Shadows and Tender Frailties

2024
Album (23mins)

Shadows and Tender Frailties is an exploration into the liminal space between noise and music, a space where Joseph James Francis often resides.

Assembled from a series of improvisations recorded at MESS (Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio) in early 2023, these recordings made on a variety of modular synthesisers were then assembled during an artist residency at IATRUS in the ancient town of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. Using a variation of the musique concrète technique which involves assembling recorded sounds as raw material, Joseph invites play, possibility, and randomness. With this free approach comes pleasant surprises and curiosities, giving the work a distinctive gridless feel.

Joseph’s sonic aesthetic takes inspiration from the abstract and austere sensibilities of the Constructivist art movement, who aimed to reflect modern industrial society in their works. Just as the Constructivists rejected decorative stylisation in favour of the industrial assemblage of materials, Joseph strives to move beyond traditional musical constructs such as melody and harmony by using the assemblage approach.

In developing the works, Joseph imposed the limitation of only using recordings from a single session and then overlaying field recordings over that assemblage. As such, each track has a signature sound deriving from the modular system he collaborated with on that day of recording. The field recordings used were collected in Bulgaria, Istanbul, Turkey, and during his residency in Gallatina, Italy.

The title Shadows and Tender Frailties refers to the profound and often hidden parts of us that lie dormant. These shadows, often reflecting the fears and doubts that we carry, are the obscure parts of our nature that we seldom reveal. Our tender frailties refer to the delicate and sensitive weaknesses inherent in our humanity. Though we often perceive ourselves as invincible, we are, in truth, remarkably vulnerable and fragile.

Listen to the album on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud and most other streaming platforms.

Positions: Beyond the Centre

2024, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.
Live performance.

A synthesis of live art, sound, visual art, performance and spoken word, ‘Positions’ was an event presenting site specific performances in the historic Han Hadji Nikoli building in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. The event set out to challenge conventional notions of what an art exhibition is and invited a revaluation of the relationship between art and history.

By animating the building with live performances, the project offered a dynamic reinterpretation of its historical narrative, encouraging a deeper engagement with the space and its cultural significance. The event was organised by the Doma Art Foundation and curated by Voin de Coin. Participating artists were Ida Sophia, Elissa Mateva, Mia Pushkarova, Voin de Voin, Julien Lambrev and Sofia Dimova.

Freedom from the Limitations of Matter

2023
Album (24min, 03 sec).

In this work explores the architecture of sound and its interplay with place; investigating how traditions inform and influence a society. Created during the Domus Artist Residency in Galatina, Italy it is the investigation of the sonic intersection of sacred and pagan heritage and Italian Futurism.

Serendipitously coming across a collection of the Futurist manifestos in London on route to Italy in the form of The Art of Noise: Destruction of Music by Futurist Machines, Joseph James Francis used this text as a lens through which to approach, deconstruct and conflagrate traditional sounds found in the Puglia region to produce contemporary noise architectures. This work draws significantly from the Futurists’ obsession with machine music and the desire to abstract sound from its source, dispossessing it from its tradition and meaning. Making recordings on a 464 year old grand pipe organ in the medieval Basilica di Santa Caterina d’Alessandria, he looked to create a dialogue between this traditional instrument and its embodiment of a machine for noise.

This work is coupled closely with his questioning of the fluidity of tradition when met with the demands, ruptures and beauty of a contemporary social context. Within this investigation he delved deeply into the tradition of La Taranta, a myth associated with the town of Galatina. La Taranta is an orgiastic pagan ritual where victims bitten by a Tarantula would experience physical and mental disturbances akin to hysteria. Those affected could be cured only by dancing to music played on a violin, tambourine, and accordion, as a form of exorcism to expel the devil. This musical tradition continues to this day in the genre of Pizzica. With its relentless, hypnotic rhythm Pizzica marries well with the mechanistic Futurist approach to machine music.

Listen to the album on Soundcloud.

VERSE

2023, Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia.
6-hour improvisation.

Perpetual actions of vain hope was the conceptual structure for the durational live performance VERSE by Ida Sophia. In the work, Joseph James Francis responded to the actions performed by the artist by way of a 6 hour live improvised sound work. The actions Ida Sophia performed were a repetitious circumambulation (the act of walking around a sacred object), the object being a large installation of sculptural works, each resolving into a candle in which the artist would light and in turn extinguish on each circumambulation. At the core of the work was the poem 'Go to the limits of your longing' by German poet Rilke, which was arranged in responsorial format, recorded in Joseph’s studio with vocalist Kristy Johnson and repeated through the duration of the work. The use of spoken word enacted the idea that textual recall, combined with action, can revise emotional associations to memory.An unorthodox score was created as an overarching structure for the improvisation which was followed by Joseph and Cellist, Sonya Mellor over the 6 hours.

VERSE was presented by Post Office Projects as part of their 2023 Performance Series at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE).

You can view an excerpt of the performance on Ida Sophia’s website.

Witness

2022, Wirmalngrang/Beachport, Australia.
Composition for 4k Video work (12min, 12 sec).

