Sounds
Feel the Sky
May – June 2020
Feel the Sky is a duo of sound works in conversation produced by Jaye Kranz (Australia) and Myra Al-Rahim (USA). Both extend from the same starting point – a recording from 1992 made by a news reporter unfamiliar with field recording, but entranced by a chance encounter with trumpeter swans on an icy lake.
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Are We There Yet?
““Are We There Yet?” is a strange, recurring road-trip towards home. A home we can never really find or retrieve; while at the same time, being a home we have already found: the one that is already ours.”
Jaye Kranz
May 29, 2020
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The Burdened Land
“I wanted the work to have a distinct feeling of space and scale. I sought to explore the thematic interconnectedness between the migratory paths of birds and the sprawling supply chains of capital.”
Bassel Al-Rahim
May 29, 2020
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2020 Season
2020 was Constellations’ most ambitious season to date, and featured work from over twenty artists, mostly made for our podcast feed. The predominant new element of this season was gathering multiple works together in single episodes. In episodes like Missed Connections and Inner Geographies, and Extraction, the pieces trip over each other, harmonize, and build upon each other, either or both thematically and structurally.
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BROOD
“I want to talk about the blockades that were in Vancouver this winter in support of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs (law and governance system that is older than what is now known as Canada).”
RUTMEAT
June 27, 2020
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Lonely Artefacts
“How to document these often fragile nodes of community interaction and herstory as a matter of public record?”
Sisters Akousmatica
July 10, 2020
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Listen to more sounds from the 2020 podcast season here →
Resonant Bodies
August – December 2020
Resonant Bodies is an online exhibition about the sonic reflections between bodies and their environments, and an extension of a physical exhibition which took place at the Toronto Media Arts Centre from August 11-17th, 2019. The online exhibition consists of 6 new Constellations episodes, featuring new works by participating artists Aliya Pabani, Chandra Melting Tallow, Cheldon Paterson, Kaija Siirala, Jon Tjhia, and Phoebe Wang.
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2019 Season
By 2019, Constellations had established itself in a weird little corner of the audio world, leading to more artists and producers making original works for us. Our third season is comprised primarily of new works made especially for Constellations. Working alongside these artists in a curatorial capacity, we continued to craft our in-between space: not quite narrative audio, not quite sound art, but solidly somewhere that people wanted to be with us.
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To Slow Down Time
“I began thinking about how we engage in certain processes to slow down time. If you are tying a rope or laying out a fish net on the ice in the winter, the elders tell you to go slow.”
Janna Graham
February 1, 2019
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Naka Naka Oka Aina
“This piece sounds unheard and repressed voices in our society. Behind the laughter of children playing, we can hear the solemn chanting of a lost Roma woman walking the streets of Barcelona.”
Tamara Montenegro
April 19, 2019
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And The Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were In It
“I wanted to explore the idea of broken sounds. I certainly feel as if many of the clips I used sustained a good amount of abuse throughout the process of creating the piece.”
Bassel Al-Rahim
March 29, 2019
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Listen to more sounds from the 2019 podcast season here →
2018 Season
Our second year of Constellations contains some of our most inspired original pieces, alongside an excellent back catalogue of established sound artists’ works. We started reaching out to artists around the world to gain insights into sound and audio works outside of North America, and to cultivate a community of artists listening to each other across borders and sonic traditions.
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A Conversation
“This project was born out of a conversation I had while visiting the Faroe Islands a few years ago. I interviewed a sea captain named Birgir Enni about how he navigates the incessant fog that shrouds the islands.”
Kaija Siirala
June 29, 2018
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Refuse: military.01
“What alternatives to forced conscription are presented to these children? Schools which allow access to the Israeli military propaganda merchants, rarely, if ever, allow alternative voices to reach the children. ”
Meira Asher
June 1, 2018
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Black Beach
“As I worked with the tape of the waves, I began to see what I had been missing in own conflicted relationship with masculinity.”
Chris Connolly
July 13, 2018
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Listen to more sounds from the 2018 podcast season here →
2017 Season
Constellations began as a small collaboration between us, Michelle Macklem and Jess Shane, in the first half of 2017. We were working at a public broadcaster at the time, surrounded by tight deadlines and fast paced workflows. There was intense pressure to keep up with podcasting and radio culture in our industry, and even though we loved working with sound, we were left wondering, were we really listening?
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Anatomy of the Road
“I was wondering if there was a way to spatially re-create the sounds of being in a car... and whether I could capture that mood and weirdness and giddiness and intensity that comes from being in such a small space with another person.”
Ellie Gordon-Moershel
November 3, 2017
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Migraines & Tsunamis
“I think anyone who experiences some kind of internal, invisible but frequently, reoccurring pain ends up using some kind of external imagery or analogy in order to both explain to others, but also to yourself, what exactly the pain is.”
Adriene Lilly
September 8, 2017
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No Event
“No Event is a plastic moment in a waiting room.”
Miyuki Jokiranta
October 6, 2017
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