Signature Sounds

for Sarah Breen-Lovett’s podcast series Hereness 2020

About Hereness

Hereness is a new monthly podcast featuring Blue Mountains artists which was released on the winter solstice. Originally planned to be launched during the Winter Magic Festival 2020, Hereness explores contemporary art practices for connecting body, place and space.  This is increased awareness of being, sense of wellbeing, relationships with others and bond with this earth. Blue Mountains born, Hereness host Dr Sarah Breen Lovett releases an interview with a different contemporary artist each month. The podcast features Signature Sounds created by WeiZen Ho proudly supported by the Blue Mountains City of the Arts Trust through the 2020 COVID-19 Quick Response Grant program.

Each podcast os released on the full moon to create a sense of hereness, in looking to the sky throughout the month to gauge how far the next episode will be, connecting us all in time and space. Following the pre-released introduction to hereness,  the first guest on 5th July 2020 was Durunanang, an Aboriginal Arts and Culture company. Durunanang is the Darug word for daughter and is a collaboration between father and daughter Chris and Jessica Tobin. They are storytellers and artists from Katoomba, who develop educational resources, Darug Art and Designs in the Blue Mountains community and the greater Sydney region.  

After Chris and Jessica, the first group of confirmed guests include artists such as: Honi Ryan, a peace maker who is well known for her silent dinner parties and other socially constructed art works; Roger Foley Fogg, an artist who shifts into cosmic consciousness through a profound relationship with light;  Emma Rooney, is an artist works with contemplation of place and self through her practices of bushwalking, recording and found object  installation; Leo Cremonese, a painter who works with ideas of Vedanta and Zen in a practice based from connecting to the landscape; Ben Denham who explores ideas of trans dimensional communication and the practice of witch-doctoring with the help of his alter ego Bernie Durnheim; Rachel Peachey and Paul Mosig whose work brings awareness to relationships between body and place through the power of play and process of making; Micheal Lovett, who works with uncovering magical inhabitants of place in his writings…

Below are some images of WeiZen who used horsehair, broken bows and other objects to play the insides of a piano for one of the outro soundtracks.