, SAGE PBBBT’s extra-normal vocal techniques will conjure chaos magick via a feminist, queer and trans praxis of air, lungs, vocal folds, lips and room.

“I can feel my concentration is shot. I feel I could be much smarter but my discipline to commit to knowledge has eroded.” Antony Pateras

“Ritual without intent! Magick without results!” Sage Pbbbt

“Real singers are able to communicate things and incite feelings within the listeners. I realized, I’m just not a singer in that sense. I started to think about what I was, and I realized that rather than try to be a singer, I could do punk.” Phew

NATASHA TONTEY
SARAH CROWEST
ZOU ZHAO
3–6pm
Sat, 19. Oct 2019
RSVP

Saturday afternoon’s performance program features Indonesian punk coder, designer and horror-aficionado NATASHA TONTEY presenting new work Church of Xenoglossia. First developed as part of Instrument Builders Project Kyoto, the project employs early-internet proto-emoji language Shift JIS in scores for improvisation. Chinese Singaporean artist ZOU ZHAO will be apologising on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party as part of her continuing investigation into language and neocolonial knowledge today. British Australian artist SARAH CROWEST will present the first experimental showing of her open-source text-score project Sound Seen, for multiple performers.

On the Saturday afternoon of Polyphonic Social we will be unveiling the first texts from our new publishing platform Disclaimer. Editor, Autumn Royal, and contributors will be exhibiting their texts, or in Autumn’s words, ‘outflows from Disclaimer will be present, as published content materialises into live performance to reveal the journal’s inaugural release.'

“On behalf of the whole universe of absurdity, narration and potentiality of speculative thinking through imagination, I declare war on rational thinking!” Natasha Tontey

“What are the treacheries in representation?” Zou Zhao

CHINO AMOBI
NINA BUCHANAN
LUCRECCIA QUINTANILLA
& BRYAN PHILLIPS
8–11pm
Sat, 19. Oct 2019
$20–30

Nigerian American sound-artist, writer and founder of NON Worldwide, CHINO AMOBI will headline Saturday evening’s concert with an experimental performance incorporating elements from his acclaimed albums Airport Music For Black Folk and Paradiso and his new novel Eroica. Melbourne-based electronic artist NINA BUCHANAN’s new performance will explore queer, feminist methodologies through the prism of deep listening. Salvadoran Australian sound artist LUCRECCIA QUINTANILLA and Chilean Australian musician BRYAN PHILLIPS will band together to present an experimental audio essay exploring multiple histories of protest and noise.

“Yeah, I do identify as queer, and I also identify as black, I also identify as a follower of Christ, I also identify as a designer, I also identify as a curator. It’s multiple identities. It’s not just this fixed identity. It’s multiple levels of identity.” Chino Amobi, Jezebel

“It has now been more than a week since I experienced Polyphonic Social. The echo of its sonic and visual imagery is still knocking around in my mind; and in the interval between the event and its reverberation a space seems to have been established for thoughts and feelings I’ve not yet managed to apprehend.” Polyphonic Social: sacred & other resonances, Elyssia Bugg