Back to the Islands

Back to the Islands is a micro FM radio composition and performance bringing transformed field-recordings from the Magdalen Islands into Montreal’s Parc Frédéric-Back. It reflects on human relationships to one another and to multiple sites of environmental change.

During the radio walk visitors are given portable radios to carry as we make our way through the Boisé section of the park. A limited-range transmission is diffused through the radios. As participants move through the park the sonic space shifts depending on the relative positions of the multiple radios, and on the fluctuating signal strength of the transmission.

Using nearly obsolete technologies, the radio walk is an invitation to traverse an ex-quarry while listening to recomposed sounds of erosion from islands over 1000 km away.

This performance questions our changing relationships with distance, space, and the fluctuations of environments.

Back to the Islands by Samuel Thulin is part of “Manual for a New Neighbourhood”, by curator Eric Mattson.