New music group Clocked Out—percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson and pianist Erik Griswold—has been stretching the perceived boundaries of music for over 10 years now. Their first coverage in the published archive of RealTime is in an article from 2001 by Alistair Riddell on Virtuosic Visions, a series of concerts at the Melbourne Museum where Tomlinson impressed with her signature performance, “Dear Judy,” a solo for balloon, dedicated to American composer Judy Dunway (RT42).
Shortly after, Keith Gallasch commends their appearance at the Sydney Spring New Music festival (RT46), stating that Clocked Out “proved to be the most idiosyncratic concert of the festival, a striking and original fusion of minimalist and jazz (and other) impulses realised in piano (Erik Griswold) and percussion (Vanessa Tomlinson).”
What has been consistent in their output over the decade through their is a sense of play in cmbination with serious exploration, drawing influences from a wide range of sources yet somehow maintaining a clear focus. Russell Smith interviewed the couple in RT55 in which he states: “the remarkable thing about Clocked Out Duo’s performances is not so much their wild eclecticism, but the way they maintain a strange cohesiveness and integrity.”
This sentiment is echoed in a more recent review by Greg Hooper of the CD Foreign Objects in which he writes: “There are strange overlays—Griswold might play something dark and rhythmic on piano whilst Tomlinson sounds like she is walking around in a Foley room tapping whatever feels right. This is a real strength of an excellent CD—the coherent layering of consistent and inconsistent attributes into a coherent soundfield that is both abstract and concrete.”
The key to this might be found in their dedication to exploratory processes as stated by Tomlinson in the RT55 interview: “Whether it’s balloons, prepared piano or conventional instruments, the working process is the same. Often it’s a case of one of us coming up with a musical idea, and the other failing to understand it. Then it becomes necessary to push it and play with it until it becomes something we can both work with.”
Clocked Out is based in Brisbane, but have collaborated extensively within Australia and internationally. In RT85 Greg Hooper praises their efforts in bringing the music of little known French-Sovenian composer Vinko Globokar to Australian audiences. Their collaboration with Chinese composer Zou Xiangping from Chengdu in the Sichuan province is praised by Keith Gallasch both as a performance (RT90) and its translation to recording.
Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Clocked Out
photo Prue Upton
Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson, Clocked Out
In the last few years Clocked Out have begun presenting concerts with interstate ensembles, essentially expanding the touring network. Through their Trilling the Wire Series they’ve mounted concerts with the Soundstream Collective (Adelaide), Decibel (Perth), Golden Fur and Quiver (Melbourne) and Ensemble Offspring (Sydney). Their efforts have not gone unnoticed—in 2011 they won the Award for Excellence by an Organisation or Individual for their annual programs as well as the Queensland State Award in the inaugural APRA/AMC Art Music Awards (see RT103).
But a tangible quality of the duo remains humility. As Greg Hooper stated in his RT107 review of the Trilling the Wire series in reference to a typographical feature of the program: “Lower casing the title fits nicely with Griswold’s music and public persona (strengths as far as I’m concerned).”
Finally this archive collection also allows us to highlight the writing of one of our favourite reviewers, Greg Hooper, who, as Brisbane correspondent, has covered many of Clocked Out’s activities. Hooper’s open style and wit, yet incisive criticism makes for accessible and pleasurable reading, truly capturing the spirit of the artists and their endeavours.
qbfm feature 2003 (currently not online)
high times
greg hooper:?topology, clocked out duo?australian, contemporary music market showcase,?spiegeltent, south bank, july 24
earbash cd reviews
clocked out the wide alley
September 20, 2010 online e-dition
clocked out foreign objects
September 7, 2010 online e-dition
sound sample
soundcapsule #1
featuring clocked out
December 2009, online e-dition
In addition to the free ongoing compilation series feeding those of us who are hungry for what’s new and curious in Australian music (see review of Vols 1 & 2), the New Weird Australia project also releases a series of limited run CD editions (with free downloads) highlighting the work of particular artists.
One of latest in the series comes from two fellows who, despite their youthful appearance, have already created a significant impact through both their live performances and releases in various other guises. Tom Smith has been masquerading as Cleptocleptics for the last few years, recently changing his ‘stage name’ to Thomas Williams, while Marcus Whale plays prolifically as Scissor Lock and is one half of the pop duo Collarbones (with Travis Cook). They first teamed up for a New Weird Australia benefit gig and have continued to collaborate, with Jewelz being their first EP.
Thomas Williams' work is heavily sample based, while Scissor Lock is known for his gritty swathes of feedback and lo-fi vocals (see Silent Hour review RT103), and while you can hear each artist’s particular signature in the compositions, Jewelz is particularly impressive for the way in which their styles seem to meld into a texturally complex, atmospherically rich yet still essentially melodic sound.
“Cadillic” eases us in with a slightly awkward, lilting melody of mashed sounds. It’s clearly a sample, but of what remains vague; instead it offers a patina of nostalgia—not for the original piece of music itself, but for the early sound of sampling. The rhythm is joined by half-hidden vocals—a cool pop whine—yet the sibilances are distorted, the words buried in grit.
The title track “Jewelz” is the standout. It’s an eight minute adventure starting with what seems to be a melodic fragment referencing Laurie Anderson’s “Born, Never Asked,” but played on tortured instruments, snipped and tucked into uneven phrases until it transforms into a repetitive, degraded nasal stab (a reference to “Oh Superman”?). This is enveloped in escalating sheets of noisy feedback and grit giving way to a childlike chanting of muffled vocals, delayed and cannoning between the left and right field until they fade into flutter distortion.
“Omega” displays a similar fluidity in structure as a loose, breezy sample loop is increasingly stretched and twisted, melding into orchestral crescendos, shifting to hints of beats and eventually disintegrating. “Qusqu” is a structurally simpler affair: a gradual escalation from the hiss of punched-up gain through to heightened fuzz and a growing harmonic bed underpinning wistful vocals, with, once again, that inevitable disintegration.
Jewelz is aptly named—a little treasure. But not in the shiny conspicuous way of precisely cut and polished gems, rather the intrigue comes more from the strange geological forces at work—the melting and compression—that has gone into forging each of these raw sound compounds. Each sonic fragment making up the music is a curiosity, the samples alluding to something—a song, an instrument, a texture—almost recognisable but ultimately remaining elusive. These are then crafted into a set of songs that have enough angularity to offer a challenge, but essentially are still a pleasurable listen.
Canberra duo Spartak have been making a name for themselves outside their hometown through a rigorous touring schedule from which this album is a result, containing a series of tracks recorded live during a recent trip to Japan.
Spartak is Shoeb Ahmad on guitar, electronics, clarinet and vocals, and Evan Dorrian on drums, percussion, field recordings and voice. The duo has a distinct improv feel, particularly evident in the impressive playing of Dorrian, so the live recording format feels like a fitting way to capture their sound.
The album starts with a fragment—“Lover’s Distress” seems like the middle two minutes of an improvisation, introducing us to the sonic territory of swirling guitar figures and artfully scattered percussion, with an occasional feedback swell.
“Snowflake Reflection (opening)” also seems to start someway into the session, after the musicians have established some material. Small guitar arpeggios swell out into occasional larger melodic fragments, the easy-listening guitar sound surrounded by tremors of agitation from Dorrian’s cymbal spatter and drum rumbles with floating electronic textures and samples. The excerpt takes us up one gear from ambient and then cuts dead, into the next track.
On most of the tracks on Nippon, the electronic and augmented sounds seem to sit outside the instruments, a shell-like coating rather than meshing and melding with them. However on “Channels” the swelling, sheering sound is hard to decode—possibly field recording, possibly percussive friction, possibly guitar pedal emanation, perhaps all of these. A distant melody and a small rhythm, slowly building, give the sense of the insistent yet somehow controlled pace and buzz of Japan’s larger cities.
“Colour is the Night” is the centrepiece of the album. At nine minutes it allows the musicians to travel through a range of territories curtailed in the shorter excerpts. Starting with a small ambient loop of guitar string scratches it evolves into a kind of busier version of a John Fahey guitar line with surrounding waves of shushing cymbals and drum patter—a specialty of Dorrian who can make the individual elements of percussion combine into a shimmering sustain. This track too ends abruptly, merging into “Wire + Water,” replacing the meditative space we’ve just reached with an agitated drum solo, augmented perhaps by reversed drum samples and delicately peppered with electronic bleeps.
The album finishes with another version of track 2, “Snowflake Reflections (Closer),” but this recording seems to be a more lo-fi affair, taken from the room rather than individual instrument feeds. It reinforces the point of the album—that it’s a live document— and while the sound feels very different, it’s worthwhile as it seems a particularly good version of the piece with Evan Dorrian hitting his stride in a rocking drum finale.
Ironically, the through-line of Spartak’s Nippon is interruption. Shoeb Ahmad frequently uses filters that break up his guitar melodies depositing them in more challenging configurations. This effect is also particularly evident on the vocally driven “Rail Start Mode” which includes samples of gospel preaching and insistent vocal moaning—somewhat out of place in terms of content and contrivance. The abrupt beginnings and ends of tracks also reinforce the sense of liveness—we are offered moments, not the whole event. It keeps the album moving, but it makes you wonder if the tracks have a sense of structure beyond gradual expansion since we never get to hear an ending. That aside, Spartak’s Nippon, is a well-paced exploration of live performance as document from an engaging duo.