Ida Sophia’s ‘Witness’ speaks to how exhaustive, violent and ultimately futile actions of vain hope can be. Shot in a single take at The Pool of Siloam in Wirmalngrang/Beachport, ‘Witness’ is centred around the repetitive and intense submergence and uplifting of the artist from water taking a single baptism to an obsessive, relentless level. Referencing the bleak persistence, Joseph James Francis composed and produced a haunting composition of synthesised and sampled sound. It includes a live recording from the set with Hydrophone for the underwater audio as well as above water sound recording. The composition builds, commanding an unrelenting grip that verges on madness. ‘Witness’ was awarded the Ramsay Art Prize in June 2023 and the work is now part of the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. More information about the work can be found on Ida Sophia’s website.

Through me, the road

2022, Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia.
Composition for interactive sculpture.

‘Through Me, The Road’ is an immediate, bodily experience of awe. This installation by Ida Sophia standing at three metres tall and clad in light blue, is invitational. A series of nine successive pairs of doors open one way and must be pushed; it is an action of choice. Ida’s brief was to create a call-to-arms, one that urges the participant to take action. Joseph James Francis composed the work for Clarinet and collaborated with long standing musical collaborator Phil Chetcuti, recording in Joseph James Francis’s studio. The composition was triggered by custom created sensors when entering the gallery space. You can hear the work on Soundcloud. More information about the work can be found on Ida Sophia’s website.

Votivo

2021, Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia.
Composition for performance.

Created for a Ida Sophia’s re-staging of a work performed at The European Centre for Culture, Palazzo Mora, Venice, during The Venice International Performance Art Week, 2020, ‘Votivo’ is participatory work inspired by witnessing a priest snuffing out votive candles in a Bulgarian church, the artist holds a candle throughout the performance, allowing participants to light from her flame and writing a object of their votive act on her body, the performance ending when the candle burns out. The composition was to be a haunting accompaniment for these ritual actions. Utilising recordings of Gregorian chants, inverting and warping them to create a surreal and trance-inducing state in the audient. You can hear the work on Soundcloud. More information about the work can be found on Ida Sophia’s website.

A Time and A Place

2014 – Current, Worldwide.
Photographic documentation.

A long-term project documenting the detritus of human life and nature's effort to exist in our cities, the human influence on our surroundings and it’s influence on us. Exploring accidental compositions in our urban and natural environments. The project consists of photographs, shot directly downwards, in everyday places that the artist stumbles upon in his travels. There are strict rules to these images: they must be square, shot exactly directly down and the object and composition cannot be modified at all. It must be exactly as found.The book Untitled, 2015-2018 is available for purchase from the artist, and contains 500 images collected around the world.

Regret

2021, Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia.
Custom instrumentation and production.

Ida Sophia’s, Regret was an act of redemption confronting Ida’s regret that she was absent from her Fathers’ side in his last month of life. Over the month of June 2021, Ida observed a monumental installation of flowers decompose. The resounding silence of the space was broken only by the rhythmic sound of Ida’s own heartbeat — a poignant reminder that the space we inhabit is simultaneously living and dying, and that as mortals we are granted only a certain number of heartbeats in our lifetime. Joseph James Francis collaborated with Ida to produce the sound apparatus required to channel her live heartbeat into the gallery space. You can find out more about Regret on Ida Sophia’s website.

Departed Dialogues

2019, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Composition for interactive sculpture.

In this collaboration with Ida Sophia, the artwork considered the next phase of the journey as we depart this life. Does dialogue exist ‘up there’, in nirvana, the next world, the hereafter? What (perhaps) might it sound like? Can we be heard? These questions were the brief that Ida Sophia gave Joseph James Francis. The result was a complex, layered composition of field recordings, synthesised sounds and studio recordings of the artists’ voices. You can hear the work on Soundcloud. More information about the work can be found on Ida Sophia’s website.

Line Works

2018 - Current, Australia.
Pigment on paper.

Joseph James Francis exhibited a body of work in 2018 comprising of works of pigment on paper and acrylic on board. Since then this body of work has grown in complexity and scale, with a second exhibition of these works in the pipeline. The works draw on the artist fascination with constructivist sensibilities, and the abstraction of the object while maintaining the semantic nature of imagery.

Walls

2018, Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia.
Installation.

The Walls Around Us was an installation covering four walls of the exhibition space, immersing the participant giving a sense of being surrounded by the abstraction of a mountain range. The medium used was blue masking tape, meticulously cut and placed around this space. The work was a scaled reproduction of a work part of the Line Works series exhibited in the same year.

Transition

2018, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Composition for interactive sculpture.

This piece was created in collaboration with artist Ida Sophia during the Performance of the ritual 'Separation-Transition-Incorporation'. It represented the centre of the ritual: Transition. The symbology throughout this work is carefully constructed to enhance contrast between life and death. You can hear the work on Soundcloud. More information about the work can be found on Ida Sophia’s website.

Here, there

2013, Tarntanya/Adelaide, Australia.
Site-specific sound installation.

This project involved the composition of a site-specific sound work installed for 24/7 playback under an urban bridge in the City of Adelaide (Tarntanya). The concept was of the tyranny of distance and was created on reflection of the artists experience of living overseas and how that experience shapes the way we interact with the place we reside at any one time. The work included recordings sent into space in 1977 on the Voyager Golden Records. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them.