Sound: Razia Aziz and James Wilkie

Text: Dulani Kulasinghe

This poem is against forgetting. 

‘In Balance, This Life’ highlights the personal and colonial histories that led to the presence in WWI Europe of the 53 men memorialised by the Chattri. The poem links their lives to those of other men of empire – from across Africa, China, Ireland – who served alongside them.

In Balance, This Life

It shimmers in the mourning light

this white marble funeral umbrella

holding the memory of these 53

so few in war and yet, if you love even one, so many.

What makes them so hard to see?

Is it how all the stories rush us at once?

What do we remember here?

In the uprising of 1857

race myths imposed meet

race myths homegrown.

Suspicion, inequality, then the spark –

rumour of pork and beef in the mouth of belief –

and empire is skewered on a million bayonets in

first Indian, then many 1000s more British hands.

Loyalty is hard to hold –

who deserves protection,

who destruction? –

in the midst of rage.

In so much blood who would not slip?

Belief in the martial races changed

the shape of the fight.

Two generations later

in that dark drenched soil

grows the many headed god of war fed

emollient images of injured soldiers

in the caste-correct gilded fishbowl of the Royal Pavilion

rolls of barbed wire out of sight

of eyes fixed on the march

from the subcontinent’s north and northeast –

Western Punjab to Rawalpindi

Jhelum to Kangra to the Kingdom of Nepal –

to Marseilles then

on to

Ypres

Givenchy

Neuve Chapelle.

And these men write how

bullets and cannonballs come down like snow

more thickly than drops of rain

of bodies as

leaves falling off a tree, no space remains on the ground

plums fallen and lying in heaps

and those who survive as

the few grains left uncooked in the pot

Some fought for King-Emperor

some because crops failed

some to marry

some because they married

No two the same – one and a half million reasons – as singular as us.

And lest we forget how wide is this empire of brothers –

sons fathers uncles nephews too –

remember this

20,000 Caribbean men of the British West Indies Regiment

31,600 Black Central and East Africans of the Kings African Rifles

70,000 Black South Africans of the Native Labour Corps

100,000 men of the Chinese Labour Corps

Can we hold the whole

in our hearts minds bodies at once?

We must be clear who we mourn

and honour here

the heaviest grief –

the one we entrench by not acknowledging

is this –

empire sent them all

for its own ends

to their deaths.

Mourn the world order that created the conditions

from which that war grew.

See too our natural human impulses on contact –

fascination, attraction, curiosity –

set against the indifference of empire.

I glory in the sudden influx

the mix

the tumble change and charge.

How can I not rejoice?

I am here because they were here,

their longing seeded my belonging.

Remember the world in the war

See all these brothers at arms

Look east to Caribbean brothers

brought from other islands to Seaford

19 never left that chalk.

Look northwest to

19 Muslim brothers buried deep

shrouded in respect

and brambles in Surrey soil.

Where might they have met?

France?

Egypt?

Mesopotamia?

Syria?

Or after all, in some other element –

flesh in fire turned to ash on this Sussex hill flesh buried deep in Surrey

drifting on earth, holding sun and

air rain, drawn up into trees

out to breathed out into

sea air

we hold them

we begin

together

Dulani Kulasinghe

Sound Notes Razia Aziz

Challé Gayé - A journey in sound, song, words and music

By Razia Aziz & friends

Complete concept notes: Concept Notes

1.Song of the Sea

2. Chants of the Faithful

• Om bhur bhuvasvaha… - Hindu (Sanskrit)

• Surah Fatiha, An-Nur (excerpt), Al-Ikhlas, An Naas, Al-Falaq - Muslim (Arabic)

• Ek Onkar – Sikh (Punjabi)

• Namo Tassa… - Buddhist (Pali)

3.A Street Musician Starts to Sing: ‘Kis ko ma’loom tha? / Who would have known?’

• Stanza of an Urdu ghazal – poet unknown

4. Lament - Final March: ‘Challé Gayé / They have departed’

• Villagers’, soldiers’ and sweethearts’ lament

• They have departed

• Mother, father, friend and beloved, we have gone far away

• I will sit and wait for you, my beloved

• Military/funeral march

• Composed by Razia Aziz

5. Honouring the Departed

• In honour of all the World War One soldiers of the Purana Desh whose mortal remains were committed to fire here, and those buried at Brookwood cemetery

• Names of the departed in alphabetical order.

