I. JOHN – 3550N, 2820E (Cerulean Island) by Mary McDonald & Sarah Tremlett

"JOHN – 3550N, 2820E (Cerulean Island)" is a poetry film about loss, displacement, commemoration and the futility of war.

The poetry film features an original soundtrack and visual design created by Sundridge multi-disciplinary Mary McDonald in response to the text of the poem. Poet and Filmmaker Sarah Tremlett says that the poem "is about the futility of war, and each stanza could be described as a different scene on a trajectory where time is running out. Here, dual forces are in play: light and darkness, security and destabilization – and these are echoed in the poetic devices employed and the fact that the protagonist was half German. Water and holding one’s breath have particularly charged meanings, both of innocence and also loss of life."

Mary McDonald responded to the poem with both a sound and visual design centred on an exploration of the precision of war, with its insistence on record keeping, of precise time and location, of kill marks and recording the number of deaths, of straight lines and cross-hairs. This controlled precision is contrasted with the vague outlines of memory, of time and space separating father and son. The presence of water central to the documented events throughout the poem, present in sound and film allegorically represents this flow of memory, one that is beyond the control of humans, time and precision. The work explores the power of water and how water can submerse and immerse, but can also buoy one up. Water can resurrect, it can wash away all.

II. Firewash by Sarah Tremlett

"Firewash" as both a poem and poetry film is a conversation with an ancestor who mined at a site in Cornwall in the 12th century. The poem (published in Earth Lines anthology, Autumn 2021) by Edinburgh Geological Society is based on the author’s experience of staying at the same location during a gale. It is taken from "TREE" which is a geopoetic family history and poetry film project across different periods and locations.

III. On the Margin of History by Mary McDonald with Natasha Boskic and Mohamad Kebbewar

"On the Margin of History" is a Poetry film and an Augmented Reality installation created by Mary McDonald in collaboration with Poets Natasha Boskic and Mohamad Kebbewar. Boskic and Kebbewar were excited to tell their story through this collaboration since their countries, Serbia and Syria, experienced similar fates. When weaving their verses together, their lines overlapped, their words chased each other. Their voices echoed with the same emptiness, recognizing a human soul can be peeled, layer by layer, revealed through art.

Fragmented layers of sound and image within the poetry film reproduce a sense of displacement and erasure, exposing the reverberating loss of destruction of people and place, family, heritage, traditions, cultures. In the AR version the still images become short video clips. These fragments all explore the surreal experience of displacement.

"On the Margin of History" is witness to destruction of ancient history and sharp demographic change in Aleppo, city of six million people that lost ninety percent of its residents over six years, then filled with new people. It is witness also to the breakdown of the former Yugoslavia, culminating in the NATO bombing of Serbia where silence was the only response to events that left people shocked, disbelieving. On the Margin of History is a trans-disciplinary project considering tensions between personal voice and possibilities within sound and visual to suggest and reinforce false narratives and/or create understandings through metaphor, playing with all levels of perception. Text is digitally exploded, creating reverberating echoes of lost words, lost truths.

IV. Klavierklang by Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, Hildegard Westerkamp Nettie Wild and Michael Brockington

KLAVIERKLANG, is a cinematic tone poem that follows a young girl in post-war Germany who grows up loving the piano. She takes piano lessons—but instead of freeing the girl to play, the lessons make her frightened of making mistakes. The girl’s ears shut down, making music an uninspiring chore. Later as a young woman, she travels to central British Columbia, to a ghost town and an abandoned house. There she spots a piano—perfectly ruined, a piano on which no note could be a mistake. She learns to listen again—and the girl and her music are free.

Acclaimed composer/activist Hildegard Westerkamp and renowned pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa combine their personal encounters with the piano to create the story of the girl in KLAVIERKLANG. Interweaving the challenges and wonders of mastering the piano, the girl's journey allows Westerkamp and Iwaasa to explore the liminal space between music and sound.

In a celebration of the piano as an extraordinary instrument, Iwaasa plays both its keys and plucks its strings, as if exploring a sound sculpture. Her non-linear spoken narrative interacts with intricate soundscapes evoking Westerkamp’s childhood in Germany. These are layered and digitally manipulated with Iwaasa’s recorded reflections on the piano, “this creature, this instrument, that you think you know.”

Filmmakers and installation artists Nettie Wild (director) and Michael Brockington (editor) capture this performance, interpreting the composition’s drama with lyrical imagery coloured and shaped by the music itself.

Special thanks to David Pay, Betsy Carson, Chris Sheldon and to all of KLAVIERKLANG's Indiegogo funders. Made with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, Creative BC, and Music on Main. Thank you Keslow Camera for the much appreciated in-kind support. We respectfully acknowledge that KLAVIERKLANG was filmed in Vancouver BC, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations—keepers of this land since time immemorial.