Hum live at RE:FLUX 20
Credit: Marc Bones LeBlanc
Thanks so much to RE:FLUX 20 and Galerie Sans Nom for organizing this festival and inviting me to perform. This performance was the debut of a structured-improv live soundscape work called Hum, which took place on May 31, 2025 at Salle Bernard LaBlanc at Moncton's Aberdeen Cultural Centre.
I had an amazing time attending the RE:FLUX 20 festival and felt so accommodated by the lovely folks who worked so hard to organize this thing. I was able to witness some excellent performances and artworks that left me feeling inspired and curious about the world. I saw some old friends and made new ones and had the pleasure of good conversation at every event I attended. Honestly it has been a dream of mine to perform at RE:FLUX since I was a kid and I can confidently say it was everything I hoped for and much more. It makes me so happy to know there are folks in New Brunswick who want to share the strange sounds of the world! It brings me life!
Developed during a residency at Fredericton’s Charlotte Street Arts Centre, Hum is a soundscape performance that draws on months of field recording inside the 140-year-old building, documenting its creaking floorboards, resonant stairwells, rehearsal rhythms, and subtle seasonal shifts. These recordings are transformed live through real-time electronic processing into a sound collage that centres the abstracted, resonant stories embedded in this community hub. By treating the building as both instrument and archive, Hum seeks meaning in acts of attentive listening—revealing how place, memory, and community are inscribed in sound. The performance is meant to push beyond passive hearing, encouraging deep listening as a way of engaging with surroundings and the textures they hold. Hum opens a space for reflection on how sound can alter our understanding of where we are and where we’ve been.
Développée lors d’une résidence au Charlotte Street Arts Centre , Hum est une performance de paysage sonore qui puise dans plusieurs mois d’enregistrements réalisés à l’intérieur de ce bâtiment vieux de 140 ans. Ces captations documentent les planchers qui craquent, les cages d’escaliers résonantes, les rythmes des répétitions et les subtiles variations des saisons. Ces sons sont transformés en direct grâce à un traitement électronique pour créer un collage sonore qui met en lumière les récits abstraits et résonants ancrés dans ce lieu. En traitant le bâtiment à la fois comme instrument et archive, Hum explore le sens que l’on peut trouver dans l’écoute attentive — révélant comment l’espace, la mémoire et la communauté sont inscrits dans le son. La performance invite à dépasser l’écoute passive en encourageant une écoute profonde, comme manière d’entrer en relation avec son environnement et les textures qui l’habitent. Hum ouvre un espace de réflexion sur la manière dont le son peut transformer notre perception des lieux que nous habitons — et de ceux que nous avons traversés.
Composed and performed by Charles Harding
Video recorded by Nathan Finnamore and Marc Bones LeBlanc
Audio recorded by Léandre Bourgeois
Video and audio edited by Charles Harding
RE:FLUX Festival
https://www.festivalreflux.com/
https://www.festivalreflux.com/programmation20
Le festival de musique expérimentale et d’art sonore RE:FLUX met en scène l’éclatement des frontières sonores par l’expérimentation et invite à puiser dans les failles des normes musicales pour y trouver de nouvelles possibilités d’expansions sensorielles. On y réinvente la musique telle que nous la connaissons, cherchant une raison d’être tout en la fuyant. RE:FLUX est un projet annuel du centre d’artistes autogéré Galerie Sans Nom.
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RE:FLUX explores new frontiers in sound through experimentation and invites spectators to explore the space between musical conventions in order to find new sensorial possibilities. The festival offers an experience that transcends all expectations by reinventing music as we’ve come to know it, seeking its purpose without ever finding it. RE:FLUX is run by the Galerie Sans Nom artist-run centre.
Charlotte Street Arts Centre
https://www.charlottestreetarts.ca/
The Charlotte Street Arts Centre is a unique community of entrepreneurs in the arts, culture and wellness sectors, as well as provincial arts and culture organizations, and individual artists in a wide variety of disciplines (music, dance, new media, visual arts, etc). The Charlotte Street Arts Centre facility is a registered nonprofit charity.
The Charlotte Street Arts Centre officially opened for business as an arts facility in 2005, and in 2006 became part of the Local Historic Places Register (municipal). The Charlotte Street Arts Centre acquired Provincial Historic Site status in 2009.
In 2008, the Foyer, front staircases and landings on two floors of the CSAC were officially established as the Charlotte Glencross Gallery (in honour of founding member Charlotte Glencross who passed away October 2007). Regular exhibitions are featured in this space and have been since 2006. In 2009, as part of the City of Fredericton/ Canadian Heritage Cultural Capitals 2009 projects, they developed their backyard into a Culture Garden, featuring high caliber outdoor installation art.
