Step inside the Urban Theatre Projects’ BLAK BOX and experience the First Peoples concept of ‘deep listening’. Based on oral storytelling, silences and the spaces in between, deep listening is a practice to develop respect and community building.

From within a state-of-the-art surround sound space, listen to a powerful suite of First People’s stories commissioned by Urban Theatre Projects’ BLAK BOX curator Daniel Browning. Browning is a respected journalist and broadcaster on ABC Radio National and from the Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far northern New South Wales. The works respond to the past and future of the Barangaroo site, Australia’s next cultural precinct and creative stage for leading-edge public art and programming.

The inaugural BLAK BOX program is titled humechochorus (hum echo chorus) and features oral history, interviews and spoken word performances ranging from the historical and factual to the imaginary and speculative. These works will sit alongside evocative original music, field recordings and excerpts of the Sydney language. Together the pieces offer a curated soundscape for the mind in a stream of consciousness blending stories of the past (echo), the present (hum) and an imagined future (chorus).

BLAK BOX is an ambitious project designed by renowned architect, Kevin O’Brien. He is of Kaurereg and Meriam descent and known globally for drawing on Aboriginal concepts of space in his work.

The world premiere season comes to Barangaroo in June for three weeks with sessions limited to an intimate experience of only 30 audience members at a time. The 2018 world premiere project marks the beginning of a three-year partnership between Urban Theatre Projects and Barangaroo Delivery Authority, with a suite of new art and sound installations commissioned on Barangaroo Reserve each year at the same time until 2020.