Image Credit: Image courtesy of Chris Watson.
THREE QUESTIONS SERIES / ARTIST & CURATOR PROFILES
A very quick hello from the festival office! In this edition we bring you our second Curator and Artist profile of Lawrence English, an Artist profile for Chris Watson and introduce a whole new segment of our festival website and "conversation" between us all.
With special thanks to Camilla Hannan for coordinating, we welcome the fantastic new addition to our website and written information about our artists, the THREE QUESTIONS SERIES. Australian sound artists have been selected based on the relevance of their own practices to pose three questions to a matched festival artist. The questions and answers alike are all worth a read, and will be progessively added to the website and festival newsletters as the festival draws closer.
From the 2012 Liquid Architecture Team.
2012 FESTIVAL PROGRAM: www.liquidarchitecture.org.au
Image Credit: Image by Lawrence English.
ARTIST PROFILE: LAWRENCE ENGLISH (AUSTRALIA)
Lawrence English is composer, media artist and curator based in Australia. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. English utilises a variety of approaches including live performance and installation to create works that ponder subtle transformations of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception. As a producer, English has completed numerous projects with artists including Tujiko Noriko (U, Blurred In My Mirror), Ben Frost (Theory Of Machines) and Tenniscoats (Totemo Aimasho, Temporacha). He has also completed commissioned compositions for acclaimed performance troupe Circa and other contemporary dance ensembles. Outside of his recording and art commissions, English curates a number of ongoing sound and media programs including Mono at the Institute Of Modern Art and Syncretism at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts. English’s imprint and multi-arts organisation ROOM40 maintains a steady release schedule from an eclectic array of Australian and international artists.
From our THREE QUESTIONS SERIES where we have asked sound artists to devise three questions for our festival artists, come Lawrence's responses to Ben Byrne's enquiry after conceptualising the monumental and the volatile in the work being presented at this year's festival:
BYRNE: The work you are presenting with Werner Dafeldecker and Scott Morrison as part of Liquid Architecture 13: Antarctic Convergence is called Monolith Project and is based on recordings you made on your own trip to Antarctica. Its title suggests Antarctica to be somehow monumental and unflinching in character but the footage and field recordings you use in the work nonetheless demonstrate Antarctica's volatility, showing it to be a place of constantly shifting environments and wild weather. How does this contradiction reflect your experience of Antarctica?
ENGLISH: I think this is a question of perspective really. When viewed from a macro level Antarctica does seem unflinching - as though it is absolute (though we recognised now thanks to aerial photography how much change there has been in recent times). On a micro level however it's incredible dynamic and constantly shifting and evolving. It's at this level that the volatility really comes to the fore, as at a macro level we have difficulty charting that change - the time scale is not one that really suits us as humans. This contradiction was something that really became very apparent when we were there. When viewed from the air, many of the glaciers or pancake ice layers we saw forming seemed resolved and finite, but upon closer inspection that were alive with activity - Antarctica is utterly in motion, just at scales we can't always comprehend.
Lawrence will present the work Monolith Project with Werner Dafeldecker and Scott Morrison.
Find out more about this artist/curator:
Festival Artist Profile See Program of Events Three Questions with Lawrence
ARTIST PROFILE: CHRIS WATSON (UNITED KINGDOM)
Chris Watson is a sound recordist with a particular and passionate interest in the wildlife sounds of animals and their habitats world wide. Watson’s work covers film, television, radio, CD and multi channel sound installations. In 1971 he was a founding member of the influential Sheffield-based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire, and started his sound career in 1980’s. In 2006 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Technology degree by the University of the West of England "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to sound recording technology, especially in the field of natural history and documentary location sound". Watson’s major production credits include The Life of Birds, which won him a BAFTA in 1998, The Blue Planet, The Life of Mammals and more recently the David Attenborough BBC documentary series Frozen Planet. Watson undertook a period of location work in the Antarctic during the Austral summer of 2009 to 2010.From our THREE QUESTIONS SERIES Camilla Hannan asks just what is it about the ends of the world:
Find out more about this artist:
HANNAN: What is it about the Antarctic or Arctic environments that is most appealing as a field recordist and sound artist?
WATSON: Having had the privilege and pleasure of visiting both the south and north poles I was particularly struck, in calm conditions, by the quieteness. The poles are two of the few remaining places on our planet where there can be no noise pollution and where even very quiet sounds can travel great distances across the ice. I remember recording the sounds of the Barne glacier on Ross island at 78 degrees south by Terra Nova, the hut built for the ill fated Scott expedition of 1911. In 2010 those remarkable sounds of shifting pressure ridges would have been almost identical to those experienced daily by the Scott party and reflects for me personally that under those conditions we can not only hear across great distances but listen into the past.
Chris Watson's work will be presented in playback in Melbourne and Sydney Performance Concert events, and in the Exhibitions Program at West Space Gallery, Melbourne and the Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane. Please note that Chris will not be performing live at this year's festival events.Festival Artist Profile See Program of Events Three Questions with Chris
Major Supporters In 2012 Liquid Architecture is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, Arts Victoria and City of Melbourne.
All 2012 Partners and Supporters can be found at www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/supporters
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