Brad Darkson’s multimodal practice is often informed by his Anglo-Australian and Narungga First Nations heritage, as well as his background in music production. From this perspective, Hold Me encompasses ideas of ritualised human behaviour, memory, identity and technology by way of the expanded fields of architecture, and channels them through sound. In a public-facing work, listeners are invited to pick up an old-style domestic Telstra handset — recognisable to all Australian residents of a certain time — situated in Fenn Place and other city locations. Through the handset’s receiver we hear his score evoking our interactions with the architectures of bureaucracy. How long and to what end the listener waits is a part of this experiment in patience and frustration with a system that keeps users removed and disengaged from their social agency, while highlighting the divide between domestic and bureaucratic structures.

2020 Adelaide//International catalogue with essays by Robert Cook, Ross Gibson, Rachel Hurst, Gillian Brown and Andy Butler.

Listen to an audio description of the work.