Gail Priest
anat: echology: making sense of data seminars
A major project for ANAT in 2012 (with key partners Lend Lease and Carbon Arts) will be Echology which will bring together “Australia’s leading artists and urban developers to create data-driven public artworks that engage with serious issues in evocative and playful ways” (press release). The project will draw on the skills of artists such as Julie Freeman (UK), Usman Haque (UK), Joyce Hinterding (AU), Geo Homsy (US), Natalie Jeremijenko (AU/US) and DV Rogers (NZ/AU). ANAT will be conducting a series of seminars around the country where you can meet the artists and find out how you might also participate. Free seminars, registration is essential (click links): Melbourne March 26, Brisbane March 28, Sydney March 29. www.anat.org.au
waterwheel: world water day symposium
Waterwheel interface
Suzon Fuk’s Waterwheel project will be streaming the World Water Day Symposium which will include 50 participants—scientists, artists and professionals from five continents presenting and interacting with people at Sousse University in Tunisia and at UCLA Nanosystems Centre in Los Angeles. “The symposium will promote exchange between all those who are, for various reasons, concerned with water issues, land management and hydraulic infrastructure, for a better sharing of knowledge and governance” (press release). You will be able access the symposium via The Tap—an online, real-time venue and forum, workshop and stage for live networked performance and presentation. World Water Day Synposium, March 22/23 http://water-wheel.net/
4a contemporary asian art: the cola project
He Xiangyu, Skeleton (2010), jade, installation view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, courtesy of Pearl Lam Gallery, Shanghai
photo Zan Wimberley
He Xiangyu, Skeleton (2010), jade, installation view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, courtesy of Pearl Lam Gallery, Shanghai
In case you were in any doubt, cola (specifically branded or otherwise) is evil black stuff. Chinese artist He Xiangyu has found the perfect exemplification by poetically referencing the dissolving tooth-in-a-can urban legend. He Xiangyu worked with factory workers to boil down thousands of litres of cola over a year which eventually transformed into black carbon like crystals. He then ground up this substance to use as inks in paintings in Song dynasty style. With these paintings he also exhibits a life-sized jade skeleton that has been eaten away by the distillation of the drink. He Xiangyu, The Cola Project, 4a Contemporary Asian Art, March 16-May 5; www.4a.com.au/he-xiangyu-cola-project/
sydney chamber opera: in the penal colony
While John Cage is posthumously turning 100, Philip Glass is alive and kicking and celebrating his 75th birthday. In his honour the Sydney Chamber Opera will present the Australian premiere of his 2000 work In the Penal Colony. Based on a short story by Kafka it presents the tale of man forced to witness an execution administered by a machine. True to the company’s name, the production is intimate, performed by two singers, one actor and string quintet, while Glass’ “hypnotic repetition resonates powerfully with Kafka’s nightmarish vision of imprisonment, torture and execution” (press release). Sydney Chamber Opera, The Penal Colony, by Philip Glass, The Parade Theatre, NIDA, Kensington , April 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 7.30pm; www.sydneychamberopera.com
contact, the arts centre, melbourne
Contact!, The Arts Centre Melbourne
Another soon-to-premier music theatre work, but one with surprising subject matter, is Contact! Written by Angus Grant and directed by Cameron Menzies, Contact! was the key work chosen go to full production from the 2011 Carnegie 18 series of music theatre works in-development, part of a special initiative set up by The Arts Centre and The Australia Council (see RT102). Contact! focuses on Australia’s most popular women’s sport, netball, exploring the highs and lows of the Hyatt Park Rangers under-21 team. While a comedy at its core, the work explores “suburban life, the claustrophobia and the comfort of staying within your boundaries, the dynamics of all-female organisations and the danger and rewards of contact” (press release). The full-length work will feature some of Melbourne’s most exciting young operatic talent from Opera Australia, Victorian Opera and the VCA. After the premiere season in the Melbourne, Contact! will also be touring regionally throughout Victoria, where it’s sure to score. Contact!, Fairfax Studio, The Arts Centre Melbourne, April 11-14, 17-21, 24-28, 7pm , April 13-15, 21-22, 28-29, 2pm; www.artscentremelbourne.com.au
The 2012 Carnegie season of new music theatre works in development will be reviewed in RT108 April-May.
Now in its 13th year and with Rhoda Roberts currently at the helm, Message Sticks has expanded from a primarily screen-based festival to become a multi-arts celebration of Australia’s indigenous cultures. Highlights include Dancestry, free daily performances incorporating ritual dance and song described as a “modern day corroboree…embracing the history, spirituality and psychology of connection to country” (website).
Those amazingly successful ambassadors of song The Black Arm Band will also be presenting their new project dirtsong, in which the songs take the form of conversations between the artists “conjuring not only a sense of geographical place but encounters, memories, obligations, community and nature” (website).
There’s also two days of free films from Australia and Canada, including Ivan Sen’s recent feature Toomelah (see RT104) as well a free daily exhibition Under the Beach Umbrella, celebrating the courage and tenacity of the Tent Embassy protests.
An extensive screening and talks program rounds off the festival and, courtesy of Sydney Opera House & Message Sticks, we have 1 double pass to give away for each of the following sessions:
Margaret & David at the Black Screen
Wednesday 28 March, 7pm
One double pass
Join Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton as they delve into the small and large screen of Black Cinema, commencing with a screening of Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith featuring Tommy Lewis.
Living the Intervention
Thursday 29 March, 7pm
One double pass
Screening of the powerful documentary Our Generation, chronicling the Yolngu people’s ongoing struggle for land, culture and freedom, followed by a candid panel discussion on the impact of the 2007 'intervention' on all Australians today.
Tent Embassy and Identity
Friday 30 March, 7pm
One double pass
The 1970s were a renaissance period for Aboriginal people, politically, socially and culturally. Essential services and Aboriginal controlled organisations were established, political movements swayed governments and many legacies were created. Forty years on what has a new generation inherited?
What’s the Fuss in the Kimberley?
Saturday 31 March, 7pm
One double pass
The Kimberley landscape, in remote Western Australia, is wild, dramatic and untamed. Some consider it the most beautiful place on Earth. So what's the fuss all about?
Please email onlinegiveaways@realtimearts.net and specify which session you would like to attend.
Please email request by COB March 22. This is a Sydney based event.
The death of Tanja Liedtke at 29, just as she was poised to take on the role of Artistic Director of the Sydney Dance Company, shook the arts community to the core. Liedtke had made such a strong impact with her first two full-length works Twelfth Floor (RT74) and Construct (RT81 & RT83).
Bryan Mason and Sophie Hyde’s documentary Life in Movement, attempts to deal with a sense of both collective and personal loss. The filmmakers had worked with the Liedtke documenting her processes. Following her death they follow Liedtke’s partner Solon Ulbrich, and dancers as they tour her last work, Construct, internationally. The result is a film that is described as a “powerfully rendered take on art and artists, creativity and our own mortality” (press release).
The film has won the 2011 Ruby Award for Best New Work, the Grand Judy Award, Cinedans (Netherlands) and the 2011 FOXTEL Australian Documentary Prize at the Sydney Film Festival. It will open in cinemas nationally on April 12.
Courtesy of Closer Productions & Antidote Films RealTime has 10 double passes (in total) for screenings in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.
Life in Movement, directors Bryan Mason and Sophie Hyde, Closer Productions and Antidote Film, opens nationally April 12; http://lifeinmovementfilm.com/
Based in Lismore, Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) is one the countries most ambitious and innovative regional arts organisations. Their 2012 program consists of over 13 productions across the year, ranging from children’s shows such as ERTH’s magical I Bunyip to the extraordinary physical theatre of CIRCA; from Shaun Parker’s impressive youth dance work The Yard to Finucane & Smith’s saucy Caravan Burlesque.
As well as being an important presenting venue on the east coast touring circuit, NORPA also creates a range of inhouse works through their Generator creative development program. Director Julian Louis says “creating our own home grown theatre, through Generator, that is limitless and adventurous is the heart of NORPA. It’s what our audiences love to see” (website).
In 2011 the Generator program saw the beginnings of a three-year partnership with Southern Cross University to create the Home Project, looking at the specific nature of homelessness in regional Australia, particularly in Lismore. NORPA also created the site-specific work Open House with local acrobatic family Gareth Bjaaland, Bronte Webster and their son Gwyn, performing in, around and on a vacated house.
The next Generator project, just about to premier, is Railway Wonderland which takes place on a platform in the old railway station. Drawn from interviews from the local community, the work sees four characters waiting at the station, ready to leave for anywhere. An old lady arrives and begins to tell her story—that of a young immigrant trying to find her place in this regional town. The devised work is directed by Julian Louis, scripted by Janis Balodis and the performers include the always charismatic Katia Molino, with choreography by Emma Saunders (from the Fondue Set) and music by Michael Askill. It looks to be a captivating journey and worth the trip to Lismore.
photo Dorothy Norman; courtesy of the John Cage Trust
John Cage (Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1973)
“I once asked Arragon the historian how history was written. He said, ‘You have to invent it.’” John Cage, An Autobiographical Statement, 1989
It is hard to dispute that John Cage has had a major impact, perhaps in some ways invented the history of Western contemporary classical music. This year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth, and so it was inevitable that there’d be a variety of commemorative events.
One of the first of these for Australia will be the Cage in Us festival, presented by Clocked Out and the Judith Wright Centre Contemporary Art Centre in Brisbane. This four-day event is commemorative but also involves a healthy amount of reinvigoration and re-interpretation bringing together an impressive array of Australian and international artists.
The festival kicks off on April 5 with a series of films curated by Joel Stern from OtherFilm. Described as Cage-related they include Stan Vanderbeek’s Poem Field No.7 (1967), Jud Yakult’s John Cage Mushroom Hunting in Stony Point (1973), and DA Pennebaker’s Rainforest.
The remainder of the festival takes place April 12-14, opening with Valerio Tricoli (Italy) and Werner Dafeldecker (Germany) performing Williams Mix Extended, a re-interpretation, using digital production techniques, of Cage’s 1952 work for magnetic tape.
On Friday April 13 Swedish Percussion ensemble Kroumata will join Brisbane-based group Ba Da Boom to perform Music for Percussion and Prepared Piano. This will be followed by the Australian premier of Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra performed by Vanessa Tomlinson, Erik Griswold and the Queensland Conservatorium New Music Ensemble.