  Still, the Water Falls

6.A song of spiritual reconciliation

Composed by Razia Aziz

7. Street Musicians return to bring the departed home: ‘Na to Karvaan…’

• Na to Karvaan ki Talaash Hai by Sahir Ludhianvi

• Based on the qawwali by Manna Dey and Asha Bhosle

• ‘I seek neither a caravan nor fellow traveller: my ill-fated desire lies in seeking Your path’

8.Song of the Sea

9.Poem in response to the site by Dulani Kulasinghe In Balance, This Life

10. Song of the Sea

Translation of Recitations (in recorded order)

Om bhur bhuvasvaha (mantra) We meditate on the Glory of the Creator; Who has created the universe; Who is worthy of worship; Who is the embodiment of Knowledge and Light; Who is the remover of all error and ignorance

Qur’anic verses: Surah Fatiha Praise be to the One God, Lord of all the Worlds; the Beneficient and Merciful; Ruler of the Day of Recompense; Thee do we worship and to Thee do we turn for help. Guide us upon the straight path – the path of those upon whom You have bestowed your favour, not those whose portion is wrath or who have gone astray. Surah An-Nur (excerpt) God is the light of heaven and earth: the similitude of His light is as a niche in a wall, wherein a lamp is placed, and the lamp enclosed in a case of glass; the glass appears as it were a shining star. It is lighted with the oil of a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east, nor of the west: it wanteth little but that the oil thereof would give light, although no fire touched it. This is light added unto light. God will direct unto his light whom he pleaseth. God propoundeth parables unto men; for God knoweth all things. Surah Al-Ikhlas Say “God is One, Indivisible; the Sustainer, self sufficient, needed by all; Who has never had offspring nor was born; and there is none that can be compared to God”. Surah An Naas Say “I seek refuge in the Lord of humankind, the Sovereign of humankind, the God of humankind; from the evil of the retreating whisperer who whispers into the heart of humankind from among the jinn and humankind”. Surah Al-Falaq Say “I seek refuge in the Lord of the daybreak from the evil of whatever He has created; and from the evil of the night when it is dark; and from the evil of those who cast curses; and from the evil of the envier when he envies”

Ek Onkar (mantra) There is One God; Whose Name is True; the Creator, without fear, without hate, timeless and without form; Beyond birth and death; Self-existent; realised by the Grace of the True Guru. Meditate upon the Name; God was True in the timeless beginning; God was True when ages began; God is True now; Nanak says “God will for evermore be True”

Namo Tassa… (mantra) I pay homage to the Exalted One, the Worthy One, the fully Enlightened One.

Translation of Songs (in order of play)

Kis ko Ma’loom tha?

Who could have known before the journey’s end was due,

Like the flowers of the seasons you, too, would change your hue?

And that grieving for times gone by,

Only memories would remain, while time would fly!

Challé Gayé

Chorus: They have gone, they have departed

Soldier/s: Mother, father, friend / beloved, I have gone far away

Sweetheart/s: I sit here, waiting for you, my beloved / intimate companion

Na to Kaarvaan ki Talaash Hai

I seek neither caravan nor fellow traveller

my ill-fated desire lies in seeking Your path / the path to You

Your Love is my desire; your Love is my honour

My heart is love, my body is love, and my life is love

If you ask after my faith, then that too is love

How could I ever leave your love?

That love is what I have been searching for my whole life

Credit:

With valued contributions from: Alex Moody (snare drum), Barinder Kaur Gohler (Ek Onkar), Cassie Aziz-Few (cello),

Dominic Rai (names of the deceased), Hamida & Khalid Aziz (vocals),Imam Dr Salah Al-Ansari (qur’anic recitation), Madhu

Malhotra (Hindi lines – sweetheart), Neal Bland (trumpet), Sheila Auguste & Edi Mandala (vocals), Ustad Fida Hussain Khan(Hindustani musical consultation) and Anuja Sharma (home front).

Baluji Shrivastav OBE: Sitar, Dilruba, Hindustani Musical Direction

Yash Kummar: Tablas, Vocals

Peter Middleton: Creative Direction, Audio Production

Sound notes James Wilkie

This QR code takes you to a video of James talking about the work.

Credits

With valued contributions from: Alex Moody (snare drum), Barinder Kaur Gohler (Ek Onkar), Cassie Aziz-Few (cello), Dominic Rai (names of the deceased), Hamida & Khalid,Aziz (vocals),, Imam Dr Salah Al-Ansari (qur’anic recitation), Madhu Malhotra (Hindi lines – sweetheart), Neal Bland (trumpet), Sheila Auguste & Edi Mandala (vocals), Ustad Fida Hussain Khan (Hindustani musical consultation) and Anuja Sharma (home front).

