UNBOUND & BEYOND FEST
There’s a world of audio beyond the podcast feed & the broadcast airwaves. We’re here to explore it.
On October 25, we spent half the day in celebration of the format-breaking, the weird, the experimental, the half-finished, the very nearly begun — the stuff that gets lost in the cracks or breaks out of what ~society tells us~ audio should be. All of that is out the window!
We came together for creative inspiration, artist conversations, and multimedia performances that provoke, inspire, and question what sound & story can be, and what happens when you let the work guide you.
Below were our offerings, for you, dear participants, for our first-ever Unbound & Beyond Mini-Fest! While you're experiencing the day, check out the collaborative notes below, and & add your thoughts, musings, etc.
ALL DAY AUDIO ADVENT-URES
We encourage you to dive into two Audio Advent-ures, available exclusively for Third Place attendees & part of our Unbound & Beyond Fest experience. (A note that Wintopia was only available to watch during the live portion of Third Place. Click here more information about where you can catch a screening!)
As part of our lineup of scheduled programming, we hosted behind-the-scenes Q&A’s for each piece: at 2 PM CT (mythicPotentialiies) & 4 PM CT (Wintopia).
But first — introducing your Beyond & Unbound Audio Advent-ures:
mythicPotentialities (a world premiere!)
Produced by Lawrence Andrews
Duration: 58 minutes, 40 seconds
From Third Coast: We first heard mythicPotentialities through the Audio Unbound category in our Third Coast/RHDF Competition, and were totally blown away. mythicPotentialities was created by Lawrence Andrews, a California-based installation & media artist, and a professor in the Film & Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This is a would-be installation piece, but in the time of pandemic, mythicPotentialities is a sound piece you’ll listen to, from wherever you are. Here is the setting, as Lawrence Andrews intended it:
"Set in the Tallahatchie County Courtroom of Mississippi, mythicPotentialities explores the event that galvanized the civil rights movement, the murder of Emmett Till, and how these event are mediated through documentary text like Eyes on the Prize, and other books, plays, and poems.
It explores how these texts have constructed Till’s Uncle, Moses Wright, from a limited list of predicates, falling short of capturing his complexity. The project draws connections between documentary predication and Agamben’s resistance as expressed in his notion of “whatever being. It explores the destabilization of blackness, reconstituting it as creativity, invention, pure potaentiality. Sonically it explores how sound space can be heard without the language we use to describe it, asking the listener to embrace the sensuous aspects of pure sound."
Wintopia (an "audio world" premiere!)
Directed by Mira Burt-Wintonick
Duration: 88 minutes
From Third Coast: Having spent 15 years making narrative audio work, Mira recently directed her first documentary film, Wintopia. We’ve long dreamed of bringing this film to the audio community — and we’re thrilled to convene around this beautiful piece of work. Wintopia is a deeply personal story about her late father, filmmaker Peter Wintonick, and his search for Utopia, but it's also a universal film about grief, hope, and making art.
Synopsis: A box of tapes uncovered. A lifelong Utopian obsession. A daughter’s attempt to complete her father’s final film. Wintopia traces the enigmatic footsteps of renowned documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick through the lens of his daughter, Mira, as she tries to decipher the map he has left behind. Reverberating with emotion and whimsy, the film guides us on a journey through possible worlds in pursuit of reconciliation, both between artist and family and between dreams and reality.
LIVE PROGRAMMING
Warm-up Stretch: Reattaching Your Ears To Your Body
with Johnny Spence & Erin Poole
1 PM CT on 10/25
As we were looking for the perfect way to warm up & kick off Unbound & Beyond Fest, we realized that such a way already exists: a session called “Editorial Embodiment,” presented at MIRP (the Meeting of Independent Radio Producers) in Dublin, in 2019. Today, two of the artists who created this session — Johnny Spence & Erin Poole — will bring it back to live as a warm-up stretch for our day of breaking open & unbinding the possibilities of audio storytelling. Re-attach your ears to your bodies & explore concrete ways of introducing body-awareness into the editorial process.
In Conversation: mythicPotentialities
with Lawrence Andrews & Tempestt Hazel
2 PM CT on 10/25
Join us for a conversation between California-based film & digital media professor and sound artist Lawrence Andrews & Chicago-based curator Tempestt Hazel.
When Lawrence (Larry) Andrews entered his experimental sound work mythicPotentialities into the brand-new Audio Unbound category of the Third Coast / RHDF Competition, it instantly stood out as a creative, immersive example of boundary-pushing audio. Tempestt Hazel was one of three inaugural judges for this category, and her discussion with the other two judges illuminated just how much there is to unpack in this one story.
Today, we premiere mythicPotentialities for you, and invite you to listen and ask questions about the creation and process of this work.
In Conversation: Wintopia
with Cristal Duhaime & Mira Burt-Wintonick
4 PM CT on 10/25
So you stayed up all night watching the "audio world" premiere of Wintopia, right? (Or just now, in your short break!) Great.
Now join us for an audio-informed conversation and Q&A with Mira, interviewed by her friend, collaborator & Love Me co-creator, Cristal Duhaime.
After 15 years of producing audio stories, how did Mira approach her first-ever documentary film? What techniques did she bring with her, what did she learn beyond the bounds of audio, and how did the final product take shape, and breathe?
Hearing + Seeing + Touching: An Audio Sketch Workshop
with Jackson Roach & Ariana Martinez
6:30 PM CT on 10/25
An informal workshop, embodiment, lengthening, stretching & re-orientation — join Ariana & Jackson as they guide you through a series of audio-inspired artistic exercises, designed to ground you from the unbound & the beyond … back into your home.