Being There For A Long Time To Come

Gus Franklin’s The Edge of Forever

catalogue essay - Warnambool Art Gallery, Warnambool, 2025

The title of Gus Franklin’s sound installation highlights something that might be missed by those who experience art galleries through a primarily optical lens. The Edge of Forever indicates a metaphysical nexus of space and time—of how a border connects to an expanse beyond barriers, to a limitless field which is measured not in distance but in how long it would take to traverse its terrain. Gus’s work here—a site specific audio created by processing localized sonic elements—originates from a heady spatio-temporal mix of real-time sound recordings of multiple locations whose spatial interconnection is reconfigured as a series of temporal overlays via Gus’ processing, synthesis addition, and track laying. That sounds complicated (because it is) but put simply, The Edge of Forever is comprised of multiple sounds sourced from a variety of spaces encountered at different times, all of which are combined into the gallery space to allow the visitor to experience sites and times beyond the physical walls of the gallery.

The Edge of Forever addresses something beyond the normative category of ‘field recording’, which is essentially the documenting of a soundscape in a fixed, specific place. The history of soundscapes and acoustic ecology provides an import discourse on how active listening to an environment can reveal much about its current circumstances and the aura through which it creates a sense of location to a visitor or inhabitant of a specific terrain. Yet the act of going into a place and assuming its ‘natural’ appeal can be neutrally or essentially documented raises a range of anthropological, ethnographic and even ethical issues related to the occupancy, legacy and heritage of a supposedly ‘uninhabited’ natural zone. Just as all natural acts and artefacts are a priori overlaid by cultural contexts, thereby rendering them ‘unnatural’, the desirous notion of a ‘natural environment’ is freighted with the specious logic that a space devoid of human intervention is somehow a prime indicator of its natural essence. This of course ignores the non-humancentric, multi-species existence that constitutes a space’s livelihood; and it equally disregards the cultural heritage of peoples whose connection to a land—like Gus’ title—extend beyond normative notions of time and space.

This is where The Edge of Forever gets particularly interesting. For like so many ‘Australians’, Gus—a local from the region—is an intergenerational interloper within the greater framework of indigenous space. Of this, Gus is well aware: his sound installation is not about the totality of this region, and instead focuses on a poetic invocation of his limited embodiment within the area. That Gus is widely travelled internationally (through his key involvement in the successful band Architecture In Helsinki, among his many other musical projects) fuels his contemplation of the region following his eventual resettlement in his family’s childhood locale. For many Australians not of indigenous heritage, travelling overseas often enables them perspective on this colonial nation once they ‘return home’. And for an increasing number, this entails doubting and re-evaluating the notion of ‘home’. Both Australian and indigenous artists in the contemporary sphere are in the midst of an exciting period seeking to artistically express these complex socio-political and multi-cultural formations; The Edge of Forever contributes to this ongoing conversation.

By chance, I happen to have experienced many times one of the locations important to Gus: the craggy bottom line of small beaches and coastal reserves west of Port Fairy, facing the Southern Ocean. From there, you can draw a vertical line south and hit Antarctica. The waves, the spray, the dumps, the gales, the clouds, the horizon, the light, the dark, the rumble, the whistling, the salt, the sand. No singular element takes hold of the senses when standing on the rocky shore line at low tide during blistering winds. The terrestrial and the stratospheric merge: it’s like visceral weather and physical temperature converge to create a sensurround of climatic frequencies. Frankly, it’s impossible to convey or capture—and that’s precisely what The Edge of Forever conjures forth. Gus takes that coastal strip and a variety of spatially connected environs from Port Fairy to Portland and reconstructs an imaginary experience of his return to their grounds and skies. By processing his acoustic recordings and simulating them through electronic synthesis, Gus transfigures the material in acknowledgement of how Nature escapes the manifold definitions laid upon its body, and how his own memory and sensation of those places is an overwhelming meld of past incidents, current assessments and future ponderings. As such, he is on the cusp of realization of where he has come from, while accepting that the mystery of his embodiment here will stay for a long time to come.

Text © Philip Brophy.