Sound: Johanna Bramli and Ingrid Plum and Gene Pool

Text: Georgina Aboud

Brighton’s Marina car park is rumoured to be a place where migrants and refugees can find themselves as they navigate passage. Writing from a universal perspective, this piece aims to reflect the extraordinary difficulties and uncertainties that people face in leaving their homes and trying to create lives in strange lands.

From one life

to another

Men arrive, or threaten to, or man-made devices sniff

and trip, or food ceases, or crops fail, or someone doesn’t like

what you believe or who you want to love.

You leave at night quickly, with or without your family,

your lover, your community. You leave with the skin on your back,

your bank balance strapped to a thigh, clothes fit only

for a single season. You may walk, or run, or lie silently

in vehicles crossing borders drawn on maps, overstepping

imaginary borders, personal borders. And you travel for many months,

a tour of intercontinental ditches and beatings, and the money

dwindles, if it isn’t lost to others. Men take the rest

or you pay in other ways, and on something as flimsy

as a bath toy, in winds to spin compasses

and water, cold enough to leave you

and the sun without breath,

you are tangled in the immorality of a shipping lane. The stories

are known, the foreign newspapers always offer photos.

But, not of you. Because you find yourself here.

Creasing wind, trying to fold air again and again

your shoes clack on the stairs, bone-white walls and then

sky.

Sour meaty gulls circle, there are many feathers in your mouth.

The sea is soft now, holiday-ready but for the shore machinery

pushing pebbles, splitting land. And you echo

everyone who has stood here before, in this bully boy

of a car park, defiant, who thinks he can contend with the sea,

who parades vehicles to the oceans, and pushes back

nature, holding it in his concrete hands. You have come

from a boat that tells you otherwise, that spells it out in

whispers or roars: I could eat you.

You sift through new language. Your homeland’s name

found in a gleaming clean TV studio, in the islands of print in hard

of hearing letters. And you wait to discover if you can return,

whilst not knowing if you can stay

here, in this limbo. Your heart is halved, lungs too,

one kidney is carried, whilst another resides with the ghost version

of you that is still in your home. And maybe you return by choice, or by force,

and maybe you don’t, or can’t, and this city laden with all its good intentions

and contradictions becomes home.

As time passes, maybe there are glimpses of possibility,

of you using your vast talents, your clever eye,

ready with both hands to mold a strange newness.

Sometimes you will be struck by beauty,

or laughter. Fragments of humanity:

community table tennis in what locals in the know call pinglish,

tock – Hello!

tock – Alright?

tock – Yeah, Alright!

Here: the delivery of a prayer mat, phone credit, a toy

so soft, it is stitched by your kinder god. Directions provided,

thoughtfulness on public transport. A flannel, soap.

You understand in a roll of different dice, you are

here for a food shop, a pizza date, chivvying your kids

to the cinema. You, a child falling through air to land

on a trampoline. And, you think about all the people you have had

to be to get this far, all the parallels that exist side by

side, and the rails people jump across, if they can,

from one life to another.  You will still measure the sea


in teaspoons and desire the sky netted, yet juggle the magic


you wish to hotly handle, and bury the threads

of electricity that keep you awake at night.

With fingertips in the dark you seek a door,

which swings on hope.

Georgina Aboud

Sound Notes Johanna Bramli and Ingrid Plum

Invisible Voices looks at the tension offered by the unique Brighton Marina site: where the land meets the sea; entertainment meets functionality; the brutal meets the organic; degeneration meets regeneration; pride meets shame; the continent separates from the island..

Fragments of intertwining stories and sensations allow the environmental 

elements to collide and align in effervescent formations. The invisible voices of the landscape dialogue to build into a series of segments exploring the dynamics that push and pull in this place: the sky and the cement; the sea and the shingle; the scaffolds and the supermarket. 

In this collaboration between Johanna Bramli and Ingrid Plum, the environment is the 3rd collaborator through recordings of the environment mixed with text scores extracted from Georgina Aboud’s Global, local; vocals and electronics. Warm voices and glacial synth lines accompany the onlookers through a choreography of harmony and tension contemplating what was meant to be and what might soon become. In unison, clusters, and harmony, we move forward through the precarious present to a new horizon that encompasses all of the brutal truth, and the beautiful fantasy, of the Marina. www.johannabramli.comwww.ingridplum.com

Sound notes Gene Pool

As our contribution to Witness Stand, Gene Pool have responded to the interwoven relationship between the natural and artificial alongside Brighton’s coast and, as Brighton natives, to growing up by the sea.

