Ólafur Eliasson.

The artist I most feel connected with.
The ideologies are exceptional, and his conversations called "Life in Space" are also exceptional.



It is true about distance perception in Iceland; early cartographers mapped the country bigger and smaller across the fjords because of light and perception. Also very good points about presence, existentialism, and art.

There is definitely a tangible reality that is important within the experience of art, a physical presence with surrounding environments.

Immersive Environments, Before the Storm...

On a roadtrip along the south of Iceland I came across a few environments that were so unique, inspiring, otherworldly, and stunning that they will no doubt show themselves later in experiments with immersive environments in the studio.







Our journey was rich with drama, danger, and doubt as we got caught in a GIANT Icelandic wind storm that picked up the earth and moved it around. We saw ice, dust, dirt, and volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull (THAT volcano) flying through the air, creating large walls we would drive through, or it would whip across the road threatening to catch us with it. The storm hit us at Jökullsárlón, the glacier lagoon, breaking the drivers side door and whipping us into meek submission to the true power of nature.

We would drive through conditions so dramatic and theatrical it felt like a film, all at once we would be surrounded by dust and ash, with only our headlights to find the white lines of the road in the dark Icelandic winter, then all at once it would break, and we would see a force of wind moving an enormous wall of dirt, dust, and ash across the wide open plains beneath the glaciers. At one point we were in the eye of the storm, encircled by sky high barriers of dust and ash, moving forward with us, as if it was doing it's best to protect us from itself but it couldn't keep it's ferocious side at bay and it changed direction, we drove through it's sky high barriers and into more lashings and whippings from every direction. It was a 5 hour game of tag that would hit the car and we would have to be at peace with the bullying of our superior.

My camera broke (due to ash) but above is a few snaps of things we saw before the storm.

Feels like heima.

After a trip home to Australia to be a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival's keynote project Visible City I am back in Iceland! This time I will spend December at SIM Artist Residency in Reykjavik.

Here's a short film that highlights a few ethics and circumstances of Iceland that has captured my heart about this country.

The City Stripped Back - Underground Spaces

Miru Kim guides us through her work and the ideas of a city's underground, abandoned, disused or historical sites. She finds the city's alternate identity that above ground dwellers are often oblivious to.

I find the works that inhabit collapsing, abandoned, decaying or pre-demolition sites the most beautiful. It makes me want to further explore unused and crumbling places around the city and it's poetic parallels to humanity and our constant flux between destruction and rebuilding, evolution and resurgence amidst the discarded and wasteful.

Resident - Gibraltar

Gibraltar is the city of walls. Crumbling walls, strong impenetrable walls, walls being built, knocked down, decaying, inhabited by the Macaque monkeys, walls literally dividing a mountain, walls of scaffolding, walls stained of rich defensive war history, walls with canons, walls with bars and windows, walls of Mediterranean buildings, walls that seems to kiss, wet cave walls, busy alley walls and siege tunnel walls winding endlessly inside a giant rock. There are WALLS here! EVERYWHERE! I have always loved to feel my fingertips run along brick walls, coarse walls, smooth walls, walls that anchor space. Walls that anchor me.

It has me thinking about what kind of walls we build, and why? Walls we build in our own lives, walls we build in our homes, in our cities, in our societies and our countries. Walls, borders, boundaries, city limits, the infamous Brisbane "Boundary Streets", the borders between the EU countries, the border between the USA and Mexico. Walls we build in our relationships, in reaction to our differences, walls that divide us as people, walls that we break ourselves on, or even walls we break our humanity over. The walls that create spaces, and hubs, and Chinatowns and the canals of Venice. The walls architects build from a single idea.


It makes me curious, to build a wall...

Collapse, out of Iceland

the beauty in chaos
is the point of our
collapse

This work took over the Sue Benner Theatre at Metro Arts, June 26, 2010.
It was showcased alongside new works by Brisbane artists in performance, installation and visual arts as a part of Cross-Stitch: No Pluto, Just Stars curated by Lauren Clelland.

