I began my ongoing series Shadow-walks in 2003 and since then it has occurred in cities, towns and villages throughout Asia, the Americas, Canada, Europe and Australia.The process is straightforward. I arrive in a new place and ask local inhabitants to take me on a special walk, one that has been repeated many times and has meaning or significance for that person. While walking together, I record our conversations and the sounds of the environment. I then go back along the same route alone, trying to get a sense of my previous companion’s traces on the walk. Then I sing what I feel using wordless improvisations.
The many hours of recordings made in the place are then taken back to my studio, selected and edited together to become the final work, the Shadow-walk. These raw materials are my singing, the conversations and the environmental sounds. When I begin to shape the work, I already have all of its elements. Except for equalisation, nothing new is added in the studio. All sounds and singing heard in the final composition have been recorded in the actual location.
I began Shadow-walks after finishing a different project, one that required me to walk the same route repeatedly over several months. When I no longer did this daily walk I was surprised to notice my sense of nostalgia for it. It had become my “special walk” with some significance for me. I began to wonder whether this was a common experience for other people too if a walk is repeated over and over again, does it become meaningful for that person as if they had left some part of themselves there? James Joyce wrote that places remember events. I find this idea very engaging - as if everything that happens leaves traces that we might be able to sense. If a person walks through certain places repeatedly, along the same route, does that act of walking leave a trace? In a sense Shadow-walks is an attempt to make a person’s traces, their shadow, audible through my singing, improvising voice.
It is important to me that these Shadow-walks are presented in some way in the places where they were made and to the people who walked with me. I have made them into audio-walks, concerts, radio works, an iPhone app and sound installations. In Athens I presented one as a walking, singing performance through the streets. In 2018 I toured in Hong Kong, China, India and Taiwan with a solo work called “Shattered song, shadow city”. It is based on Shadow-walks from five different countries and uses a multichannel setup plus live vocals.
In 2020 the Pandemic came and I had to change my methods. Instead of accompanying a person on their chosen walk and later repeating the walk in order to sing it, I gathered people's recorded descriptions of walks and my singing reflects how I imagined them. I call these works Shadow-walks (at home). Four of these were released on Flaming Pines label's Footfalls series in 2021:
Shadow-walks (at home) - Abu Dhabi UAE with Amanda Gutierrez
Shadow-walks (at home) - Llansilin Wales with Rick Wilson
Shadow-walks (at home) - The Alps France with Geert Vermeire
Shadow-walks (at home) - Coburg Australia with Catherine Clover
Excerpts of these and earlier Shadow-walks are available on Soundcloud.
Shadow-walks available on CD Walking released by Innova
Shadow-walks (at home) available on USB compass and download from Flaming Pines Footfalls series.