The 30 minute performance consists of a reworked set of original songs, which draws upon found sound, improvisation, and resonant lyrical themes.

Many of our tracks reference the sea as a symbol of turbulence, calm, death and decay, rebirth and acceptance. Our current collection of new songs focus on the theme of house and home, and explore the structures that we inhabit, protect and always return to.

The West Pier site is a symbol all these things - home, conservation, new life, and a point of return - and the Marina a place of un/welcoming, childhood and new opportunities.

Witness Stand has encouraged a deep dive into the place we call home, and reflection upon the spaces we as locals may often overlook as beautiful.

Sound: Thor McIntyre-Burnie, Mrisi and Gene Pool

Text: Zaid S. Sethi 

I have known the West Pier ever since I was a child, picnicking with my family on days out at the seaside. An icon, I can’t imagine Brighton without it! Like my parents with unshared memories, it bears the scars of lived experience which have made me who I am. 

Ode to West Pier

Shall I remember as you once were

When millions came to savour

Moments of forgetfulness.

Or, remember as you are,

Memories of my grandmother.

Who, old, like you, sat squat-large,

Booming laughter, infused with spice,

A squeeze of blue cloud lemonade.

When you were young, one of two,

Rowdy, roaring loud, screaming joy

Drowned the sound of guls and waves.

‘Piccadilly by the sea,’ someone said.

No more fires to destroy the rest,

Your rusted dreams wait to crumble.

But all who die, leave a trace.

The Chain Pier did, and you will too.

Do the old still have some to hear

I remember stories of the poppy-war

When felicity danced and countless died,

Of gangland wars when Pinkie thrived.

Now, in our age of enlightened minds

We don’t kill others, instead,

We climb pillars on a dare, or fish,

Or swim to touch an icon without a plaque.

For those who scowl at the dark side,

The i360, smug trespass on your land,

Nods to an archived future.

For those who hope, there are dreams

Of achievable fantasies.

For those who love, sentimental

Starlings smile in shape-sweeping clouds, and,

Brighton rock will never change.

When nature dismantles what’s left of you

A solemn burial of ravaged remains,

And the Kiosk marks your having been

We’ll excite tourists with one more thing.

While those of us who know

Will marvel at the reef which grows below,

Mussels, whelks and kelp, and barnacles,

Guarded by a scorpion fish, and me.

Zaid S Sethi

Sound Notes Thor McIntyre-Burnie

I used to live by the West Pier and became fascinated by how watching the starlings gather at sunset over this ephemeral place became a kind of vigil or phenomena to bare-witness-to, for so many people.

20yrs ago I negotiated an Artist Residency with the West Pier Trust, who were brilliant, allowing me access to document & play with it and its’ inhabitants, remarkably just before and as it stooped, burned and collapsed into the arms of the ocean.

I wanted to capture 24hrs of the Pier and so collaborating with wild-life-sound recordist Chris Watson, we rigged an array of mics within the vast concert hall, capturing height and space, from details like roof hole starling departures to wide binaural ambience. Recording from the dawn departures; to awesome dusk arrivals; into a strange midnight ballroom scattered with flutters & squarks and rotten windows lamenting in the sea-breeze, as deep waves rumbled beneath a vast mass of bird poop.

We created a kind of Ghost Roost installation, migrating to Stockholm’s Fylkingen, Wilton’s Music Hall , Farnborough’s Wind Tunnels and yet never back to Brighton. So, I’m cracking that archive open a little, to revisit a place where time & place bends and where birds perhaps fly just for the thrill of it.

www.aswarm.com

Sound Notes Mrisi

My pieces are an amalgamation of emotions, sounds and times in my life. 

Using a mix of traditional and modern sounds I created a piece in which the soundscape relates to sounds that I’ve heard growing up and sounds from the current era.  My other pieces are a journey into specific points in my life and a commentary on things I observe in life through the medium of rap piano and singing.

I hope the journey I take you on will not only show you who I am as an artist but will give you some insight into my experience as a British & South African man growing up and living in Brighton and in England.

Sound notes Gene Pool

As our contribution to Witness Stand, Gene Pool have responded to the interwoven relationship between the natural and artificial alongside Brighton’s coast and, as Brighton natives, to growing up by the sea.