It was inspired by my time in Iceland while at Nes Artist Residency. Even though I was still at the residency when the show went up in Brisbane Australia, a dynamic collaboration between myself, Hamish Clift, Jasmin Coleman and Kat Danger Sawyer brought the work into being as an immersive environment with sound, lighting, masses of destruction, haze, bubbles, and dirt.

"Collapse" hints at the fragile state of chaos, and our humanity within it.

More 'Collapse' images can be found here: http://homepage.mac.com/h.clift/Collapse/large-1.html
or on my main website: http://web.me.com/vote.bohemia

Architecture as Installation

A fascinating look at architecture, urban space, light as a medium and "the absence of presence". Inspiring! Thoughts of architecture as installation, and installation as architecture really calling me to do something urban.

We live by the Greenland sea-side

A beautiful cover of Holly Miranda's "Waves" by Peter Silberman of New York band The Antlers.

I've been carrying this mood when I close my eyes. Standing at the oceans rocky edge of Northern Iceland.
And thinking more about music, and my desire to play piano.

And the sky argues with itself

A crack in the sky, as I crave for the dark of night and calm and sleep, the 24 hour daylight argues with the clouds that promise a haven from the ever present day. Perhaps a fascination with darkness is not just a fascination.

Sex Sex Sex

HVERNIG GERIRÐU KONUNA ÞÍNA HAMINGJUSAMA.
EINGÖNGU FYRIR KARLMENN

(HOW TO MAKE YOUR WOMAN HAPPY. ONLY FOR MEN)

Skemmtilegra kynlif - Fallegri samskipti - Meira sjálfsöryggi

Fun sex - A beautiful relationship - More confidence

This week at Nes Listamiðstöð Artist Residency we had a writer come to stay with us. Infamous amoung Icelanders, Þorgrímur Þráinsson is a sportsman turned writer. This is the book that rumours first surfaced about and we´ve managed to ´find´ one conveniently sticking half out of the studio´s bookshelf...it´s caused quite some interest over the last few days... though it´s stated ´Only for Men´, we´ve been doing a little research here at the studios of our own.

It seems that in fact pigs have orgasms that last up to almost an hour, women may draw it out for up to 51 seconds, and men, well much quicker than that.

But there are plenty of tips on how to please your woman, make her happy, understand male self-esteem and understand more about the connection between the sexes, and of course...sex sex sex! Just practice your Icelandic a bit before picking it up to read or have it read to you...

Ben Frost Interview

Icelandic based and Melbourne raised modern composer, Ben Frost, resonates with universal theories of creativity in his interview with Resident Advisor. Some of the questions and answers here are concurrent with ideas I have within my own practice also. From audience reaction to my work, or ideas of process and what work should be or why I do it, some answers can be found in parallel to Frost's notions here.

A friend once told me that after listening to By the Throat for the first time, he felt sick. To play psychiatrist for a moment, how does that make you feel?

It's increasingly more difficult to get that kind of reaction from people, so I guess my immediate reaction is [that] it's a positive thing. For all our grandstanding about the heightened level of evolution we have apparently achieved, the idea that my music can invoke a physiological reaction in a person says a great deal about that illusion.

Why do you play in the dark?

In the same way, I don't want to make didactic albums, I also don't intend to perform didactically. That's one of the principal reasons I loathe the element of video in music performance. Telling your audience what your visual image your performance is supposed to evoke is frankly insulting to an audience. This postmodern obsession with turning every live concert into a cinematic experience is just fucking insulting to me as an audience

When you use video in a live show you are effectively saying to me two things. One: You are completely and utterly incapable of engaging me in your performance and are compensating. Two: You think I am a moron, and have no imagination of my own.

That said, I played at a festival the other night with Kanding Ray and he had "video"—but what was interesting about it is that there were no images, barely any colour. It was like a swarm of pixels that backlit his band and, occasionally but not always, made these synesthetic gestures of syncing with the beat—making very powerful kinetic relationships. There was no lighting and, as a result, it was lighting design rather than film. And I really, honestly loved it.

You obviously know (on some level) that there are images that are associated with your own ("earthquakes, volcanoes and fear of predators in dark") that most people already have in their minds when they approach your work. Does it bother you that potentially all people get is the dark stuff?

