conversation[S] (2020-
in collaboration with BENJAMIN HANCOCK, lucy pijnenburg & michele vescio
discarded chair : weather : landscape
THE 3RD CONVERSATION - HEXHAM/ MT. NOORAT/ LAKE CORANGAMITE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 2021 - ONGOING
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”
Clifford W. Ashley
A year after my return to Australia, the declaration of a global pandemic and the easing of extended lockdowns, I and my project collaborators, Lucy Pijnenburg and Michele Vescio, are joined by dancer Benjamin Hancock for the 3RD CONVERSATION - continuing our exploration of isolation and disconnection in the context of a re-emerging society and the unfolding implications of a “return to normal.”
Along with audio (Vescio) and video capture (Pijnenburg), I picked up a camera and began to explore photography as a new medium with which to explore the language of this 3RD CONVERSATION.
A limited run fine art photographic series of these works are now available through the STOCKROOM
discarded chairs : cotton rope : bonded thread : weather : landscape
THE 2ND CONVERSATION - HEXHAM, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA - AUGUST 2020-JANUARY 2021
“A. The security of a knot is determined by the stress it will endure before it slips. To determine security a material is required that will slip before it breaks. B. The strength of a knot is determined by the stress it will endure before it breaks. To determine strength a material is required that will break before it slips.”
Clifford W. Ashley
Days after my return to Australia, and just over a month since I created the 1st of this series whilst on residency in France, the World Health Organisation declared a global pandemic. The Australian Federal and State governments shut down borders and began introducing restrictions and lockdowns. Following a second wave of infections in the artist’s home state of Victoria, the state went into hard lockdown and faced one of the longest and harshest Covid-19 lockdowns enacted worldwide, lasting four months.
Under these new strict and enforceable directives of social isolation, physical distancing and mobility restriction, I, alongside collaborators, sound artist Michele Vescio and cinematographer Lucy Pijnenburg, embarked on a collaborative development in isolation. Unable to move freely, we undertook material, sonic and visual experiments during Victoria’s 2020 extended lockdown, each exploring ideas of physical, personal, emotional and tactile absence and isolation - both actual and perceived - and nature/ human “embodied networks”, developing material and conceptual possibilities through this new lens of Covid-19 isolation regulations and their implications.
Explorations around tactility during a time when touch interactions are, at the very least, discouraged and risky and at worst, criminalized and deadly, inform the development of the 2ND CONVERSATION, as do the implications and experience of lockdown and isolation through our differing urban and regional lenses.
As Covid-related restrictions eased, the 5km travel and urban/ regional travel bans were lifted, we continue to develop their work through field experiments and capture.
Anastasia La Fey, Lucy Pijnenburg and Michele Vescio would like to thank Creative Victoria for their generous support of the first collaborative development stage of CONVERSATION[s}
discarded chairs : cotton rope : copper wire: bonded thread
THE 1ST CONVERSATION - ORQUEVAUX, FRANCE - JAN 2020:
“A knot is never “nearly right”; it is either exactly right or it is hopelessly wrong, one or the other; there is nothing in-between”
Clifford W. Ashley.
Exploring ideas around physical, personal, emotional and tactile absence and isolation - both actual and perceived - the first piece in this series, a site-responsive installation work titled CONVERSATION, was created whilst on artists’ residency in France, late January 2020.
The two chairs were installed in locations within the residency buildings and always at a precise (but arbitrary) distance apart of 1.5 metres. Only one viewer at a time was permitted to experience the work.
A little over a month later, Covid-19 the World Health Organisation declared a global pandemic and humans across the globe were being instructed to maintain a distance of 1.5 metres from one another and to live under varying degrees of enforced physical and social distancing.
A limited run of small-scale (A4) fine art photographic documentation prints of the 1ST CONVERSATION are available to purchase via the STOCKROOM
