Photo by Ben D Woods
PRIMORDIAL
A journey through time, to the first signs of animal life on Earth
A SERIES OF DOCUMENTARIES AND PERFORMANCES
In 1946, fossils of the planet’s first multicellular animals were discovered in the Flinders Ranges
mountains of South Australia. Evolving almost 600 million years ago, these Ediacaran
organisms were soft-bodied creatures, like jellyfish, which rarely are preserved in rock as they
lack skeletons. Yet these ancient species defied expectations, with their bountiful remains
appearing at over two-dozen sites from Brazil to Ukraine.
When composer Constantine Koukias and pianist Gabriella Smart visited the Ediacara Fossil
Site in Australia’s Southern Desert, they were captivated by the layers of sediment built up over
millions of years, both smothering and preserving these monumental relics. The seismic
phenomenon inspired PRIMORDIAL’s initial form: a live piano performance combined with a
recording by Smart, captured at the site in May 2021, and Mischa Duncan Te Pas’s original
sound-design tape. Creating a visceral listening experience, Koukias’s composition conjures a
haunting and fragile landscape which reflects an archaic continent.
Now, in a series of documentaries and performances, PRIMORDIAL expands to further re-
enact and interpret the shifting tectonic plates that formed these spectacular signs of past life.
Beginning in 2024, the creative team will visit 11 additional Ediacara fossil sites around the
world where Smart will record the work in situ, as she first did in Australia. Every performance
will create another stratum of the work and will be accompanied by a short documentary film
featuring each site’s unique landscape. The culmination of the project will occur in late 2027,
with a performance featuring all 12 layers and a feature-length documentary.
Producer: Constantine Koukias
Piano: Gabriella Smart
Director: Robin van Erven Dorens
Writer & Researcher: Charles Shafaieh
Commissioned by The Hon. Christopher Schacht & Soundstream new music
“Koukias’ sharp and at times fragile music miraculously reflected this vast landscape on the edge of the Australian desert”
— Thomas Tamvakos, Archive of Greek Composers, 2020
2024
Tanafjorden, Norway
Charnwood Forest, UK
Huangling Anticline, South China
2025
Wernecke & Mackenzie Mountains, Canada
Newfoundland, Canada
Death Valley/ White Inyo Mountains, USA
Sonora, Mexico
2026
Corumba, Brazil
Farm Aar & Farm Plateau, Southern Namibia
2027
South & Central Urals, Siberia
Dniester River, Ukraine
2023
February 26 | MONA FOMA Festival, Australia |
2022
October 18 | Nassaukerk, Amsterdam |
October 31 | Cultural Centre, Novi Sad, Serbia |
November 1 | Dom Kulture, Belgrade, Serbia |
2021
May 20 | Burra, South Australia |
May 21 | Melrose, South Australia |
May 22 | Blinman, South Australia |
May 23 | Warooka, South Australia |
May 28 | Port Augusta, South Australia |
May 29 | Whyalla, South Australia |
May 30 | Port Lincoln, South Australia |
July 31 | Nexus Arts, Lion Arts Centre Adelaide, Illuminate Festival |
November 26 | Hackett Hall, WA Museum Boola Bardip, Presented by TURA |

Constantine Koukias
Producer
Constantine Koukias is an internationally acclaimed composer, opera director, and producer based in Amsterdam since 2013. Originally from Tasmania, where he co-founded with Werner Ihlenfeld IHOS Music Theatre and Opera, he has built a distinguished career spanning over three decades, with projects presented across Europe, Australia, North America, and Asia.
Koukias’s work is distinguished by its innovative fusion of large-scale music theatre, opera, film, and installation art, often exploring themes of migration, identity, and human rights. His productions are recognized for their striking spatial and temporal designs and their integration of diverse musical traditions, including Byzantine, Latin, and Eastern influences.
Major international commissions include ICON for the 20th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House and The Barbarians, inspired by Constantine Cavafy, which was commissioned by the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Koukias’s avant-garde approach to opera has resulted in groundbreaking productions such as Days and Nights with Christ, To Traverse Water, MIKROVION, The Divine Kiss, Tesla – Lightning in His Hand, and Prayer Bells, which premiered in Chicago. Other notable works include Kimisis – Falling Asleep, which has toured the Netherlands and Australia, and Before The Flame Goes Out, performed at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and other major European museums.
Recent projects include the film noir opera Deep Black Sleep for MONA FOMA, the film opera Shaped by Trees (in collaboration with Biasino William Pezzimenti), and the international documentary-performance series PRIMORDIAL, exploring Ediacara fossil sites worldwide.
Koukias has received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Valentino Bucchi Vocal Prize in Rome for Incantation II for soprano and digital delay, the Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship for his contributions to music and opera, and The American Prize for his direction of Backward from Winter. He also won ABC Radio’s Gallipoli Centenary Composer Competition with Three Episodes from the Diary of Signaller Peter Ellis. His opera The Barbarians was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best New Opera. His work has also been recognized in the field of design with the Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) and the Australian Interior Design Awards for the production of The Barbarians.
Beyond his artistic achievements, Koukias is recognized as a passionate collaborator and advocate for social justice initiatives.

Gabriella Smart
Piano
Pianist Gabriella Smart is a leading advocate of new music. Touring extensively in Australia and internationally for over 30 years, she has premiered over 80 new works for solo piano in Europe and China. Her expertise and leadership as an Australian representative artist has been recognised with numerous awards and grants including a Helpmann Award, a Churchill Fellowship, an Arts SA Fellowship, a Prelude Composer Residency, and, in 2019, an APRA AMCOS Award for Excellence by an Individual. As an improviser, she has collaborated with numerous acclaimed artists including Lisa Gerrard, Brian Ritchie, Cat Hope, and Paul Grabowsky.

Robin van Erven Dorens
Director
Robin van Erven Dorens is an independent filmmaker from Amsterdam. He makes documentaries, films on commission and music videos.
His documentary Ik ben een zwarte beeldhouwer (“I am a black sculptor”) is a poetic quest for the imagination and inspiration of the Amsterdam artist Nelson Carrilho, who expresses his African origins with his bronze sculptures. In this time of polarisation, Carrilho feels the pain of the colonial past and transforms this pain into monumental statues.
The documentary In Groove We Trust is a cinematic expression of the musical spirit of Joseph Bowie: the foreman, singer and trombone player of Defunkt, the eccentric, highly influential New York based hard-core jazz-funk band from the 80s. Starting off as a regular music documentary, with a lot of live music, this film appears to be a search for the definition of ‘groove’. The story line takes many surprising twists and therewith passes along many aspects of Bowie’s inspiration, his character and his musical ambitions. While themes like heroin addiction, racism, personal responsibility, buddhism and commercialism in music come along in often humorous scenes, Bowie is shown as a man of great contrasts.
Robin also made documentaries about the visual artist Hilarius Hofstede and Former USSR leader Michaël Gorbachov, among many other projects. Currently he makes video’s for musicians and for the Nederlandse Bach Vereniging (Dutch Bach Society).

Photo by Rahi Rezvani
Charles Shafaieh
Writer & Researcher
Charles Shafaieh is an arts critic and journalist whose writing on theatre, visual art, literature, architecture, film, and music has appeared in The New Yorker, The Financial Times, Artforum, The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and Mastermind, among other international publications. An editor at large for The Brooklyn Rail, he regularly contributes to Harvard Design Magazine and Opera News. For the Brooklyn Public Library, he co-curates LitFilm, an annual film festival which focuses on documentaries about writers. He is based in Paris.