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Mira Calix Creates a Labyrinth of Sound and Storytelling Out of Paper

For 'Inside There Falls,' artist Mira Calix has created a large-scale paper ellipse that marries sound with structure and storytelling.

Images courtesy of the artist. Photos by Jana Chiellino

Some people have what Oasis's Liam Gallagher once called “sun-she-yine."  Composer, sound designer, and audio sculptor extraordinaireMira Calix, is one of them. Having just hopped off a 24-hour flight from the UK, fueled by copious cups of Sydney’s finest coffee, the sound artist is keen to tell a story.

Having originally established herself as a composer musician on indie label Warp Records, Calix released her third studio album Eyes Set Against The Sun earlier this year, and continues to create contemporary art pieces alongside her music. Her latest piece, Inside There Falls, takes the form of a shimmering white labyrinth and invites audiences to individually explore and create their own narratives from hidden pathways made of paper.

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As she puts it, “the walls literally speak,” as music by Calix, narration by Hayley Atwell, and dances performed by Sydney Dance Company dancers and Associate Artists—choreographed by Sydney Dance Company’s Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela—converge into a fully immersive experience at Carriageworks, one of Australia’s leading and most innovative contemporary art spaces.

Calix explains that the proposed work is a large-scale paper ellipse “that sees cascading paper streams falling from the rafters and walls and come to life with music and movement.” But more than just a mix of paper, wires, hidden speakers, sound, narrative and abstract space, her work is ultimately about telling a story.

“It's a way of sharing ideas, emotion and meaning with others,” she says, “it's the composition and articulation of our most personal thoughts and imagination.”

Currently in a shipping container en route from her studio in the UK, there is only a rough plan to look at and no work to physically walk around as yet, so our metaphorical chat around the campfire (coffee shop in the exhibition space) seems to tie in rather nicely with Calix’s idea of conveying a story through a story. The odd picture on her iPad helps along the way.

“I am telling you a story about the work that will be” she says, “It's something we have done across cultures from the beginning of time. I think we feel the urge to share and will continue to use every device available to us in order to convey and express the very things we find so hard to articulate. We create, improvise and embellish in order to make ourselves heard. It seems to be a human instinct.”

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The 1.5 kilometres of hand-crushed paper, something Calix calls “processed paper,” took a month and a team to complete. These restructured papyrus drapes will act as speakers for the music that will ooze from its pores, a layering of metaphors and creative dimensions that aim to both titillate and lead the audience. In this way, Calix is much like an author writing a novel.

“While I was folding paper I was working on the score and then soldering. It’s like a huge game of Tetris. I am creating a work about storytelling in which I am telling a story and the audience are there to participate by interacting with the narrative that I have laid out with the materials.”

So much of social media stems from this drive to share stories, whether it is with photos on Instagram or tumblr, film on Vimeo and YouTube or with the most minimal of words on Twitter. It is something which Calix is keen to touch upon.

As she takes another sip of coffee, she flicks her iPad screen from a photograph of her working in the studio to her favourite app called The Wider Image to her website via a Facebook page, dismissing a phone call from London along the way.

Calix believes we are narrating, “our own lives, thoughts and feelings” and that we “edit, frame curate and choose to share” these with the rest of the world. “So many of us are now participating in fiction building, creating characters and narratives, it seems to me the art of storytelling is simply taking a new form, while we build new languages to pursue this most ancient of needs.“

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“Alongside these most recent storytelling devices and gestures we continue to share the book at bedtime, perform plays, make films, sit around the campfire and so on. Storytelling is something we just do, fantastical or simple, local or global.”

Inside There Falls opens January 8, 2015 at Carriageworks, as part of the Sydney Festival. It was commissioned by Brett Clegg, Gretel Packer, Simon and Catriona Mordant and is supported by the Packer Family Foundation.

Related:

Chris Milk’s "The Treachery of Sanctuary" Unveiled At London's Digital Revolution

Augmenting A Disused Railway Tunnel With Light And Sound

Mira Calix: Nothing Is Set In Stone (2012)