mea culpa

mea culpa

after all those galleries, after all those exhibitions i saw last year, the last 6 weeks in melbourne has been a drought! turns out that when your life is precarious, you don't have the luxury of seeing art with a capital A.

in the times i would normally be going to art openings, or checking out exhibitions, i've been asking friends to stay on their couch, travelling to various parts of the city or travelling to the country to stay at my folks', or working my various casual jobs and projects, or waiting for peeps to finish their work so i can stay with them.

that's not intended to be an outright whinge (see previous post), but it did remind me that when i make art in a gallery, i'm only going to be talking to people who have a pretty nice, even steady life.

an important lesson too methinks.

image credit: mikala dywer at docklands by ajf clark from flickr 

85 decibels, baby!

the anode festival opened in melbourne on friday night and i remembered that i should really tell you all about a work i have in it.

it's the third in a series of city listening works and this one, 85 decibels, baby!, is a durational work - a long one. i'll be attending to the sounds of city - listening to as much of that cacophony as possible - for 8 hours straight.

8 hours. a traditional working timeframe and the one deemed 'safe' to listen to 85 decibels.
85 decibels is the apparent sound level of city traffic. from inside a car.
i'll be out in the open, with headphones on as that muffler.
i'll be subverting that desire to make the unwanted, the 'noise' subliminal.

the performance will be on saturday 14th november, 2009: 1- 9pm. on the corner of bourke and elizabeth sts in melbourne CBD. feel free to pop down and say hello.
listen with me if you want to.

i'm hoping to post an image each hour and, if we can find a way, hopefully webcasting it somehow. although that's still to be worked out exactly. i will, however, be making notes and images in a series of books and i'll post those images afterwards.

for more info about the rest of the program, check out the anode site.