The 30 minute performance consists of a reworked set of original songs, which draws upon found sound, improvisation, and resonant lyrical themes

Many of our tracks reference the sea as a symbol of turbulence, calm, death and decay, rebirth and acceptance. Our current collection of new songs focus on the theme of house and home, and explore the structures that we inhabit, protect and always return to.

The West Pier site is a symbol all these things - home, conservation, new life, and a point of return - and the Marina a place of un/welcoming, childhood and new opportunities.

Witness Stand has encouraged a deep dive into the place we call home, and reflection upon the spaces we as locals may often overlook as beautiful.

Text: Akila M Richards

This poem is for the elements that constantly surround. It is for the elements speaking for themselves in relation to each site of the Witness Stands. A snapshot of their ever shifting ‘livity’. Allow yourself to sit and become still. Listen and let yourself be witnessed as being a-part, of becoming a metaphor.

PORTAL’S

Portal

I gather hot from the cold plunge and form in a crowded mouth

of a storey car park,

hang from railing’s lips, spiked by metal teeth into birthed clouds –

I belong to infinity.

I am the portal of air

I wash off salty boundaries, un-muted life glistens in my liquid

veins - pathways into earth’s terrain.

Let my rhythm rock the boat and expose muddy

hope in my sweeter return.

I am the portal of water

I store up terror and prayers, until they crumble the slaughtered

into jewels - my seeds.

Rain, weep into my deep. Let volcanos tremor, land break

and release. I resurrect peace.

I am the portal of earth

I am the kernel, melt metal and ignite the rebel. I crown the heart,

the worker’s art

and artist’s hunger. I am the soul of this globe, give light and destroy

the old for new growth.

I am the portal of fire

I open dimensions, rust the pillars of life into fleeting murmuration. Past

and future connect

these waves to the horizon’s gaze. This memorial charged with dreams

feeds eternity.

I am the portal of time.

I dance in stillness, rise in each breath and dawn; colour the landscape, divide

the sea and free

humanity. I am the whisper, the storm, rich and poor, defy logic, I have

no motive. I am love.

I am the portal.

Akila Richards

Notes from Maddie and Tim

It has been a great privilege to make this work with the artists and communities who we gathered. We remained in Australia, creating remotely from the sites, calling in from the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. This has required a great deal of trust from all of us: the knowledge of the safe hands and ears in Brighton has made it all possible.

How do we understand where we are through listening?

From across the city, drifting over land, sea and forgotten sites, comes an invitation to gather, sit and listen together. 

Australian artists Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey have commissioned a community of writers and sound artists with a connection to Brighton to design sound works that respond to five specific sites that reverberate with ancient, recent, and future stories of the city. 

Each chosen site is a place where we can experience the confluence of past and future, the ebb and flow of time and tide. Places that hover around dereliction and renewal, separation and coming together. The Adur Estuary at Shoreham-by-Sea, the Chattri, the West Pier, East Brighton, and Brighton Marina will all be linked in a physical and aural network. We will gather together with the artists, on simple seating stands, to contemplate vistas that we rarely pause properly to see, to spend time together in a place where the site is both companion and performer. 

This unique perspective merged with an immersive soundscape, live performance and each area’s natural ambience, gives us the opportunity to look outwards and consider what it means to be here now, what it meant in the past, and what it might mean in the future. A chance to witness, together, exactly what it is that makes these places so unique.

Credits

Concept and direction: Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

Lead writer: Akila M Richards

Artists: Razia Aziz, Johanna Bramli, Thor McIntyre Burnie, Ed Chivers, Scott Smith, Emma-Kate Matthews, Gene Pool, Quinta, Ingrid Plum, James C Wilkie, Mrisi

Writers: Georgina Aboud, Jenny Arach, Sheila Auguste, Dulani Kulasinghe, Zaid S Sethi

Cultural Consultants: Dave Searby Mason, Richard Bickers, Davinder Dhillon, Richard Williams, Katie Sollohub, Rachel Clark

This ongoing project has been created and developed with Live Umbrella Finland and Bureau of Works; assisted by the Australia Council for the Arts, Vitalstatistix, Dark Mofo, and the APRA/AMCOS Art Music Fund. Witness Stand was originally commissioned for Perth Festival 2021.

This season was commissioned and premiered at Brighton Festival 2022.

https://brightonfestival.org/whats-on/witness-stand-4545/

It is also available to listen on site of the stands via the Echoes App. Search for Witness Stand Brighton on Echoes to find the five sites. After each site is performed live, traces of the works appear here. Until then, there are prologues at each site. Or here’s a link https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/BEsbaQNT6loGjaBG