An audio-movement performance and companion piece to Six Swallowed Moons. Audio composed by Julian Udine and performed by Angelo Bartolome.
Julian collected whale song, underwater ambient noise, and a recording of their own voice to create a sonic reflection of their ink painting. They processed and rearranged their voice to the point of unintelligibility and wove this into wind, water and whalesong. Bartolome translated this sonic experience into movement. The title is a reference to the six mythological moons who once existed before they were eaten by the bakunawa. While never named, some versions of the myth identified them as siblings of the seventh moon, a deity locked in eternal battle with the bakunawa. These six unnamed deities, now lost to time, would have held long-forgotten knowledge, language, and ways of being from a younger world.
Like the six moons, much of the Philippines’ historical culture has been devoured and lost to colonizations and brutal subjugation. The past becomes indecipherable, and must be reconstructed through guesstimates and speculation. But this is our creative inheritance–the ability to reach for something lost, ink it, unravel it, reinterpret it, and use it as a tool for further creation.
*In order to align with the Bartolome’s practice of ephemeral performance, there is no video recording available.
Julian Udine 