Just arrived for production and rehearsal lead up to In Lieu‘s season in the OzAsia Festival. Bad $4 coffee from the Festival Centre café (isn’t there a $3-something ceiling?) but set construction is all well in hand, likely to be delivered early. Looked at Richard Serra’s amazing steel sculptures and torqued walls for early inspiration (although it is not a steel set)… more soon.
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I remember hearing about Cassandra Jones’ cheerleader wallpaper years ago, but this interview with the artist also takes a look at recent animations using found photos. Suns set, moons wax and wane, birds fly… like most animation, it appeals to my ocd nature, and like all photography, it deals with the de/re-construction of time and movement.
Filed under: watchable
Been an extra pair of hands for video artist Sam James this week, as he works in the studio on a new installation work titled The Nest. He said in a recent interview for Realtime, “The main notion is that space is a series of interconnected links, like a nest. With conceptual forms similar to ant nest architecture, I am interested in making connections between these found spaces and people. The compositing and animation process is digging the tunnels, to try to make connections between subject and space, and also to make connections between them as newly invented, discrete entities.” (read full interview here)
Sam is constructing layered, composite environments from footage he has shot on previous travels, and will place performers in these spaces in post-production. This week we are recording the performers in a little black studio at UNSW (picture below from my phone). Visit Sam’s blog here.
Sam confers with Peter Fraser before filming
A friend put me onto some little page-turning videos on youtube from Moleskine’s Detour project, a touring exhibition of illustrated notebooks (more info). Ahhh – paper, pen, pencil… the simple things. Love this one by French artist Marianne Fountain which is like a flip-book animation, wrapping cartographic views of the city and the evolution of single-cell organisms into a cyclic story.
In or around Newcastle? This is Not Art – Electrofringe, Critical Animals, Sound Summit and the National Young Writers Festival – are on this coming weekend. I’ve curated a program of recent Australian and New Zealand shorts with choreographer Anton called ReelDance: Take08 for Electrofringe. The program includes documentaries that explore social and cultural relationships through dance, abstract movement created through intricate editing, responses to the urban environment, and dancing in the streets.
Where: Playhouse, Newcastle
When: Saturday 4th October, 16:30pm – 18:00pm
More info: http://www.electrofringe.net/
digital animation, 4:3, colour
3:15 minutes
This short animation was made as part of a masterclass with New York artist Raul Vincent Enriquez. It was designed to be watched by one person at a time, peering into a little screen in a dark capsule, eating rosemary and chili infused mozzarella on toast which I had just made for you.
I was reading a book about Reza Abdoh, some fellow classmates were really into Jacques Pepin, slow food was happening and I had the Snowman’s tangential tirade about toast in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake simmering in the back of my mind. It is a tribute to all these things.
devised & made by Justine Shih Pearson
digital video, 4:3, colour
7:10 minutes
Trick of Shade is a layered, elliptical journey through the Greek myth of Pandora’s box. Building around the moment of transgression, Pandora’s fall from grace, the film ponders the precipice of indecision and the moment that curiosity soils innocence.
directed & edited by Justine Shih Pearson
featuring Naida Chinner
animation by Grant Pietsch, Blue Onion New Media
music written & performed by Bergerac
screenings:
‘Into the Kaleidoscope’ – Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, 2004
digital video, 4:3, colour
11:05 minutes
Ade Dancing: Golek Manis is an un-narrated, impressionistic documentary featuring Australian-Indonesian dancer Ade Suharto. The film follows the structure of the classical dance Golek Manis, preserving the introspective focus and pace of the Javanese movement style. At the same time, it captures a period at the end of 2002 when Ade had just returned to Australia from two years dancing in Solo and Jakarta. The film gives an insight into Ade and what this experience meant to her personally, reflecting ideas of reverence, biculturalism, distance, travel, and freedom.
directed & edited by Justine Shih Pearson
featuring Ade Suharto
music performed by ASKI Surakarta Gamelan
screenings:
Adelaide Festival Centre – Open Space Program, 2002 (2002 edit)
Australian Dance Theatre, 2003
Asian Music and Dance Festival, 2004