Contemporary music is going the way of the James Cameron school of storytelling: Remove any element of suggestion or subtlety and replace with a fucking sledgehammer. It's like: YOU. WILL. FEEL. THIS.

...I suggest things in my work, and my records certainly have an angle. I draw on everything that I absorbed while creating a record. They allude to images, texts, ideas, and I do try to frame what I've done...and obviously I see things in a particular way, which I can try to visualize on the cover of my record. I mean, it's my record, right?
...I think if you have strong ideas, there is no need to orchestrate the way in which they come together. The concept will reign.

I would like to think I respect the intelligence and—moreover—the imagination of an audience to draw the lines between things, dramatically. The void is far more fascinating than anything I could fill it with. I just want to map out my territory, and piss in the corners so you know where the edges are. You can work out—and make up the rest—on your own.
-Ben Frost 2010


The full interview can be found here:
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1173

To purchase Ben Frost's work you can find it here:
http://www.bedroomcommunity.net/artists/ben_frost/
OR
http://www.room40.org/releases-frost.shtml

DIRECTIONS

^ Melody Woodnutt, 2010, "4 Titles."


Questions of pivots and paths.
My own musings are below after reading an interview with Marina Abramovic by Robert Ayers.


You believe that there’s a clear distinction between performance art and theatre?

"This is what I think: to be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake: there is a black box, you pay for a ticket, and you sit in the dark and see somebody playing somebody else’s life. The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real. It’s a very different concept. It’s about true reality." - Marina Abramovic

Sometimes I find live art and performance art to be interchangeable words, however one rings more relevant to each individual performer/artist I guess. For performance art I find it more indicative of a "performance" with a "performer" and a "stage" and an "audience". For live art (wherein lies moreso an interest to myself) seems to transcend these boundaries of "performance" and bring into focus acts of art that may not need a stage, nor a "performer", despite the body's cooperation at times. Though, even recognising these differences, I still find it difficult to explain the difference to friends or other artists. But I am convinced that once you see them in front of you, you can tell the difference. Perhaps I am biased to a humility I find in works of live art, as opposed to a (possibly my mis-)conception that performance is louder, more egotistically based or "performed" in a more traditional sense than it's quieter younger brother. -Melody Woodnutt



"Now I’m 63 now, and I’m struck by the awareness that we can’t take anything with us. When we die the only thing we can leave is a good idea. Material goods are such an obsession of American culture especially. But it’s just illusion." - Marina Abramovic on her current show in NYC.

This is something I can highly relate to, the struggle within myself and the production of something for consumption. I work in hybrid arts. I am passionate about installation and experience. I construct ideas into physical things. In creating artworks or paintings or drawings or things...do we really need more stuff? Or do we in fact just need more ideas? I believe this is the pivotal notion that shifts me from producing paintings or drawings into creating non-material works, and moving further from the visual and more to the live realm. Someone once asked me "Mel if you burn all your art, who will be able to collect it?" I honestly don't think this should be a problem, so long as they have experienced something through it. ( I also would like to avoid burning art in the future, I'd like to go green....) Experiential work seems to me to be the only way forward. For us to experience art in our lives, in our venues, in our studios. Because ultimately, when we die, we have nothing but our memory, or less. - Melody Woodnutt





http://www.askyfilledwithshootingstars.com/wordpress/?p=1197
It is her 600-hour performance The Artist is Present, which will be a constant component of her MoMA retrospective of the same name, and which has been organized and curated by Klaus Biesenbach, It sees Ms Abramović cease all social interaction with the outside world, and all verbal contact, and dedicate herself instead – as she explains in this conversation – to an unbroken performing presence in the MoMA atrium.

A Gate With No Fence.
A Skagaströnd house, further down Vetrarbraut, on the gravel road, towards the black beach, by the Icelandic horses. No borders, no boundaries, no obstacles. Just a gate, so you know you're almost there; where you should be. Now.

Nes Listamidstöd Artist Residency, Iceland

2010, April arrives with the last of Iceland's white blankets. I see snow for the first time and it sends my synapses to work. Ideas to work further with immersive artworks and with the senses have me standing in a blackened and abandoned fishing freezer wondering about sensory deprivation/manipulation in my work.