Wk 17 // "ideal syllabus", artist profiles, and Martian soundscapes
- annabensky
- Jun 7, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 7, 2023
Victoria recently posed a good thought exercise around the lit review component of MFA:
This assignment involves four mini-texts, each discusses a publication or article that is relevant to your MFA project. Each one will bring different concepts and ideas from your practice to the fore and there should be a mixture of theoretical texts and texts about artists’ whose work is relevant to your practice.
What are they four texts that hold the concerns of your project? If you had four books on your studio table to show to visitors, what would these be? How can you key people into your practice like this?
Richard Coyne, "Book of Stone" in Network Nature: The Place of Nature in the Digital Age
Geoff Park, “Theatre Country” in Theatre Country: Essays on landscape and whenua
Geoffrey Batchen, "Nothing to See" in On the Last Afternoon: Disrupted Ecologies and the Work of Joyce Campbell
Lucy Mackintosh, Shifting Grounds: The Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Why these texts?
RC = outlines the relationships between digital technology, semiotics and the natural world, outlining that non-living and non-human entities take part the the semiotic mesh of existence; explores the central focus of geology and geological materials in this network of meaning. As geology is a central focus for me, I appreciate how this book delves into the semiotic potential and agency of geological materials, and poses the question around how we conceptualise abiotic nature.
GP = Discusses, from the contextual standpoint of Aotearoa's history, the ways in which the Western world views the land, humanity's relationship to it, and the devices we use in the process; and illustrates that the process of viewing is never neutral but an action infused with deep rooted ideology. Dealing with the way landscape is conceptualised and imaged, this chapter opens discussion around how we relate to the land in the present day and the impact that British Imperialism and Western ideology has had on this process.
GB = Discusses the work of artist Joyce Campbell and the way she utilises cameraless photography to challenge conventions around viewing landscapes and the natural world, to explore the intersection between human activity and ecology, and to visualise the agency and presence of non-human subjects. I feel there is a parallel between they way Campbell utilises the media she works with and what I am attempting to do with my own material choices (particularly around ecology and image)
LM = Explores the deep, complicated, intersecting histories - both material and human - that underly the city of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and how these events have shaped our relationship to the land throughout human history. I appreciate how Mackintosh illustrates the complex and boundless nature of the city's history and the geological materials it is built on, and in doing so paints a picture of how humanity has related to (and continues to relate to) this space over time.
What are the key concerns/themes/topics of my practice?
At its core, my current investigations in studio are around the intersection between humans and geology in the context of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. I have chosen these texts and I feel they relate either in process, ideology or theme, to the research I am doing in this process. While they may not relate directly, there is enough overlap between them (I hope) to paint a broad picture of the issues and themes I am focused on within my current practice.
Charlotte Parallel
From Liquid Architecture:
Charlotte Parallel is a New Zealand artist based in Koputai Port Chalmers working in the fields of sculpture, sound, performance and collaboration. She has been exhibiting within New Zealand consistently over the last 16 years and internationally since 2010.
I recently came across Parallel's name in Geoff Chapple's book Terrain in reference to a sound art piece she created. The work involved interpreting seismic activity from 11 sensors around Auckland city into an immersive sound installation. I was unable to find the name of this work, but in the process of looking into her practice I cam across Listening to the Basalt, an 90 minute long collaborative work between herself, Rachel Blackburn, Iso 12, Motoko Kikkawa, Calla Knudson, and Kuini Scott. Created during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the artists were rowed around Kamau Taurua Quarantine Island, playing to it to honour its past, present and future. I love the collaborative aspect to this work, and how each artist involved brings their own interpretation and voice into the mix. The combination of poetry, sound, and video are giving me ideas for how the various elements in my own investigations currently could be combined, either into a singular work or a body of work that explore the topic of Auckland's deep geological histories...
Singing to the Basalt was a sonic call and response from: Kamau Taurua to Mt Mihara-yama, Koputai Port Chalmers to Habu Minato, Te Wai Pounamu South Island to Izu Oshima Cinematographer: Iain Frengley and Alex Lovell-Smith Post production: Iain Frengley all sound and stationary cameras recorded live and synchronised together Artists instruments: Rachel Blackburn- synth triggered by wind machine and digital delay pedal, Iso 12- iPad and sampler triggered by wind machine, Motoko Kikkawa- conversation with violin XD, Calla Knudson- electric violin, loop pedal and vocals, Charlotte Parallel- hydrophone and DIY sampler with sounds from Izu Oshima and Kamau Taurua and Kuini Scott- waiata and spoken word poetry. Rowers: Francis O'Neill, Matthew Ward and Chris Wratislav Volunteers: Alice McKenzie, Katie Molloy
Warwick Freeman
Freeman's name also came up in Terrain, specifically in reference to his work with volcanic rock. An exhibition of these works at Objectspace in 2017 can be found below, with a link to a text written in response by Geoff Chapple:
...by chance, I met Warwick Freeman. I pressed him on his interest in the local rock:— Not the science of it, he said, but the social thing. How people respond to the rock, and how they use the rock... We walked across a city marked everywhere by eruptive violence, trying to discern the influence of such widespread volcanic product. The buildings: this volcanic bluestone church, these hand-knapped basalt kerbstones. This high scoria wall the Central Police Station inflicts on the citizens below... We walked across wide ground-level craters and the soft green rise of their tuff rings. We walked across the lava flows, invisible now under the built environment. We walked over the great cones that define whole suburbs: Maungawhau / Mt Eden, the suburb so prettily arrayed around its eponymous cone that journeymen drinking soy lattes within cafes at the mountain’s base often adopt the default description for Auckland’s distinct volcanic locales – the perfidious, overly-comfortable ‘sense of place’.The psychogeography we were attempting was more — manic. We beheld in the cold stone mountains the intense blackbody radiation of their progenitor, active and brooding far, far below. We tipped our hats to past uses of the mountains, admiring the astonishing physical labours of early Maori, who’d girdled the cones with defensive terraces, and piled stones to conserve heat in the gardens below. We recalled, within the demands of their own time, the city- and nation-building settlers who’d embedded water reservoirs in the summits, or stripped whole scoria cones for railway ballast or drainage ditches. We noted the contemporary Maori determination to hallow the summits, return them to their past, to ban vehicles and dropkick exotic trees right off the slopes. Thus the psychogeography of Auckland, its cones and vents, and the strong emotions they evoke — love, fear, greed, anger, indifference, resentment, respect.
Warwick Freeman, Lava Brooch (2004), Image: Roy Tremain
Martian sounds - how temperature and atmosphere impact sound
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