Creative Practice Showcase
Close Distance: An Evolving Durational Performance and Intervention
Creative Practice Showcase Jen Urso, Eileen Standley
Using intense awareness in public and private spaces, Eileen Standley uses her body as a tool to track the edges and interiors of her and her environment. Jen Urso uses this same awareness to track the edges of Standley’s movement to record it in blind gesture drawings on paper or on public surfaces. By addressing one another and their environment carefully, they highlight the desire to seek out the overt, sensational and spectacular. Their work becomes the reverse. This heightened practice of paying attention—acknowledging the impact of a person, building, or movement in space—are things happening here and now. The artists believe these micro-movements and presences are something we are always in tune with but tend to block out, distracted by the allure of something more spectacular. As artists who have built their separate practices on the subtle, intricate and complex, they believe that this sensibility they have honed can be used as a force to slow down and share a general awareness, acceptance and tenderness that appears to often be lacking in our society. The resulting blind gesture drawings, left on paper or in the performed space, become a record of a small moment, constantly in movement.
REBOOT Laboratory: Critical Repair and Maintenance
Creative Practice Showcase Rob Duarte
The first project, "FixShop" is an effort to frame the acts of maintenance and repair as a form of critical and speculative (re)design. Through a mobile venue that acts as a repair shop storefront, I accept outdated, obsolete, "broken" objects from the public. Subsequently, a form of "repair" takes place, in which the goal is not to restore the object to its original function, but to reimagine/redesign the object as a non-product: a critical reflection of the original that is explicitly political, personal, confrontational, or challenging. The second project is about a different kind of maintenance, working to reclaim the material waste products of conspicuous consumption. Through a process of collecting YouTube "folk knowledge," reproducing DIY designs, and developing low-tech, accessible processes and tools for materials recovery, the project works to transform waste materials to become components of building systems. The subtext and driving motivation is to draw attention to consumer culture by making material and visible the discards of that mode of production, to challenge individuals to examine their place in those systems and imagine the alternatives. Through this Creative Practice Showcase, I intend to describe the ways in which these projects challenge the status quo of how we address the roles of audience, community, and cross-disciplinary practices.
Children, War, and Propaganda in the Cluster Project's Children's Guide to Weapons
Creative Practice Showcase Bob Paris
The Cluster Project produces collaborative, multimedia artworks that explore weapons, war, civilian casualties and popular culture. As director of the project, I conceive works that seek to challenge the collective alienation in the West toward war and attract viewers who don't typically frequent art venues. This creative practice presentation surveys our works related to children and war, especially our new exhibition Children's Guide to Weapons, a giddy spectacle about our culture's daily mix of violence and entertainment, and the patriotic role of children in a militarized state. The satirical exhibition features a central laser-based interactive shooting game (hosted by "Cupcake," our teddy bear guide), animated tributes to beloved weapons, drone war coloring books, twisted patriotic stickers, and militarized stuffed animals. Children's Guide to Weapons reflects the surreal normalization of violence in our culture, references the widespread practice of using children as war propaganda for military recruitment and civilian obedience, and ultimately considers how militarized cultures tend to create and promote a kind of infantilism, where its citizens are reduced to childlike endorsement of complex and destructive policies.
If These Halls Could Talk: Connecting Community Artist and Cultural Assets
Creative Practice Showcase Peter Wood
If These Halls Could Talk was a multi-arts initiative developed by Arts Northern Rivers, a regional arts development organisation based in New South Wales, Australia. The project was developed to celebrate community halls and the role they play in society. Whether done up or worn out, these little gems scattered around the country hold secrets of times gone by and memories of lives still being lived; from first kisses to kisses goodbye. At its core this was a place-making project empowering communities to reengage with their community hall, to raise the roof and discover what’s inside and driven by artists commissioned to create site-specific works inspired by the unique narrative of the halls. The first iteration of the project was rolled out across the seven local government areas of the Northern Rivers region of NSW over a two-year period and in eight key phases. The project captured the imaginations of the Northern Rivers regional communities and attracted significant local and national media coverage. The scale and calibre of the If These Halls Could Talk events is something rarely seen outside of metropolitan centres. The artists produced bold and captivating new works, which activated the historic spaces giving new life and creating new memories for the halls.The project has been commissioned by the Sydney Festival and is currently scheduled to be included in the 2019 Festival - a fine example of a significant and successful regional project transferring to an international festival.
