THE RESIDENCY

I just did a Next Wave residency for one month at the Meat Market in Melbourne, in preparation for an art show about new beginnings, which is a topic that roams right up my alley and close to my heart. My team was Michael, Zoe and Matthew from Tape Projects. Ours ended up being a live interactive mini-series called Becoming Carol Brown. It finished on Sunday so I am just beginning to digest the experience. There were four other collectives too. Sadly though, we all got engulfed in our own creative bubbles and barely saw each other until the last week .

Here is a photo essay of the residency part.

Didn't the month fly by !

WHAT IS ALCHEMY & HOW CAN WE BE FRIENDS ?

Show opening at The Physics Room in Christchurch tonight, on not a disimilar buzz thematically (externalised process-wise) from what is currently going down on the mind-set of our Next Wave project, BECOMING CAROL BROWN :

The title of this project, with its nod to alchemy, suggests an outmoded philosophy. To me alchemy is particularly interesting when understood in terms of process and not product. It’s not really about attaining gold from base metals but rather the mental space that that process allows – that utopia, if you like. Process over product, that’s the key.

— Simon Starling

British artist Simon Starling’s Autoxylopyrocycloboros documents a project he undertook in Scotland in 2006; this slide sequence being the only permanent record of the event. The original work entailed the artist reclaiming a small steam boat called Dignity from the bottom of Lake Windermere then motoring in it across nearby Loch Long, using the wood from which the boat was constructed to fuel its motion in a process of auto-destruction that eventually returned the vessel to the bottom of the loch. This cycle of recovery and destruction finds its ideal visual analogy in the revolutions of slides that pass through the projector to seamlessly document the performance. As a record that outlasts the action, it offers a metaphor for photography’s historical value; yet Autoxylopyrocycloboros actually takes us nowhere, as each rotation returns us to the beginning; a perpetual return that delivers no final effect.

Starling describes his work as ‘the physical manifestation of a thought process’. As such it is an absurdist response to the terms of the Cove Park Commission for which the work was executed, which is designed specifically to enable a contemporary artist to undertake a period of artistic research in order to produce new work. Using old technology—steam propulsion and slide projection—Starling provides a humorously fitting analogy for the possible consequences of future real-world auto-destruction, referring—in the raising and sinking of his little vessel—to the Trident submarines that carry missiles as part of the United Kingdom’s strategy of nuclear deterrence that share their base in Loch Long. Autoxylopyrocycloboros is therefore more than a record; it survives as a meditation on history and technology and a pointed critique of our all-too-human investment in progress and the abuse of power to which it gives rise.

The exhibition has been realised through a partnership with the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, and is received courtesy of Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York. 

Simon Starling

Autoxylopyrocycloboros 

Opening Tuesday 22 May, 6pm

23 May – 23 June, 2012

55 Sandyford Street

Sydenham 

Christchurch

In our case we are using our knowledge and experience of past parties and our solid psychic connections with C.G Jung to make current parties in the present totally pop :

 

One of the outcomes will be an Elixir of Eternal Parties in word form.

WAKE UP AND SMELL OUR ART SHOW

 Today is a momentous day in the field of Party Artistry. A collection of collectives have pooled their skills to transform Westspace on Bourke St into a HIVE OF STARTLING ACTIVITY in an art show about NEW BEGINNINGS as part of Melbourne's NEXT WAVE festival. I am writing from a peach office in the heart of Carol Brown's brain on set of Becoming Carol Brown by Tape Projects ... a live mini-series featuring interactive new episodes daily between NOW and May 27th.

Carol is going to receive an abundance of information and needs your help to file it in a TRULY OUTRAGEOUS FASHION !


Here's the trailer :  

Thanks to SECRETS of CRYSTAL MAGIC for the theme song !


Carols consciousness streams live from 6 - 10pm nightly, with reruns the following day between 12 and 4.


Season premiere ANTICIPATING ANTICIPATION starts tonight ...


Level 1, 225 Bourke Street
Melbourne, Vic, 3000
(press the buzzer to get up here)


NOT only that though, there are BRAIN ANGELS wandering round in white jeans getting ready to show us their inventions, and invent some more ...


PLUS an indoor BUSH DOOF TRANCE PARTY, with theme DJs nightly ...


AS WELL as SPACE PEOPLE LETTING US MAKE NEW CONSTELLATIONS every 2 hours ...


and if all those elements aren't intriguing enough, here is the cherry on top ...


we also have ENGLISH PEOPLE in the house! teaching us how to connect GLOBALLY


PATAPHYSICS TURNED TANGIBLE , THIS IS PARTY PHYSICS IN THE MAKING ! and in the BREAKING ... (it down)


Please come and break it down with us,


We'll pretend the opening is tonight !


But if you miss that it keeps opening every night !


with a PARTY on WEDNESDAY and XXX-MAS SPECIAL on Friday,
with presents and everything.
Whoa, heaps isn't it ?

OFF THE CHAIN LETTER

Hello friends,


I am currently taking part in a party art residency in the Next Wave festival as part of TAPE PROJECTS. It's called Wake Up And Wait For The Sun To Rise : 500 Methods For A New Beginning. It is a one month residency that we are 3 weeks into, followed by a 9 day show at Westspace. The festival has a focus on GENEROSITY and URGENCY. Read artistic director Emily Sexton's opening letter here : http://nextwave.org.au/about/.


Our group is making an installation that functions as a live mini-series in the gallery. It is called BECOMING CAROL BROWN and is loosely based on a new beginning someone had once, when they discovered a party within themselves. The set will roughly represent the interior of my brain, a universal brain, as a venue for realising, reading, partying, decoding cryptic puzzles, communicating, experiencing and observing chemical reactions. Each day features a new episode ... which brings me to a request...


For our Christmas episode, A Christmas Carol, we are making a giant pass the parcel full of presents for whoever opens that layer. It will start in the gallery and be passed on and on and on until all the layers are shed and we find out what's in the middle. We are requesting donations of gifts. Anything that you have gleaned all the joules you need out of and would like to pass on. Music, books, drawings, yummy snacks (preferably not ones you've gleaned the joules out of), art, a thought you just jotted down. Paper matter and light things are good.


Please send or deliver any contributions you care to donate to ...


A CHRISTMAS CAROL
TAPE PROJECTS
PO Box 24091
Melbourne, Vic, 3001


or (if delivering) ...


WESTSPACE
Level 1, 225 Bourke Street
Melbourne, Vic, 3000


before Friday the 18th of May or soon after, for wrapping in time for our (XX)X-MAS PARTY, Friday May 25th.


Please pass this on to any genius friends who have the x-mas spirit !


HO HO HO,


Caroline