The Cube - Broken Chord

Broken Chord

Jen Valender

Working with the premise of a broken chord—a chord that is deconstructed into notes played separately—a fractured composition is performed with a disfigured cello for the fire damaged forests of the Blue Mountains.

The artwork aims to re-imagine troubled ecologies between human-nature relationships through ruptured song. It may be read through multiple lenses that of colonisation, feminism, isolation, phenomenology, coexistence, trauma, loss and life cycles.

How do we discuss difficult things while keeping in tune? This is an emotional engagement with the complex history and scars of a landscape. It positions art as a navigational tool to work through dissonance and to find the points at which harmony sits, strikes or sings.

Artwork details

Jen Valender, Broken Chord, 2022, Five channel video, 4:30min  DoP & film editor: Gene Alberts

View other works in this exhibition

Under Soil & Skin #1-4 - a series of sculptures in the Discovery Ports

External Score - a sound installation on the North Wall

The Violin Does Not Play the Bow - a video that screens after dusk in The Node