Decibel performing John Cage’s Variations VII
photo DavideCarozza
Decibel performing John Cage’s Variations VII
Saturday April 15 will see Decibel from Perth, recently returned from their first European tour (see video interview with director Cat Hope) perform the Complete Variations I–VIII. Their epic interpretation will include TVs, projections, photo cells, Arduino, dancers, tape recorders and DIY circuitry along with assistance from Joel Stern to create Variations VII. To conclude Lawrence English will team up with audiovisual artist Scott Morrison to rework, or ‘refocus,’ Cage’s only film work, One11.
Before each ticketed event there will also be free performances of Musicircus, co-curated by Rebecca Cunningham (exist-ence, see RT101), Vanessa Tomlinson, and Joel Stern and featuring installation, exhibition and performance elements inspired or based on the works of John Cage.
Clocked Out and Judith Wright Centre, The Cage in Us, Institute of Modern Art & Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, April 5, 12-14; www.judithwrightcentre.com; www.clockedout.org/
Christian Marclay The Clock 2010, single channel video, duration: 24 hours
The long awaited renovation and expansion of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art is set to be unveiled on March 29, and the celebrations are suitably impressive. The opening exhibition references the long gestation of the museum’s development with the title Marking Time, featuring work by Australian artists such as Daniel Crooks, Tom Nicholson, Lindy Lee and Gulumbu Yunupingu as well as international guests such as John Gerrard (who will also be giving an opening lecture on March 29, 6.30pm; see RT102), Tatsuo Miyajima, Katie Paterson, Rivane Neuenschwender and Jim Campbell.
Coinciding with Marking Time will be the southern hemisphere debut of
Christian Marclay’s all encompassing epic, The Clock. Marclay has gathered excerpts from films across history that reference a particular moment in time, often using the image of a clock face, but also some with less literal means. These are then compiled to create a 24-hour installation that ticks away, minute by minute, in real-time. Of course, because the gallery is closed overnight, generally only half the work is ever seen. But on the opening night and each subsequent Thursday viewers will be able experience The Clock for its full 24-hour cycle—perfect for lovers of endurance art.
MCA has also teamed up with Performance Space who have curated Local Positioning Systems, a comprehensive live art program to celebrate the opening, The aim of the program is to blur “the threshold between the museum and its surrounding environment and communities” by creating participatory, site-specific works in spaces ranging from the first aid room, library and education facilities to the forecourt and surrounding landscape of Sydney Harbour and The Rocks.
Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich Celestial Radio 2004-2012 mixed media dimensions variable
Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich Celestial Radio 2004-2012 mixed media dimensions variable
Bringing a little glitz to the event are UK artists Walker & Bromwich who will create Celestial Radio (March 29-April 15). A small sailing boat will be covered in mirror tiles and stationed on the harbour outside the MCA. The artists will work with local communities to create a soundscape to be transmitted from this sparkling floating radio station.
Julie-Anne Long, The Invisibility Project [performance documentation] 2010. Performance Space LiveWorks Festival, Sydney
photo Heidrun Löhr
Julie-Anne Long, The Invisibility Project [performance documentation] 2010. Performance Space LiveWorks Festival, Sydney
Already attracting attention is Stuart Ringholt’s performative work which is elaborately titled: Preceded by a tour of the show by artist Stuart Ringholt 4-5pm (the artist will be naked. Those who wish to join the tour must also be naked. Adults only). That about says it all, although there are rumours of free cocktails as well (April 27, 28 & 29). On the opposite scale of exhibitionism will be Val, the Invisible (April 7-23) by Julie-Anne Long, a durational intervention in which performance and real life blur as Long indulges in “secret pleasures that are yours and yours alone, the illicit invisibilities that you get away with, while engaged in the business of everyday life” (website).
Also on an intimate scale, Jason Maling is offering to cure gallery goers of their art institution related anxieties—issues ranging from “mild conceptual perturbation to severe relational deficiency” (website). Physician (May 5–18), consists of private consultations with Maling guiding the viewer through a range of “pneumatic rituals designed to activate belief receptors.” Perhaps all museums will soon instigate such a program. (In April Maling will also be presenting another curious adventure – Fuguestate, in Melbourne, http://www.fuguestate.info.)
Lara Thoms, The Experts Project #32 Decorative Toilet Roll Holders, 2010
photo Shirley Robinson
Lara Thoms, The Experts Project #32 Decorative Toilet Roll Holders, 2010
Throughout May, Lara Thoms will be in residence at the MCA Library and around The Rocks area talking to people about their particular expertise, often in under-recognised fields. The Experts Project will culminate in presentations and documentation, including a series of portraits in which the ‘expert’ takes a photo of Thoms dressed as them (May 3, 5, 6, 10, 12 & 13). A version of the work presented at last year’s Tiny Stadiums proved this to be genuinely intriguing project.
Latai Taumoepeau’s i-Land X-isle (May 25-26) promises both visual beauty and a potent political message. In this installation and endurance work, Taumoepeau will perform under large blocks of ice suspended using traditional Tongan lashing techniques. Located in view of the harbour, the work references the effect of the melting of the polar icecaps on Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
The program concludes with something for dog-lovers. Bennet Miller’s Dachsund UN (June 2-3) entails the construction of a four-tiered amphitheatre in the forecourt of the MCA to house 47 Dachsunds representing the member countries of the UN’s Human Rights Council. (See mention of this work in relation to ethics in RT104) The work seeks to explore “utopian aspirations of the United Nations, and our capacity as humans to imagine and achieve a universal system of justice” (website).
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Marking Time; Christian Marclay, The Clock; Local Positioning Systems curated by Performance Space; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; March 29-June 3; http://www.mca.com.au/; http://www.performancespace.com.au/
A SEPARATION STARTS WITH A FACT—THE BREAKDOWN OF A MARRIAGE—AND ENDS OVER A NARRATIVE AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRECIPICE. IN BETWEEN IS A DRAMA SO INVOLVING IN ITS UNEXPECTED TWISTS AND TURNS THAT THE SUDDEN CESSATION OF MOVEMENT IN A PROLONGED, OPEN-ENDED FINAL SHOT IS SHATTERING IN ITS EFFECT. THE SILENCE THAT COMES AFTER TWO HOURS OF EMOTIONAL TUMULT LEAVES US PONDERING HOW THINGS GOT TO THIS POINT. WHO WAS RIGHT? WHO WAS WRONG? ARE QUESTIONS LIKE THESE EVEN VALID IN THE FACE OF LIFE’S ENDLESS COMPLICATIONS?
Fittingly, A Separation opens in a divorce court, but the breakup of Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) takes up only a small portion of screen time. For much of the movie it is merely a backdrop to the more pressing concerns that pile up on Nader following his wife’s desertion. But the differences underlying this couple’s conflict ripple out from the opening scene and flow into the myriad subplots, informing the film’s reflections on moral obligation, class, religion and the pressures of Iranian life.
A Separation
Nader is a man used to being in command. He is proud, a little haughty and lacking in a spirit of compromise. Yet he is also, as his wife admits in the film’s first moments, a deeply committed and honourable person—perhaps too honourable. An unexpected string of events after he is left alone with his ailing father and teenage daughter leads him into a situation where his painstaking concern for integrity could destroy all he holds dear.
Simin is Nader’s mirror image—pragmatic, changeable, indirect. She wants to leave Iran and its “present situation” to give their daughter a better chance at life. Nader accuses her of cowardice and running away from every problem. The pair stand for two ways of living, their outlooks thrown into relief by Nader’s dependent father on the one hand, and the probing, critical eye of their teenage daughter on the other. The needs of the past and the demands of the future weigh heavily on this family and threaten to tear it apart. Yet director Asghar Farhadi’s skilful writing and the constrained, heartfelt performances mean the characters never feel like symbols. They are people with the same spectrum of failings and strengths as all of us, making their trials all the more painful to watch.
A Separation
Farhadi shoots his rapid-fire story with a nervy, handheld camera that reflects the tensions and conflicted loyalties running between characters. It’s as if the lens itself is afraid that everything we see could slip away at a moment’s notice. This is a deeply anxious film, in which no-one is ever allowed sure footing. For all the emotional charge infusing every frame, however, the drama is surprisingly restrained. Farhadi’s performers convey more depth of feeling in a glance, a gesture, an anxious pace, than many films manage in hours of histrionics.
It’s this ability to wring profound questions about the right way to live from dramas rooted in the earthy interactions of common people that makes much Iranian cinema so affecting. There is no need here for heroics, extraordinary situations, bloody violence or mawkish emotion. There’s certainly no need for grandstanding speeches about our common humanity. In its story and characters, A Separation illuminates the common threads of care, love, stupidity and blindness that bond relations the world over. It subtly traces the profound moral questions that lie beneath the small, prosaic choices we make every day. And finally, it shows that clinging to moral certainties can sometimes wound as deeply as vacillation. We can never live without inflicting some pain on others, no matter how honourable our intentions.
A Separation
When A Separation won its well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Film in February—the first Iranian film to collect an Academy Award—Asghar Farhadi used the opportunity to speak out against those who believe the US and its allies should bomb Iran into salvation. Farhadi’s speech merely put into words what his film had already shown. A Separation asks us to question our own hearts before setting standards for others. Although Farhadi’s is not a world without conflict, it’s one in which empathy might just lead to restraint, and remove the self-righteous glow we so often take on as we do damage to others.
A Separation, director, writer, producer Asghar Farhadi, performers Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi, Iran, 2011, distributed in Australia by Hopscotch Films; http://www.hopscotchfilms.com.au
This article was originally published as part of RT's online e-dition march 20.
courtesy the artists, opening night photo Kate Blackmore
Mobile Projection Unit, Snake the Planet!
THE BACK WALL OF SERIAL SPACE IS FILLED WITH A PROJECTION OF A VIDEO GAME, SNAKE THE PLANET!, EMITTED FROM A TARTAN SHOPPING ‘JEEP’ (TROLLEY). IT HAS THE STUDIED INFORMALITY OF A GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB PROJECT (SEE RT103), COMPLETE WITH TITLE IN THE ROUSING IMPERATIVE.
