REQUIEM FOR NATURE
Open Field Art Festival, Berry NSW, 2025
The merging of ritual and advocacy — sound as protest, as grief, and as sacred act — calls us to bear witness, to feel, and to protect what remains.
Requiem for Nature is a sonic lament that weaves bird calls, death wailing, and whispered testimony into a ceremonial offering for the more-than-human world. Commissioned to accompany Janet Laurence’s A Court Requiem for Nature, 2025, this piece honours cultural “sorry business” practices while giving voice to the dispossessed — human and non-human alike. Beginning in a hush of breath and birdsong, the soundscape builds into a crescendo of wailing and guttural expression, before returning to the mournful melody of a classical lament. Whispered lines emerge like ghosts in the courtroom, fragments of silenced voices rising within the folds of Janet’s veiled installation, flowing through fabric and light. Originally exhibited in the historic Berry Courthouse, the work transforms a colonial site of judgment into one of reckoning and remembrance, where nature speaks and is heard.
Multichannel sound, vocalisation
Duration: 10:22
Composed, written and performed by Nicole Smede
Mixed by Damien Lane