Sounding the Farm: Zemzemeh (Siyavash Doostkhah and Greta Kelly)
ARTISTS: Zemzemeh (Siyavash Doostkhah and Greta Kelly)
LOCATION: The Citadel, Murwillumbah
WHEN: Sunday 28th June. Two shows at 2pm and 4pm
LINKS: https://zemzemeh.au/
Sounding the Farm is an environmental sound installation by Zemzemeh, created from recordings gathered on farms in Doon Doon and across the Tweed region. Cattle calls, birdsong, insects, gates, footsteps, wind, water, machinery, and the subtle pulse of daily labour are reimagined through spatial audio, looping, layering, live Persian instruments, and electro-acoustic transformation.
Presented through a multi-speaker system surrounding the audience, the work invites listeners to sit or lie down, close their eyes, and enter an acoustic landscape where distance, movement, memory, and place are carried by sound. Moments of realism dissolve into abstraction; the familiar becomes musical, intimate, and strange.
Often seen but rarely listened to, farmland holds a rich sonic ecology. Sounding the Farm reveals these hidden textures, asking us to hear rural life not as background, but as a living conversation between humans, animals, weather, and earth.
Zemzemeh is a cross-disciplinary sound and performance project by Siyavash Doostkhah and Greta Kelly, working at the intersection of environmental sound, traditional instruments, electronics, and spatial performance. Their practice draws on field recording, electro-acoustic composition, and site-responsive performance to explore themes of place, memory, ritual, and cultural continuity.
Zemzemeh’s work engages deeply with natural and human-made environments, treating sound as both material and storyteller. They have collaborated on numerous large scale immersive performances, multi-speaker works and site-specific sound interventions, frequently developed in dialogue with landscapes, communities, and informed by lived experience.
Siyavash Doostkhah brings a background in experimental music, sound design, and socially engaged arts practice, while Greta Kelly contributes unique instrumental techniques and extensive co-composition and producing experience . Together, they create works that are immersive, reflective, and grounded in listening as a political and ecological act.
Zemzemeh’s practice is informed by a commitment to artistic integrity, environmental awareness, and cross-cultural dialogue, producing contemporary sound works that invite audiences to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with the worlds they inhabit.