The casual flavour is more potent as the background of its creators, Lukasz Karluk, Rene Christen and Nick Clark (aka Mobile Projection Unit, http://mpulabs.com) who have between them worked on enough high-budget commercial interactives that it is clear they could have opted for a more seamless and slick surface. But for now they are all about insinuating themselves into the crevices.
The game is a homespun version of the arcade classic Snake, whose pixellated arena weirdly traces the shapes of the wall itself. Documentation shows the shopping jeep in the company of a ragged sofa and assorted living room furnishings, touring down back alleys and culs-de-sac, resting, it seems, in this most back-alley of galleries before the tour continues. It’s the enactment of an anecdote from writer and activist Jane Jacobs or social theorist David Harvey on the multiple uses of the sidewalk, but here we’re meshing those earlier democratic urban visions with the arcade games of the creators’ childhood milieu. Or, if you like, claiming that earlier politics for the armchair video game generation questions the idea of such games as a cause of urban alienation, countering with an 8-bit social urbanist manifesto for the next wave of space invaders.
George Khut, Distillery II
photo Kate Blackmore
George Khut, Distillery II
Tracing a different history is George Khut’s piece, Distillery II. Khut’s oeuvre sketches in miniature the evolution of computing machinery, from primordial campus behemoths to the portable experience of modern ubiquitous computing.
The core theme throughout is biofeedback. In Distillery II your physiological signals are translated into minimal, asymmetric rings of brightness on an iPad display, the unconscious processes of life made explicit and external. The hook is the visceral way you have to buy in to the work in order to experience it. If you have taken the time to use the machine’s help to change your very heart rate, then it is a contradiction to claim being unaffected.
As raw as this avowed prototype is, it is more polished than its progenitor works, say, Cardiomorphologies v2 from 2007. In that piece the retrofuturist reclining couch recalled ancient room-filling supercomputers, but this iteration, given the tenor of the moment, is necessarily on iPad app. Your heart-rate is measured by a slimline slip-on ear-ring, the visualisations displayed on a solipsistically personal screen.
One day, Khut explains, this experience could be in sundry app stores; he just needs to work out how to get decent biometric data into the phone. And with that, it looks different to me: not so much a feature on the underground terrain of new media art, rather a niche consumer item on the mainstream landscape: a takeaway meditation aid for the modern yogi-on-the-go.
This is not to dismiss it for mass-marketability—the opposite, really. Distillery II is elegant and more minutely worked than the typical eye-candy on your smartphone app-store of choice. The distinctive lines of the portable Apple fetish item do invite us to consider the relationship to Angry Birds and all the other virally unsociable fruit of this decade’s commuting habits. There is nothing wrong with exhibition as focus group, although I think the exhibition opens me to a work that would be invisible on an app-store promotion page—it’s the physical presence of the artist as he greets me that tells me to set that time aside
Paul Greedy, Untitled (Air 1)
photos courtesy the artist
Paul Greedy, Untitled (Air 1)
The show is not all software, by any means. Hands cupped at the other end of the industrial metabolism, Peter Blamey has made another RF-interference sound work from what he could catch—a new copper wire and discarded circuit-board sound installation (see e-dition Aug 23). And, conspicuously handcrafted, Paul Greedy shines for minimalism in form and function. Untitled (Air 1) is made of heating coils couched austerely in lengths of glass piping. They sing in turn, with heat-induced resonance, driven by a tiny Arduino (open-source electronics circuit board). If he wanted to make the contrast with the more computer-heavy works complete, he could have discarded the few integrated circuits entirely for pre-transistor relays.
CJ Conway, i am so into you
vertical photo courtesy the artist; horzontal photo Kate Blackmore
CJ Conway, i am so into you
Instead, the prize for simplicity (there are prizes for this, right?) goes to CJ Conway, even as the literal way that she brings people together has her in with a chance for the community-space awards as well. Her work, i am so into you, is a monochrome inflorescence—a design sketched in graphite onto the bare gallery wall, cleft in the middle to allow for a naked incandescent bulb. That bulb glows when you touch both sides of the sketched shape at once, closing the circuit. The next question, of course, is can you and another person touch one side of the work each and still light the bulb? Curator Pia van Gelder and I stand with our palms to the wall to find out. But the bloody thing won’t activate just for a fingertip touch; we have to interlock fingers.
Dorkbot Group Show 2012, curator Pia van Gelder, artists CJ Conway, George Poonkhin Khut, Peter Blamey, Paul Greedy, MPU (Mobile Projection Unit): Lukasz Karluk, Rene Christen, Nick Clark, Serial Space, Chippendale, March 6 -11; www.serialspace.org
This article first appeared as part of RT’s online e-dition march 20.
Cat Hope has been a driving force in the Perth contemporary music for many years. Her practice covers a wide variety of forms and styles, from rock and noise music to contemporary classical composition and gallery installation. In 2009 she started the new music ensemble Decibel which has rapidly proven itself to be a unique contribution to the Australian musical landscape, winning the inaugural award for Excellence in Experimental music at the 2011 APRA/AMC Art Music Awards. She completed a PhD from RMIT University entitled The Possibility of Infrasonic Music and was head of composition and music technology at WAAPA, ECU 2004- 2011. She currently holds a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship position at that same university. http://decibel.waapamusic.com/
You can download an audio recording of Decibel via realtime’s soundcapsule #2.
Cat Hope has been a driving force in the Perth contemporary music for many years. Her practice covers a wide variety of forms and styles, from rock and noise music to contemporary classical composition and gallery installation. In 2009 she started the new music ensemble Decibel which has rapidly proven itself to be a unique contribution to the Australian musical landscape, winning the inaugural award for Excellence in Experimental music at the 2011 APRA/AMC Art Music Awards. She completed a PhD from RMIT University entitled The Possibility of Infrasonic Music and was head of composition and music technology at WAAPA, ECU 2004- 2011. She currently holds a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship position at that same university. http://decibel.waapamusic.com/
You can download an audio recording of Decibel via realtime's soundcapsule #2.
Soundcapsule will be a bi-monthly online feature where we offer free downloads of music by artists we’ve recently covered in RealTime.
All tracks are copyright the artists.
cat hope (with lindsay vickery), the talking board, performed by decibel
Decibel, performing The Talking Board at Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011
photo Brad Serls
Decibel, performing The Talking Board at Totally Huge New Music Festival 2011
Cat Hope’s practice covers a wide variety of forms and styles, from rock and noise music to contemporary classical composition and gallery installation. In 2009 she started the new music ensemble Decibel which has rapidly proven itself to be a unique contribution to the Australian musical landscape, exploring the combination of electronics, digital technology and acoustic instruments.
Hope says of piece The Talking Board, composed with Lindsay Vickery, that “each player has their own ‘planchette’—a coloured circle enclosing the materials that they must perform. The four planchettes are programmed to independently traverse the graphically notated score creating a progression of material for the performers to realise, including the spatialisation and processing of the acoustic instruments.”
The Talking Board (2011)
Composer: Lindsay Vickery and Cat Hope
Performers: Decibel (Cat Hope, Lindsay Vickery, Stuart James, Malcolm Riddoch, Tristen Parr, Aaron Wyatt)
Recording: Live in Rottenburg, Germany, January 2012
To find more articles about Cat Hope and Decibel use our search facility top right.
eugene ughetti, procession
Eugene Ughetti performing Le Noir de l’Etoile, at Totally Huge New Music festival 2011
photo Brad Serls
Eugene Ughetti performing Le Noir de l’Etoile, at Totally Huge New Music festival 2011
Eugene Ughetti is a composer, percussionist and artistic director of Speak Percussion. He has toured extensively in Australia and internationally and has also collaborated with artists and companies such as Aphids, choreographer Martin del Amo and glass artist Elaine Miles on the Glass Percussion project. He is a recipient of one of 2012-13 Myer Creative Fellowship awards. www.speakpercussion.com/
The track Procession is composed and performed by Eugene Ughetti.
TRACK: Procession: click to stream or right/option click to download
To find more articles about Eugene Ughetti use our search facility top right.
dale gorfinkel, out hear festival 2011
Dale Gorfinkel performing at the Out Hear Festival 2011
photo Emile Zile
Dale Gorfinkel performing at the Out Hear Festival 2011
Dale Gorfinkel is a multi-instrumentalist, improvisor, instrument builder, installation artist and educator. He is interested in finding fresh ways of presenting and making music. These include outdoors, across artforms, and inter-cultural and inter-generational contexts. He brings creative communities together & shifts perceived boundaries of scenes, styles & artforms.
Gorfinkel states “This track is from a performance as part of the Out Hear Festival at Footscray Community Arts Centre November 2011. The festival featured sound installations and performances by artists Joyce Hinterding, Ross Manning, Riki-Metisse Marlow, Anthony Magen, Matt Chaumont, Ernie Althoff and myself as FCAC artist-in-residence. On this recording I am playing a radically modified trumpet along with my installation of a ‘footpump powered brassband’ consisting of many meters of tubes connected to automated tuba, trombone and trumpet attached to the top of flag poles at FCAC. It is a non-electric version of surround sound. In the background you can hear another of my installations, automated kinetic sculptures called ‘boubbly boubblies’, as well as the sounds of industrial footscray, transport, birds and echoes from various walls more than 50 meters away. Through Out Hear I hope to encourage a culture of listening, sound and music in outdoor and unconventional spaces. www.outhear.com www.dalegorfinkel.com
New York in early January is the perfect time for any dance or performance maker to visit. There is so much on in such a concentrated period of time, that it makes the perfect research trip.
