Aarti Jadu and Joli Boardman will illuminate Darebin with lasers, lights and sonic dreams on September 20 as part of FUSE Festival.
If you’ve visited the Darebin Arts Centre before, you won’t recognise it on September 20. As part of Darebin’s FUSE Festival – running from September 14 to September 22 – musician Aarti Jadu and creative technologist Joli Boardman are teaming up for a very special performance that will light the Darebin Arts Centre alive in an extraordinary display of visuals and sounds.
“This work aims to represent the inner world,” Aarti says about the highly anticipated show. “It’s exposing and projecting my inner thoughts outwards. Joli’s practice is instrumental to bringing that to the audience as they journey with me and the music.”
As they prepare for their show together at FUSE Festival – a celebration of local artists and performers across the City of Darebin – Aarti and Joli are creating an experience that transcends the ordinary.
Aarti Jadu and Joli Boardman at FUSE
- With Nikodimos and his Orchestra
- Friday, September 20
- Darebin Arts Centre
- Tickets here
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“We’re both really driven and moved by sound and visuals; these two elements are sort of inseparable,” Aarti says. “It’s a great interest of ours when we work together to creatively play with the format of the stage to become as scenic and immersive as possible.”
This performance isn’t just a show. It’s a transcendental journey through space, light and sound that expands the boundaries of imagination. “I definitely feel like colour and light in particular can greatly move us and our inner worlds and feelings,” Joli says. “Extending that sonic space into the visual spectrum is a really organic, aligned process.”
“Extending sonic narratives”
The pair have been supporting each other’s practices for a while, developing a synergy that’s evident in their collaborative work. For their performance at FUSE, the show will seamlessly integrate sound and visual elements, blending their distinct practices into a cohesive, explosive show. “It came quite naturally to extend the sonic narrative into a visual form,” Joli says about this particular collaboration.
Also joining Aarti and Joli will be their friend and musician, Emma Ovenden, who will be on synth and vocals for the performance. Following Aarti and Joli’s set, Nikodimos and his Orchestra will also be hitting the stage, presenting an exploration of unorthodox orchestra music that is both deep and profound.
“The lyrics are soliloquies”
Aarti and Joli’s performance will centre around the concept of exploring the world under the horizon line. “The beginning musical themes of the work, for me, conjures the feeling of underground water and the elements of water with earth,” Aarti says. “The lyrics of the music are soliloquies, affirmations and prayers to the self and god. Those kinds of thoughts that you tend to keep in private or vulnerable spaces, [that] are not often shared.”
“The icon of that [subterranean] world is the rat,” Aarti continues, “which is fearlessly and very romantically the most interesting hero of the underground world. They are about themselves and kind of display a narrative that is very much solo journeying, even within stories like Chinese Mythology.”
“An unexplored modern form of magic”
Joli adds that as well as the music, the visuals and lights will also be explored through the lens of the rat. “[We’ll be] visualising the perspective of the rat journeying from dark spaces,” he says. “Bringing the audience through this damp environment until surfacing to see the first sights of the sky at dawn break.” Through lasers and visualisations, the performance will present themes of darkness and duality, interacting with the music in a dreamlike way.
“Lasers are really a relatively unexplored modern form of magic,” Joli says. “Sending photons in this precise ray, giving some metaphoric weight to a massless particle; having precise, soft, yet sharp direct control of light feels like some wizardry.”
Wizardry at work
While the lasers and light may seem like some kind of wizardry, Aarti and Joli are the true magicians behind this intersection of innovative wonders, working hard to stretch the limits of their audience’s imaginations. Even still, Aarti points out, as sometimes also in magic, less is more.
“I really want to harness the simplicity of Joli’s aesthetic in this piece,” Aarti says. “[By] making all the elements very essential and spacious, similar to the music style. And when those minimal elements come together at the right points it creates intent and a different power.”
“We are putting feelings first”
Despite the limitless possibilities of creative technology, Aarti believes that staying true to the work’s intention is what will give it meaningful weight. It’s a piece that is anchored by authentic ideas over superfluous technological quirks.
“We are putting the story, the artwork and the feelings first,” Aarti says. As technologically mind-blowing as Aarti and Joli’s piece will be, it’s the heart at the centre of the work that will stay with you long after the performance is over.
You can get tickets to Aarti Jadu and Joli Boardman at FUSE Festival here.
This article was made in partnership with City of Darebin.
