An incredible season across 12 sites in the City of Casey.
July 2026.
Casey Megaphones : A Reflection
MF TH July 15 2026
Sound installations tend to have a finite life, especially when conceived as “permanent”. If they broadcast materials in public they require ongoing attention, which is rarely considered in a maintenance budget. And sound being ephemeral means that once a speaker falls silent it is probably forgotten, in contrast to a visual piece, which remains noticed, perhaps increasingly anachronistic as its original context changes, or its intended appearance degrades.
Until last December, we had thought that our Megaphone Project was a treasured memory of situations over the past twenty years of our practice, until the City of Casey (Brad Spolding, Matthew Hoy) asked us to bring them into the teeming context of South-East Melbourne (Naarm), with its 160 community languages, its compelling East Kulin understanding of this place of gentle slopes and wetlands, and its furiously extractive recent history.
The Megaphone Project is a little hard to explain as a piece. We often get asked by the public (usually parents and carers) “What’s this all about?”, while those in their care get stuck into a gleeful interpretation of contemporary art of their own. We have a tagline “creating situations for listening”, or how to make it a welcome and welcoming act, and lend your ears to listen.
Listen to what? We listen in many situations. And listen in different ways, according to time spent (the “dwell time”), the material of the sound (recorded, spoken, ambient, composed, warned, gifted … ), and our own agency or stake in the material (my own voice, the voice of someone’s expertise, the voice of my treasured friend, the music of birdsong, music, earworms and everything else). So how do we listen to a city of nearly half a million people? Or at least create the invitation to lend an ear to the place.
We planned for the installation to visit all twelve wards, to cover off on inclusion in the geo-political sense. And we spent six months on a learning mission. Given that there is an opportunity to hear voices of a location, in their location, with a public license to pop up, there is then the opportunity, or obligation to make conversation with people from that location. Not really an interview. We have no prior agenda for who talks, or what might be said. Our broad questions regarding a description of where we are, and what it might sound like, or what you might like about this place or another place in Casey only create a space for someone to speak. From their own located expertise and experience. About anything.
We looked at Dean Stewart’s map. Maybe everybody should. To imagine your own place as it once was, not so long ago. We even had our own understanding of the place through our personal histories. We looked at the documentation of a recent Casey/Cardinia history, giving us pause to reflect on the extent of colonial activity.
We requested sessions with particular characters, often suggested to us by the City of Casey producers. The process takes several months,involving a familiar gathering of materials through testimony, that is often the initial phase of a variety of different cultural/artistic outcomes. A podcast will reproduce longer excerpts of what a person may say. The transcripts or summaries may form part of a blogpost, document, documentary, or book. A sensational and very brief excerpt may destroy a career or become a meme. The “research process” is really a part of the outcome, establishing relationships (however temporary) and a kind of on-the-ground-work.
From the conversations, our megaphone outcome assembled an emergent cohort that included crossing supervisors, ecologists, volunteers, choirs, maternal health nurses, librarians, environmental educators. Then, when we popped up in the various locations around Casey, their voices were heard through twenty-two of the megaphones. The mix of voices was a soft murmuring, punctuated by musical materials and sonic textures. A soundfield that sat just below the ambient soundscape in level, depending on where you might be listening. Many children ran to shout, then stayed to listen. And many also returned. Some people stayed to listen to all megaphones in turn. Some people waited to hear their own voice. The field of individual red horns that are widespread visual symbols of sound reinforcement, provoke a field of listening. A pop-up situation in place. We can listen to the overall, or focus on an individual source. We create our own mix.
Three long weekends and two Wednesday’s worth of intense engagement with twelve different parts of Casey has given us a particular and intimate sense of the city and its people. We encountered a pride of place across different communities, a willingness to engage with us and the installation without any sense of prior judgement. People danced. People sang. We shared the Year Six pride in a netball ring slowly embedding into the bark of an ancient tree. We hosted a bandicoot and had a philosophical discussion around education and language with a retired Gujarati school teacher. The Samoans all recognised their song. We learnt that people create their own festivals. We observed hardship, steadfastness and joy, in equal measure, without a negative incident at any time. We sensed the functioning of a complex multicultural city, and concluded there is nothing not to love about cultural diversity, if you choose to hear from all.
Our local council commission also engaged with a complex local council organisation. Through our process we discovered doors that were newly-opened to artistic and cultural enquiry, and other regions of the city structure that remain unknown to us. We also worked with remarkable council workers who already knew the possible, probable, or impossible, and who co-created the multi-voiced textures across the twelve wards.
Our time across Casey has been finite, like life and the ephemerality of sound. We cut our time in Tooradin short as the South Westerly gale blew squalls across the mangroves, creating whistle tones in the red horns, and we just made it out before the storm. As an elder once said, “you lean into the wind”. So, as we heard and observed in our brief sonic interlude with Casey, we can lean into the winds of change, in one of this country’s fastest changing localities.
And to about twenty or so Council staff, 100 local experts, and around 2,500 visitors, producers Meg and Erica, production manager extraordinaire, Kirsten, the artists and local artists David Wells, Gulsen Ozer, Cristina Perra, Lily Ludner, and Rachel Main, thank you all for co-creating a new situation for listening. Big thanks to Brad and Matt for the trust and invitation.