Coil, Under the Radar and American Realness all offer multi ticket deals. Added to these festivals are programs at places such as The Kitchen and Danspace. Along side performances there are also complimentary programs of forums, workshops, classes and non-performance presentation. You could spend 18 hours a day immersed in dance, theatre and performance.
for culture
Statue of Liberty
photo Tom Burless
Statue of Liberty
So many places—it IS New York!
Frick Collection is housed in the Frick 5th Avenue home which was turned into a museum 75 years ago—intimate and engaging. It should leave every Australian pondering what legacy they would leave if they were a certain WA mining magnate.
Baryshnikov Arts Center was established by Misha (as he’s known) in 2005 to open up contemporary performance to a wider audience. It housed much of the Coil Festival this year while PS 122 waits to move into its new home which I imagine will become a major institution in the coming years.
For dance try the Danspace Project, St Marks in the Bowery. You just need to look at the list of people on their Artist Advisory Board! Like any truly great space that seeks to nurture, explore and investigate contemporary dance, you’ll have your hits and misses—think Antistatic in the 90s (Performance Space, Sydney – see realtime dance archive).
New York sign
photo Tom Burless
New York sign
American Realness Festival, Abrons Arts Center is a new contemporary performance festival, only three years old, embodying what I imagined Under the Radar would be, rigorous and ambitious. It’s not focused on finding the “new”, or the “next big thing” but rather it curates work that has a sense of riskiness an/or experimentation.
Printed Matter is a must in New York. A not-for-profit that promotes, publishes and exhibits publications by artists. You need to dedicate a couple of hours to discover the gems hiding just behind that next shelf. Your gay friends will undoubtedly request you bring back a copy of PinUps. I was a bit too timid to purchase.
Also a highlight is PS122’s Coil Festival held each winter.
for refreshment
Izakaya Ten, 10th Avenue, Chelsea. Sit at the bar and try the more home-style Japanese dishes. The warm sake stewed with puffer fish fin is amazing—drink it down to the fin at the bottom of your cup.
Puffer fish fin in sake, Izakaya Ten
photo Michaela Coventry
Puffer fish fin in sake, Izakaya Ten
Mary’s Fish Camp offers a seasonal menu. I’m still dreaming of the gazpacho with huge chunks of lobster tail I had there last spring.
One word: Brooklyn. Try La Superior for the most amazing seemingly simple Mexican food. $5 margaritas!
Café Colette offers Diner style with great “New American” cuisine – great for lunch/brunch.
for sleeping
The Ace Hotel lived up to expectations and the wannabe-rock-star in me loved having the velvet rope pulled aside for myself and guest on Friday and Saturday nights as I laughed at those who had to line up just to experience the very groovy foyer bar. But, if you’re like most of us, you’ll need to check out cheap deals online.
Empire State Building, from Ace Hotel window
photo Tom Burless
Empire State Building, from Ace Hotel window
other recommendations
The meatpacking district for galleries. You’re not wrong, there’s a lot of mediocre art on those walls but once in a while—wow! Hiroshi Sugimoto at Gagosian Gallery in 2008/2009, or more recently Monica Cook at Post Masters on West 19th Street.
Clearview Cinema on West 23rd: Is it still not daggy to dress up and sing along to The Rocky Horror Picture Show almost 40 years after the fact? Friday night midnight showings are worth it just to watch the young ones screaming with delight, dressing up in the bathrooms. Scarily I could still remember every word as I sang along, choking on the hairspray. Perhaps only for those in NYC for a longer stay and running out of options.
final thoughts
Read Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir of her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe and “making it” in NYC in the 70s and 80s—walk the same streets and dream of time travel…
Michaela Coventry is the Executive Producer of Lucy Guerin Inc, Melbourne. Previously she has worked as Manager for Stalker/Marrugeku and Project Manager and Publicist for Performance Space, Sydney from 2001-2004. She has also worked as a freelance producer, production manager and publicist for artists and companies such as Julie-Anne Long and Wendy Houstoun, Sam James, The Fondue Set, Tess De Quincey, PACT Theatre, Urban Theatre Projects and Brink. In 2003 she was awarded an Emerging Producer secondment with Robyn Archer’s dance focused Melbourne International Arts Festival.
After performing in Sarajevo last year, I was approached by renowned Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić, to work on the adaptation of my theatre show seven kilometres north-east, a solo piece I created in 2010 for version 1.0, working with video artist Sean Bacon.
zima (winter) in sarajevo
At Sarajevo Airport, trying to leave, in early February 2012, I clutch my boarding pass as I stare out the window at a wall of white. Is it just heavy snow or fog? Both maybe? Isn’t there a huge mountain right there? Welcome to winter travel in Sarajevo.
I’d been in Bosnia since early December, my fifth visit, and my first time building a snowman. But nothing could have prepared me for the weather that blew in that weekend, quickly throwing the city (and most of Eastern Europe) into a State of Emergency as the shops, trams and streets closed. But the city soaked it up in true Sarajevo style as people and dogs took to the streets, enjoying the craziness.
Cold bird’s feet, Sarajevo
photo Kym Vercoe
Cold bird’s feet, Sarajevo
Sarajevo is a city steeped in culture, given its history as a place where East meets West. This mash of cultural influences pops up all over town, from the food to the architecture. You open the map and see a mosque, a synagogue, an orthodox church and a catholic cathedral all on the same block. If you head down the main pedestrian street called Saraći, you eventually pass onto Ferhadija. At the meeting point between the two streets you will notice a distinct change in the architecture. Look back down Saraći and you’re in the Ottoman era. Turn onto Ferhadija and you’re greeted by grand Austro-Hungarian buildings. (You’re are also at Slatko Ćoše —or sweet corner—so take your pick of a café and get some cake before continuing on!) This historical mix brings a great richness to Bosnia.
for culture
Sarajevo hosts a lot of festivals throughout the year. The two biggest are the MESS Festival of Experimental Theatre in October every year and the Sarajevo Film Festival in July. Both program interesting work from across the globe and the city embraces the festival atmosphere. Last July I could dance all the way to my front door as the streets came alive.
There are also smaller theatres and galleries around town. SARTR (Sarajevo War Theatre) has an interesting and eclectic program, while Kino Meeting Point serves as an alternative local cinema and a place for cool folk to hang out.
Zima Džamija (winter mosque), Sarajevo
photo Kym Vercoe
Zima Džamija (winter mosque), Sarajevo
The Boris Smoje Gallery is a small, smokey gallery/bar that exhibits local and international artists. While Sevdah Art House in Baščaršija is a lovely place to go for coffee and to listen to some live traditional Sevdah music (melancholic folk songs). At the end of the day head for Zlatna Ribica, a quirky bar where even the toilet is worth the visit.
for refreshment
Much of your time in Bosnia should be spent eating and drinking. It’s amazing how easily a five-hour lunch will roll into a five-hour dinner. A change of venue, a fresh glass of travarica (a herbal rakija or herbal sljivovice) and you’re away. Some traditional Bosnian dishes include ćevapčići (grilled meat), pita or burek (pie) and čorba (soup). There are also lovely local cheeses—livanjski, travnički and kajmak—wash down well with a local red—try Blatina or Vranac.
Rooftops from Kibe, Sarajevo
photo Kym Vercoe
Rooftops from Kibe, Sarajevo
Some good local places for traditional food include Buregdžinica Bosna (for pita), Hodžić (for ćevapčići) and my favourite, Kibe, for all things delicious. Kibe is situated up in the hills so you get a spectacular panorama of Sarajevo. You also have wonderful Mediterranean options, notably Delikatesna Radnje and Noovi. If you want to grab some local produce, pop into Markale Market and find a place for a picnic after you’ve stocked up.
In Sarajevo it’s always lovely to spend a day wandering around Baščaršija (the old town), stopping to have a traditional coffee, kahva. Baščaršija is the Ottoman heart of Sarajevo—a labyrinth of small alleys, full of interesting people and shops. The centre of Baščaršija is Sebilj, a square with a fountain of the same name. From here, choose any direction and meander to your heart’s content. But don’t forget to stroll up Kazandžiluk (coppersmith street), just off Sebilj. Here you’ll see craftsmen at work. Kazandžiluk literally glitters in the sun and is a great place to pick up presents.
Baščaršija is also the centre of kahva culture in Sarajevo. Further into town you’re more likely to pick up an espresso. So, if your up for kahva served in a traditional džezva (copper pot) and fildžan (small cup with no handle), then try out one of my usual pit-stops, Morića Han, Đulistan or Havana.
Across the Miljacka River, Sarajevo
photo Kym Vercoe
Across the Miljacka River, Sarajevo
for history
If you want to discover more about the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-96) there are two good museums to visit, The History Museum and The War Tunnel Museum [http://www.visitsarajevo.biz/sightseeing/attractions/historical-sarajevo/war-tunnel/]. The History Museum has a good range of photos and artefacts from the siege, an opportunity to appreciate the inventiveness of people struggling to survive an extreme situation. The Tunnel Museum is onsite in Ilidža, in the house where the tunnel entered the besieged city. The tunnel ran underneath the airport runway, and provided the only entry and exit to the city during the entire siege. You can pick up a tour guide in town.
final recommendations
There are a number of places where you can get a great view of Sarajevo as a whole, nestled as it is amongst the mountains. Park Prinčeva is up in the hills above Bistrik. Grab a taxi, they are cheap and reliable and a good way of getting around to places where the trams don’t go. You can always wander back down on foot after a drink and soaking up the view. On the opposite side of town, you can walk up to Kovači. Up above the cemetery you’ll see an old fort wall. It’s a nice place to sip a beer and chat to the local dogs, while you take in the view down the whole rolling valley.
Kym Vercoe is a devisor-performer who has worked with a range of contemporary performance companies including Theatre Kantanka, ERTH and Theatre Physical. She has worked extensively with Version 1.0 on Wages of Spin, Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue, THIS KIND OF RUCKUS, A Distressing Scenario and The Table of Knowledge. Most recently a solo performance, seven kilometres north-east, exploring the entanglements of place, tourism and atrocity has been presented by Version 1.0 at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, Sydney, as part of the 2011 MESS Festival, Sarajevo and at the Adelaide Fringe Festival 2012.
