in the loop – may 10
realtime news and advance word
save caochangdi art district
In RealTime 92, Dan Edwards wrote from Beijing about Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Caochangdi, an ambitious initiative to give photography a recognised place in contemporary Chinese art see RT92). We've just received the bad news that Caochangdi, home to many other high profile galleries and leading artist Ai Weiwei's house, has been slated for demolition by local authorities. Protests have been mounted but help is needed. The organisers write, “We are artists, curators, representatives and friends of art institutions who support the Chinese art community and its vibrant environment. In conjunction with the Caochangdi PhotoSpring festival, we are launching an effort to collect 10,000 signatures from art supporters around the world. The goal of this effort is to protect and preserve the current state of the Caochangdi Art District. We want to launch negotiations to explore reasonable ways to resolve this issue. The effort to collect signatures for this petition ends on June 10, 2010. The signatures collected will make up a formal petition to be presented to the Beijing City Government.” You can sign the petition at http://www.threeshadows.cn/qianming/index.htm
reeldance festival: eve sussman
Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation's The Rape of the Sabine Women (see RT87) is one of the featured films in this year's Reeldance International Dance on Screen Festival in Sydney. In 2008 Carl Nilsson-Polias saw the 83-minute film and interviewed the maker for RealTime about her interpretation of the historical tale and the influences, classical and modern, on her art. Nilsson-Polias wrote that Sussman and her collaborators “brought the story into the aesthetics of the 1960s and with that came the concomitant cinematic references of that decade. Foremost among these is the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, whose distinctive visual style utilised long focal-length lenses to produce abstract graphical compositions with flat areas of colour, in the tradition of painters such as Barnett Newman. Sussman readily admits to having rewound again and again across “millions” of frames of Antonioni’s films for inspiration, as well as those of Jean-Luc Godard and John Cassavetes.” Also on the 2010 festival program are works by visiting UK filmmaker Shelly Love with her distinctive brand of fantastical imagery (www.shellylove.co.uk). ReelDance International Dance on Screen Festival, Performance Space, CarriageWorks, Sydney, May 13-16, www.reeldance.org.au
Superdeluxe@Artspace
sydney biennale: superdeluxe@artspace
SuperDeluxe@Artspace will present a dynamic program of DJs, sound artists, dancers, music, films and informal PechaKucha Nights over 12 weeks in a program co-curated by SuperDeluxe Tokyo, KDa, Namaiki Joni Waka, Artspace and the Biennale of Sydney. Friday and Saturday nights will feature DJ’s, sound artists, performers, musicians and guest curators including Rosie Dennis, Rice Corpse, Phil Dadson, Scott Donovan, Wade Marynowksy, Oren Ambarchi and Jeff Stein, Gail Priest, Alex White and a swag of Japanese and other artists.
One of the bonuses of the 2010 Biennale of Sydney is the film program, Magickal Songs, Mythical Histories and Fictitious Truths, works selected by Jack Sargeant (director, REVelation Perth International Film Festival) and Biennale director David Elliott. Each Sunday May-July rarely seen, adventurous films will be screened at SuperDeluxe. True to the Biennale's theme, the films “reflect on spirituality and indigeneity; and on the power of art and its place in traditional culture and contemporary politics.” Filmmakers include Harry Smith, Ira Cohen, Mark Baldwin, Nick Zedd, Owen Land, Jessica Yu, all USA, Fanny Brauning (Switzerland), Shen Shaomin (China), Eileen Simpson and Ben White (UK) and, from Australia, Indigenous filmmaker Allan Collins (Spirit Stones), Kenta McGrath (Three Hams in a Can) and noko (Order 41 Conjuration of Beelzebub, a film about some very remarkable performers). Artspace, SuperDeluxe, from May 13; for programs see http://www.superdeluxe-artspace.com.au
Wittenoom and the Cancerous Breeze, Jason Nelson
jason nelson: digital poems
The ever inventive Jason Nelson (who lectures on Cyberstudies, digital writing and creative practice at Griffith University in Queensland), has released onto the net three “semi-newly birthed digital artworks/poems inspired by Australian locales.” Sydney’s Siberia, “an interactive and infinitely zooming digital poem”, layers strange texts (“city planners continue to be suspicious of growing a concrete cactus from a temporary pavillion”) over sometimes doodled-on, still images (“Siberia, a winter without temperature” overlays a warmly lit cottage and a spindly, drawn tree). You can move in on a detail in each image until it becomes a huge picture quilt into which you further zoom, dizzy by now, and choose another image. Gradually you come to recognise certain images and build yourself a strange vision of Sydney.
Wittenoom and the Cancerous Breeze, Jason Nelson
Birds Still Warm from Flying is “an interactive/re-creatable poetry cube” that you can fill with small moving images and turn three-dimensionally, reading its lateral lists. Less enigmatic and not a little spooky is Wittenoom and the Cancerous Breeze: Set “1450kms north of Perth and 460m above sea level is the valley of death, a town of airborne threads, fibres from the industrial boom and if these carcinogens as residents (the harsh gateway to the Hamersley Ranges) built their own lungfull and fearsome town…” Over a series of 10 images of a desolate town (Wittenoom is a former asbestos mining site and now ghost town), texts fall and turn in sometimes beautiful configurations or an image is enveloped in a big, bloody bubble, while texts exude surreal menace: “They carry re-wind men and their houses open”, or “Armed stars, segmented knives for desecration.” http://www.secrettechnology.com
24HRS at dancehouse: the interviews
In the March 29 In the Loop we told you about the Jo Lloyd-curated 24HRS at Dancehouse, four choreographers each creating a new work over 24 hours—one for each Friday over four weeks. While the works by Phillip Adams (May14) and Luke George (May 21 ) are still to come, Lloyd has been interviewing contributing artists Natalie Cursio and Shelly Lasica about the experience. Read the interviews at http://www.dancehouse.com.au in the performance section.
RealTime issue #96 April-May 2010 pg. web
