Josh Grey Jung
Unravelling

‘Unravelling’: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Process, Processing and Self Plurality.

Unravelling is an auto-ethnographic album exploring the 'self as process'. Through the mediation of voice, using various performance and production techniques, and postmodern approaches to narrative construction, the project weaves songs, poetry, instrumentals, rap, and voice-note recordings, seesawing between obfuscation and revelation, in an attempt to move 'beyond the binary' and embrace a plurality of 'selves'. The album presents a non-linear timeline of personal memories and reflections and explores the themes of isolation, addiction, temporality, self perpetuating narratives, and the myth of male invulnerability. Its constituent parts, like the miscellaneous tiles that make up a mosaic portrait, are as much the result of idiosyncratic influences, unique and personal to me, as they are representative of the postmodern experience and the fragmented nature of the present.

As an attempt to document the 'self as process', Unravelling is a successful failure. Its failure lies in the fixed nature of its presentation - its 'finishedness' - the reason it will remain forever unfinished. It is a stills camera attempting to capture a moving image, its start and end points immortalising a moment in time that no longer exists. Paradoxically, its success lies in this failure and the emergent knowledge generated by the process of its making and completion. Regardless of its potential for commercial 'success', Unravelling is, first and foremost, a personal triumph, from its public displays of self-deprecation to the self-affirming properties of its noisy aesthetic. It documents a profoundly intimate journey to finding my voice, a process of inward reflection and outward expansion, which attempts to distill the jumble of divergent and contradictory parts of myself and extract a pure essence. Yet through the course of Unravelling's production, I came to realise this quest for a concise and singular voice was misguided. When refracted through the prism of time, the 'self' is dispersed and revealed as a multiplicity of 'selves' (Cooper/Rowan, 1999: 2). Similarly, the elusive 'voice' I had been searching for was revealed through the chorus of discarded voices I found along the way.

About Josh Grey Jung

Josh Grey-Jung is an electronic musician, filmmaker and audio-visual artist. He recently completed an Mmus in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths. His extended practice includes field recording, sound design, installation, sculpture, photography, documentary and music. In 2021 his short documentary Rubie, a portrait film of musician Rubie Green, was premiered by Sonic Scope Journal. In 2019 his work ‘The Reservoir’, an A/V installation exploring memory and inherited trauma, was exhibited at the London Group Open Show and awarded the Victor Kuell Prize for innovation. In 2018 his work ‘Edges of an Urbanised River’, a site specific A/V installation responding to the Hooghly River was exhibited at TransArts Festival in Kolkata, India. In 2017 he created the sound design and score for ‘The Turning of Leaves’, a multichannel A/V installation exhibited in the Union Chapel, London. His forthcoming album Unravelling marks a new direction for him musically. Drawing inspiration from his training as an Existential Psychotherapist, the autoethnographic project explores ideas of process, processing and self plurality.

Website: https://www.joshgreyjung.com/