For a selection of Kym’s work reviewed in RealTime see:
I most often travel for work— attending festivals, making site-specific projects and related art—so Barcelona holds a special place in my heart as the only reason I go there is to visit close friends, enjoy the ambience and relax into their luscious apartment and lifestyle.
I didn’t fall in love with Barcelona straight away; over many visits the city has woven her enchantment. Each time I find new favourite places and activities: the dragons in the park; the tilting rusted sculpture on Barceloneta beach; la Boqueria Markets; taking an extravagant taxi ride up to Bar Veolodromo; picking up one of the Bicing cycles (the free community bicycle program) around the city and finally feeling like a local. The dilapidated elegant architecture, incredible food enjoyed with close friends and sunny climate reminiscent of Sydney have all conspired to finally make me succumb to this city’s charms!
for culture
Recently I saw a fabulous exhibition on Russian Constructivist Architecture at Caixa Fòrum close to the Plaça d’Espanya. The latest exhibition, Actions in the Universe runs until May 20 and is an intriguing collaborative initiative by young Catalan artists David Bestué and Marc Vives, who aim to “activate public space and establish direct relations with people—with an uninhibited attitude towards cultural conventions.” Across the road are the Magic Fountain and Mies van der Rohe Pavilion built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition and from here you can easily stroll down the hill to visit the famous Mountjuic gardens and castle.
La Caixa Forum with poster for Russian Constructivist Architecture show
photo Jodi Rose
La Caixa Forum with poster for Russian Constructivist Architecture show
The Catalan Palace of Music is easily the most sumptuous venue I have ever seen and the only modernist concert hall declared a UNESCO world heritage site. Go to marvel at the mosaics, carvings, incredible glass ceiling, and surprisingly diverse musical program. If you find the beautiful Italian restaurant with €10 lunches, just down the road to the left, remind me where it is!
Mosaics on the Palace of Catalan Music
photo Jodi Rose
Mosaics on the Palace of Catalan Music
Arts Santa Monica, a converted convent originally built in 1636, is now an excellent state gallery run by the Generalitat de Catalunya, at the end of the Ramblas on the way to Barceloneta, showing contemporary works from light to radio waves. Walk down to the beach and visit the gorgeous Rebecca Horn sculpture L’Estel Ferit (the wounded star or the injured comet), one of my favourite places to watch the waves and contemplate life.
Rebecca Horn Sculpture at Barceloneta
photo Jodi Rose
Rebecca Horn Sculpture at Barceloneta
Barcelona Art Angels is located in the Raval district close to la Ramblas and offers a glimpse into the city’s vibrant cultural scene through three interlinked venues run by creative entrepreneur Emilio Álvarez. Angels is a contemporary art gallery while Rooms Service Gallery focuses on designer furniture. Carmalitas restaurant (C/Doctor Dou 1) shows video art during meals and promises “an accurate but diverse seasonal menu” based on freshly picked ingredients from nearby la Boqueria Market. Álvarez also directs The Loop Festival for Video Art specialising in moving image and aims to connect the city with local and international artists, institutions and festivals.
Madame La Marquise offers a new gallery space for visual arts, spoken word and unusual events. In the heart of Eixample, this modernist apartment with fabulous views of the city is a veritable Cabinet of Curiosities. Madame la Marquise invites visitors by appointment.
Otrascosas de Villarrosàs (subtitled “Mainly a design gallery”) opens a window onto the beautiful and strange. From The Lives of Others exhibition and book to From Flat to Full—Balloon, Bowls and More, to their Manifesto Project—Work Hard and Be Nice to People, there is always something to inspire. Stroll through the gallery on your way from the Ramblas to the Born district and punctuate a trip with a visit to the Picasso Museum.
Find things you never knew existed and can’t live without at the Museum of Ideas and Inventions in the old city (Ciutat Vella). MIBA is a glimpse into the incredible spectrum of creativity from around the world, curated via themes like Limitless Society, Reflectionarium and the Corner of the Absurd.
Bar Velódromo, serving champagne and oysters
photo Jodi Rose
Bar Velódromo, serving champagne and oysters
for refreshment
I was taken one night to Bar Velódromo and completely fell in love with the art deco glamour. Apparently it’s an excellent breakfast venue, although I can’t go past the baked eggs at Federal created by my wonderful ex-pat Australian hosts. It only too easy to linger for hours in their laidback and extremely stylish cafe near Mercat Sant Antoni. Wander up the hill to Federal owner, Tommy’s favourite Chinese restaurant, Jardin Rosa, where the chef will concoct a delicious creation from your choice of fresh produce. If you’re on the Gaudi Trail, take a break off Passeig de Gracia and revel in the delicacies at Tapas 24, guaranteed to revive you for the next round of culture and architecture! Finish the night on a racing-green leather sofa at the ultra sophisticated Dry Martini Bar where you’ll be served your pink martini by a waiter in a white tuxedo.
other recommendations
In the Born district near the Church of Santa Maria del Mar, Carrer Agullers is home to Vila Viniteca gourmet wine and cheese deli, and Forn de Pastisseria Vila Mala (#14) which produces the most extraordinary vanilla slice (Mil Hoyas) with caramel flaky pastry and richly decadent custard. I always like to visit the dragons in the fountain at the other end of the Passeig del Born, walk along Passeig del Picasso and then through the park. Further along the main street from the dragons, Encants Fleamarket is one of the best in the world, open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 7am to mid afternoon. If you’ve seen and enjoyed the lovely retro postcards of Barcelona around town, visit the new shop Urbana to pick up some of these fabulous nostalgic images, direct from their source to send home.
And anytime you’re lucky enough to find yourself in Barcelona, have a pink martini for me!
Jodi Rose is an artist and writer who has traveled the world since 2002 creating Singing Bridges, a conceptual sound work using the cables of bridges as musical instruments on a global scale. Jodi is working with engineers, architects, software developers and musicians to link the sounds of bridges around the world in the ultimate live networked Global Bridge Symphony, and writing a memoir of this quixotic philosophical journey from her award winning Travel Diary. http://www.singingbridges.net
For more of Jodi Rose’s work in RealTime see:
bridge odyssey
gail priest talks with sound artist jodi rose
Nigel Helyer in the Archipelago, operating Thunder Stones—primitive foghorns
photo Aino Kivisaari
Nigel Helyer in the Archipelago, operating Thunder Stones—primitive foghorns
reason for travelling
I was in Turku for three months in 2011 to make a major public sound work, two very orange sonic lifeboats moored either side of the main pedestrian bridge across the River Aura. In the summer you can lounge by it and in the winter skate along it!
kiss my turku
Turku (Åbo) Finland; Cold in Winter but Cool all Summer! A super serious, long-beard bikie dude glowers from the poster proclaiming “Kiss my Turku.” This is the way the city announces itself as the European Capital of Culture 2011, obviously the citizens have a sense of humour.
Turku is the original capital of Finland established by the Swedes in the 13th century and still boasts a fine Swedish castle, now a wonderful museum. Like the castle, the Turku Cathedral is robust and massive, surrounded by elegant stone mansions and wooden courtyard houses.
Nigel Helyer, Vox Aura, public sound work on the River Aura
photo Nigel Helyer
Nigel Helyer, Vox Aura, public sound work on the River Aura
Despite what other Nordics say about the Swedes (that they are unimaginative and boring) I have always appreciated their sociability and capacity to dance on dinner tables whilst singing romantic tango numbers. Turku’s Swedish University seems to be upholding these traditions well and the old university quarter on the banks of the River Aura swarm with late night pique-niques, open air movies and throngs of cyclists.
The capital moved from Turku to Helsinki in 1812 after Finland was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1809, hence the strong regional difference and keen rivalry between the two cities. However these days savvy Helsinki folks come to Turku for summer weekends as, frankly, the bars and restaurants are better, cheaper and more relaxed. Turku’s river promenades and easy access to the stunningly beautiful archipelago make Helsinki feel somewhat claustrophobic.
A famous Russian once lived in Turku. Uncle Vladimir (aka Lenin) worked here as a train driver, eventually taking his locomotive back to Russia just in time to start a revolution in 1917. There is a fine bronze bust of him near the superb Art Nouveau era Museum of Fine Arts. True to its word, Lenin’s revolutionary government granted Finland its independence, thus a new nation state emerged in 1917 as the homeland for an ancient people.
So what do the Finns know about? Fish, berries, Koskenkorva, a lethal Finnish vodka; knives and cabin fever inspired knife fights; Sisu, a kind of true grit concept that helped them thrash the Russian Army in the Winter War; anti-heros a la Aki Kaurismaki; trees (there are lots of them); saunas (there are lots of them too); and contemporary culture which they support well and even seem to enjoy!
Experimental Sauna, Turku. Four were installed in the City during European Capital of Culture 2011
photo Nigel Helyer
Experimental Sauna, Turku. Four were installed in the City during European Capital of Culture 2011
for culture
Titanik an artist-run space on the river, the Aboa Vetus Ars Nova museum located in an old mansion also on the river and perched atop a medieval ruin, Manilla a contemporary theatre space, also on the river (get the idea) and the City Art Gallery (TaideMuseo) and Maritime Museum, naturally both on the river. The Maritime Museum has a very good yacht themed cafe with huge smorgasbord, and just alongside the Bore, a restored 1960s cruise liner, now repurposed as cheap accommodation, bars and café, well worth a visit.
for refreshment
My favourite bars read: Apteekki an old pharmacy which serves a better type of medicine and is a hangout for artists and writers; Koulu, a massive repurposed traditional school house that now serves a better type of education and brews amazing berry ciders; and The Old Bank that now distributes a better type of currency, in the form of Lapin Kulta (Lapland Gold Beer).
for really sore ears
Head for Klubbi, a €5 in, all night heavy metal joint. (My Russian friend screams incomprehensible lyrics on stage; later I write her band two death metal anti-fascist songs and wonder if this is this a new genre or simply a contradiction in terms?)
getting around
Well it is Europa, even better, Scandinavia and that means small organic cityscapes laced with cycle paths, regular high speed trains (Helsinki in two hours and Rovaniemi (the capital of Lapland) in 12. Better still Turku is the gateway to the Baltic and the extraordinary array of granite islands that form the archipelago which, more or less, extends all the way to Sweden. Regular ferries leave for the islands (crammed with cycle tourists, off to ride the Kings Way) and also for Stockholm which is a great overnight voyage. Dock workers can still commute on €19 flights to Gdansk in Poland which, like Turku, was once a major ship building port—Turku built the Russian Imperial Navy and Gdansk the German Imperial Navy.
Nigel Helyer, Vox Aura, public sound work on the River Aura
photo Nigel Helyer
Nigel Helyer, Vox Aura, public sound work on the River Aura
final recollections
Eating smoked salmon, blackened whitefish, Baltic herring. Heading off to the woods every weekend exercising our Everyman’s Rights to pick giant baskets of Chanterelle and Porcini Mushrooms along with litres of berries and barbecuing fish caught next to the Sauna (the Finns may well have invented the Sauna, but they also think they invented the barbecue!).
So think understated; ironic; poker faced; nature loving; dead drunk; design conscious; Harley riding—Kiss my Turku!
Sound Artist and Curator of the Turku is Listening programme, Simo Alitalo gathering fungi in the woods
photo Nigel Helyer
Sound Artist and Curator of the Turku is Listening programme, Simo Alitalo gathering fungi in the woods
Nigel Helyer (a.k.a. Dr Sonique) is a Sydney based Sculptor and Sound Artist with an international reputation for his large-scale sonic installations, environmental sculpture works and new media projects.
FUSING THE LUCIDITY OF A PARABLE WITH THE UNNERVING REVERSALS OF EXPECTATION THAT MARK TRAGI-COMEDY, RITA KALNEJAIS’ BABYTEETH, DIRECTED BY EAMON FLACK, IS A BRACING EXPERIENCE, GRIMLY, IF SCABROUSLY, FUNNY, IMBUED WITH HEARTFELT MORAL PURPOSE AND FUELLED BY THE EMOTIONAL INTENSITY OF A FAMILY STRUGGLING TO COPE AS CANCER THREATENS TO BRING ONE OF THEM DOWN. BABYTEETH IS FUNNY AND MOVING, THE WORK OF A TALENTED EMERGING PLAYWRIGHT.
Babyteeth swings between a grieving present and flashbacks to events that brought each of the three family members in touch with an idiosyncratic personality who will allow them the possibility of transformation. At a railway station, 14-year-old middle class Milla (Sara West) encounters Moses (Eamon Farren), a tough but affable drug dealer in his early twenties. She takes him into her life and family home with surprising ease, his presence, intimacy and loyalty allowing the cancer-suffering Milla to realise independence and wisdom beyond her years. Just how she achieves it provides the alarming point on which Babyteeth turns.
Sara West, Babyteeth
photo Heidrun Löhr
Sara West, Babyteeth
Milla’s over-caring, contrary mother, Anna (Helen Buday)—a pill-popping bundle of nerves—tangles with her daughter’s eccentric Latvian violin teacher, Gidon (Russell Dykstra); he’s loud and cantankerous but adroit at bluntly delineating others’ problems. Anna’s psychologist husband, Henry (Greg Stone)—contrastingly calm, generously liberal with prescription drugs and conceding both wisely and foolishly to his daughter’s needs—is befriended by a pregnant neighbour (Kathryn Beck), a spontaneous if not bright youngster who firmly reintroduces Henry to some of life’s innocent joys. Through these pairings, the inward-looking world of a family in crisis opens out, offering resolution and hope to varying degrees.
If built on the solid foundation of parable and the somewhat vertiginous swing between past and present, Babyteeth is rich in apparently incidental detail, often sitcom funny, constellating around haircuts, the speed at which a car is driven, over-use of medications, condoms, a violin, food, clouds, sex and the baby tooth (Milla’s last) of the play’s title, each growing with symbolic strength as the play progresses. It’s a taut network of imagery and action but always open to surprise and shock. After Moses has spent the night with Milla, Henry gently lectures him (and like Anna, doesn’t let the boy get a word in): “I know I can trust you to give Milla her medication because I know until very recently you worked as a dealer,” adding shortly afterwards, “If she contracts any secondary infections—Do you understand? She’d die of herpes.” He then inadvertently jokes, “I don’t think she’d die of crabs, but it would be so uncomfortable.” The sheer awkwardness of a man struggling to accommodate his young daughter’s needs alongside his fears for her is typical of the play’s dynamic—tense and funny at once.
Helen Buday, Greg Stone, Babyteeth
photo Heidrun Löhr
Helen Buday, Greg Stone, Babyteeth
Despite the sheer starkness of their home with its glaringly white kitchen, Anna, Henry and Milla are not bland middle class individuals liberated by quirky strangers. Kalnejais, Flack and the performers offer us characters who are complex in themselves, quite capable of surprising us—Milla is in fact an agent for far-reaching change, not its object. With these characters from very different backgrounds and ways of being coming into close contact, Babyteeth is a comedy of contemporary manners, and much more.
Kalnejais deftly suffuses palpably comic moments with disturbing tensions, awkwardness, outbursts and tears. She dextrously juxtaposes the gentle humour of Henry holding Toby’s pregnant belly with Milla’s emotional and physical exhaustion as she sociably aims a camera at the pair. However, in the nightmarish climactic bedroom scene with Milla and Moses, where the girl reveals the full extent of her determination, Kalnejais drops her pervasively comic tone without losing impetus or descending into bathos, simply because the line between dark drama and comedy is so subtly inter-woven it can afford to loosen and shift easily in either direction, the mark of very fine playwriting.
I was intrigued that a play so rich in emotion never focuses directly on love. Doubtless Anna and Henry love Milla, their care is on the edge of panic—alone in his office Henry injects himself with morphine (“We’re losing her”); he and Anna, who blunders in, pretend it hasn’t happened (“Some tummy bug”). There’s still sexual attraction between Anna and Henry (in a very funny scene which combines sex and lunch) but love is assumed. Similarly there’s only one brief scene in which Milla and Anna are intimate but, again, love is a given. Milla and Moses are not lovers—she knows he has a girlfriend—but their relationship is such that she can ask of him a seriously dangerous favour. Babyteeth is rewardingly about everything that circulates around love but may or may not be love itself, but is what we find there—care, compassion, self-sacrifice—including the curiosity that generates new relationships, new intimacies, with strangers. And here it is regenerative— as comedies so often are—one life passes, a new one is born.
Russell Dykstra, Sean Chu, Babyteeth
photo Heidrun Löhr
Russell Dykstra, Sean Chu, Babyteeth
I was curious about Moses telling Henry and Anna that, in the night, Milla had told him “The room was full of people…They were saying she could stop struggling.” I could recall nothing else like it in the play. In the script, when Milla looks up at the clouds she hears what Kalnejais describes as “What the dead said to Milla.” The production, however, simply offers us Milla’s engagement with the clouds as a transcendent experience, conveying a distinctive sense of self-contained otherness about the girl. Moses’ report is presumably the odd residue of in-rehearsal editing.
The acting in Babyteeth is outstanding: Helen Buday’s Anna is compulsively jittery, riffing on her preoccupations, hands and legs dancing restlessly; Greg Stone conveys the sadness and bewilderment that underlies a calm exterior; and Sara West creates a convincingly young Milla, capturing her rapid maturation, anger, weariness and, in the end, dark sense of purpose. Eamon Farren’s rangy Moses oscillates nicely between charmer, scary thug and friend; Russell Dykstra expertly realises a fascinating Gidon who, despite his sexism and his anger at God and much else, is a carer in his own belligerent way; and Kathryn Beck’s single mum-to-be Toby is no innocent but is possessed of an appealing tunnel vision that yields friendliness and joy. A small boy, Thoung (David Carreon, Sean Chu), is taken on by Gidon for free lessons on the violin (the iPod-hating teacher describing the body of the instrument in sexual terms), a role performed with the requisite stillness. Collectively the performers embrace Kalnejais’ overlapping dialogue, the demands of comic timing and rapid emotional transformations.
Babyteeth reveals Rita Kalnejais to be a writer of considerable promise, adroitly negotiating the demands of structure, cleverly giving almost equal weight to her six characters to enhance the sense of an expanding if intimate world and deftly deploying symbols that lend poetry to the drama.
Belvoir: Babyteeth, writer Rita Kalnejais, director Eamon Flack, performers Kathryn Beck, Helen Buday, David Carreon, Sean Chu, Russell Dykstra, Eamon Farren, Greg Stone and Sara West, Upstairs, Belvoir Theatre, Sydney, Feb 11-March 18
This article first appeared as part of RT’s online e-dition march 6, 2012.
Tim Burns, Friendly fire, performance Hope Valley 2011
courtesy the artist
Tim Burns, Friendly fire, performance Hope Valley 2011
Now in its third year and hitting Sydney in March, ArtMonth generates a critical mass of art activity around the city with over 100 participating venues ranging from large scale publicly funded galleries to the plethora of artist-run initiatives.
The program is vast featuring the work of over 300 artists and, along with exhibitions, a variety of activities that essentially map the artistic hotspots of Sydney, including bike tours around a range of suburbs and individual ‘precinct’ celebrations. It’s a potentially overwhelming event, but here are some highlights.
At Tin Sheds Gallery, there is a rare opportunity to see the work of
Tim Burns, “one of Australia’s true avant-garde and socially engaged artists” (Teri Hoskins, curator AEAF, 2010). Originally from Western Australia, Burns lived in New York for 20 years and has created pioneering works in film, video, television, performance and painting, consistently challenging the mainstream art world. This survey exhibition, Against the Grain, will show works-on-paper, archival documentation of performance actions, and a range of screenings including Burns’ 8mm feature film Why Cars?—CARnage! from 1976 described by New York Critic J Hoberman as “an aggressive jumble of car wrecks, TV (interviews), scenes from loft life, and some Chinese propaganda shot off of (sic) the screen at Film Forums” (cited by Hoskins). You can read Tim Burns’ manifesto for community TV in RT65; and a review of his 2008 retrospective, On Record, as part of FotoFreo in RT86. Against the Grain, Tim Burns Survey, Tin Sheds Gallery, March 16-April 15; http://tinsheds.wordpress.com/
Emily Morandini, filet électronique
photo Kusum Normoyle
Emily Morandini, filet électronique
In the CBD is the recently relocated Gaffa Gallery, an artist-run space founded in 2006 with an impressive program focusing on “cross-platform collaboration, collectivity and cohesion within the contemporary arts community” (website). As part of ArtMonth Gaffa is presenting the M.A.K.E Project Part 1 in their poetically titled Failspace gallery. This will feature mixed media creations by Neil Brandhorst who wowed audiences with his Horizon installation at the 2011 Underbelly Arts Festival; Emily Morandini whose delicately crocheted circuitry was reviewed in our Aug 23 e-dition; and works by Julie Burke, Thomas Marcusson and Stephanie Rajalingam. The move to the heritage-listed space on Clarence Street has also allowed the Gaffa team to introduce the Arcade Project, a gallery and store focusing on emerging designers. M.A.K.E Project Part 1, Gaffa Gallery; March 9- 3 April 3; www.gaffa.com.au
My Parents, Richard and Pam Parke, Newcastle NSW
photo Trent Parke
My Parents, Richard and Pam Parke, Newcastle NSW
Other ArtMonth highights include Trent Parke’s Minutes to Midnight (see review of the ACP exhibition in RT65), exhibiting photos from the upcoming book of the same name, at Stills Gallery (February 29 -March 24); performance photographer Heidrun Löhr’s Parallax, previewed in RT107, at the Australian Centre for Photography (March 3-April 15); and Casula Powerhouse’s Panorama: are we there yet? including works by Sarah Goffman, Fiona Lowry, Bennett Miller, Arlo Mountford and Jemima Wyman (till March 13). The team behind MOP Projects will be launching their new commercial enterprise Galerie Pompom with a group show including artists such as Vicky Browne, Izabela Pluto, Jamie North and Heath Franco (March 6-April 1). Even the Audi Centre (yes the car manufacturer) in Zetland is getting in on the act with an exhibition of sculptural pieces by students from the Academy of Fine Arts, Bratislava based on the signature Audi grille design. They will also be celebrating the launch of a new Contemporary Art sponsorship program (March 21-April 5). ArtMonth Sydney; various venues, running through March, http://www.artmonthsydney.com.au/2012/index.html
island sounds
Since 2011, Joanne Kee of Places & Spaces has been presenting Cockatoo Calling, a range of music events, residencies and workshops held on Cockatoo Island on a semi-regular basis. Coming up in March is a new collaboration between two quite idiosyncratic musicians, Adam Simmons and Erik Griswold. Simmons, from Melbourne, is a woodwind player specialising in improvisation, perhaps known to RealTime readers for his part in the Adam Simmons’ Toy Band and Bucketrider. Griswold, from Brisbane, is a pianist, composer and co-founder of Clocked Out which has consistently presented programs of innovative new music over the years (see recent reviews in RT107 and RT105. The concerts mainly take place in Warehouse 15, one of the massive spaces on the upper part of the island. Kee will also be expanding the 2012 program to a pop-up space in the Rocks (for those who get seasick). Cockatoo Calling, March 18, http://pas.inzen.com.au
sexing the cinema
East Bloc Love, Melbourne Queer Film Festival
The 22nd Melbourne Queer Film Festival will kick off March 15 with a range of educational, emotional and just plain saucy films on gay, lesbian and transgender subjects. One highlight looks to be East Bloc Love, a documentary by Logan Mucha. Travelling across six-eastern European countries, notorious for their violent anti-gay sentiments, Mucha talks with activists about their battle for recognition and equality. The screening will be accompanied by a panel discussion about the power of cinema to educate. Also politically charged is the feature from Iran, Circumstance, by Maryam Keshavarz, exploring lesbian love and youth culture in Tehran. Also likely to excite interest is We Were Here by David Weissman which documents the unfolding of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in San Francisco during the 70s and 80s. Other contributions include the personal story of singer/actor Paul Capsis’ relationship with his formerly flowing locks in the ABC Anatomy series documentary Hair directed by Paola Morabito; and Nerve, directed by Kim Munro, which follows Paul Knight, a London-based Australian photographer as he tries to find two strangers willing to meet and have sex on film. There’s also an extensive shorts program both Australian and international and a range of talks and panels. 22nd Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Australian Centre for the Moving Image & Greater Union, March 15-25; www.mqff.com.au
you are the fourth wall
Il Pixel Ross, And the Birds Fell from the Sky
photo courtesy World Theatre Festival
Il Pixel Ross, And the Birds Fell from the Sky
Following on from their season as part of the World Theatre Festival in Brisbane, UK company Il Pixel Rosso will present and the Birds Fell from the Sky… at North Melbourne Town Hall’s Arts House (see the review in RT108). A collaboration between Silvia Mercuriali (formerly of Rotozaza) and artist/filmmaker Simon Wilkinson, the show utilises a form that they’ve named Autoteatr in which an “audience of one or two members escape realism and are invited…to use simple technology and instructions that form the basis of script…there is no actual ‘audience’ beyond the other participants” (press release). Given video goggles and an mp3 player, audience members follow instructions, interact with characters they encounter when they are kidnapped by a group of Faruk clowns. The senses—sight, hearing, touch and smell—are essentially hijacked and redeployed to explore the narrative. If you enjoyed Spat and Loogie’s Holiday in Next Wave 2008 (see RT86), which deftly used video goggles and intriguing sensory manipulation, this 20-minute adventure might be just your thing. Il Pixel Rosso, and the Birds Fell from the Sky…, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, until March 18; http://artshouse.com.au/
escape to the country
Vic & Sarah McEwan, !00 Notions from a Nation of Two (detail)
courtesy the artists
Vic & Sarah McEwan, !00 Notions from a Nation of Two (detail)
A few years ago Vic and Sarah McEwan, known to some from the CAD factory artist-run venue and gallery in Marrickville, purchased an old school house in Birrego, near Narrandera, and headed off for a rural life. In 2011 they began a series of artist residencies and so far have played host to Victoria Hunt, Mayu Kanamori, Jason Wing and US sound artist Bruce Odland. They are kicking off their 2012 program with the third instalment in their Remote Spaces Series, with a concert by Mick Harvey (The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Crime and The City Solution), in an old church in Corobimilla. He’ll be joined by Rosie Westbrook and JP Shilo and support act Grace Before Meals. In addition, the McEwans are presenting a media installation, 100 Notions from a Nation of Two, at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. For 100 days Vic got up at 6.00am to create a song/sound work to which Sarah responded with a visual work. 100 days combines these creation as an interactive, immersive video installation—a portrait of the artists as individuals and as couple. Remote Space #3 – Mick Harvey, old church in Corobimilla, March 17, 5pm; www.cadfactory.com.au/events/; 100 Notions from a Nation of Two, Vic and Sarah McEwan at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery until April 1; http://www.wagga.nsw.gov.au
virtual living
Michael Takeo Magruder, Visions of Our Communal Dreams
photo courtesy the artist
Michael Takeo Magruder, Visions of Our Communal Dreams
For anyone finding themselves in the UK March-May, check out the Robots and Avatars exhibition at FACT in Liverpool. Co-curated by FACT and the interdisciplinary design collective body>data>space, the exhibition will delve into multi-identities and “new-representational forms” that will arise in physical and virtual worlds over the next 10-15 years. With input from international artists, designers and architects it asks “how do we envisage our future relationships with robotic and avatar colleagues and playmates, and at what point does this evolution cross our personal boundaries of what it is to be a living, feeling human being?” (website). Along with extant works ranging from gaming to wearable art there are two new works commissioned for the exhibition in collaboration with The National Theatre. The Blind Robot by Canadian artist Louis-Philippe Demers (who collaborated with ADT on Devolution in 2006 see RT71 and RT72) will feature a robotic arm which touches the contours of the viewer’s face, similar to the way in which blind people explore facial features; the resulting portrait will be drawn on screen. Visions of Our Communal Dreams? by Michael Takeo Magruder (US/UK) will be a synthetic meta-verse created collaboratively by participants both in physical and virtual space. Together they will create a communal world using open source 3D application server OpenSimulator. This will also involve a series of workshops with local school students. Beyond the exhibition, Robots and Avatars is larger program of web, event and educational activities that is part of the EU Culture Program 2007-13. Robots and Avatars, FACT, Liverpool, UK, March 16-May 27; www.fact.co.uk/projects/robots-and-avatars/; www.robotsandavatars.net/
picture viewer
Excerpt Magazine #2
Amongst the many visual arts magazines and journals in print and online, the quarterly online publication Excerpt Magazine stands out as a neat conceptual package. Editor Amy Marjoram describes it as “an exhibition within a magazine and a discussion written with pictures” (Excerpt #2 editorial). Basically it’s a 35 page downloadable PDF, with seamless links to some embedded online video material. Issue 2, just out, includes 30 artists responding to the cover artwork by featured artist Izabela Pluta. Marjoram describes Pluta’s work as “picture imperfect” and “self-complicating,” challenging the veneer of perfection so often portrayed in commercial photography. With almost no text, neat, simple design and easy browsing, it’s possibly the closest an online magazine can come to a quality fine art book. http://excerptmagazine.com
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