... and then she says goodbye

god you poor readers have been through a bit of a rollercoaster with me this year.

what am i talking about.. i've been on a bit of a roller coaster this year!  the last couple of months have been quite the ride. love and loss. love and loss.

i'm sure i'll look back on this part of my life with true love and affection, knowing that this was the crucial point in the movie - the turning point that made an amazing and obvious outcome, that redefined the character of the main protagonist from here on in.

at the end of the month, i'll be getting on a plane back to the UK and europe. the plan has always been that it's for good. well, you know, in an attempt to set up a life there - try my hand at living more permanently somewhere. that somewhere being back in berlin: a place i always felt most myself, close to art, ideas, other artists and a greater gene pool of cultural production.

but really fucking far from my lover, family and dear friends.
none of whom can physically join me on this journey for various (and heartbreaking) reasons. i'll be leaving them behind.


a few months ago, the idea that i would sacrifice relationships for my career felt right. heroic. stoic, even. the obvious choice.

today, as i sit and cry for the umpteenth time about saying goodbye, it doesn't feel so obvious.

of course i've been doing all the wrong things - like listening to a mixtape my friend will made for me years ago after i left london (full of goodbyes); watching sad movies about facing ones fate, like stranger than fiction; talking to friends about relationships that could never be reading about romance and emigrantion.


unhelpful. but oddly comforting.


it's quite lucky that i'll be in the london for my first stop - i'll be spending a lot of time in the embrace of those wonderful (free) art institutions, being consoled by the arms of art history. and by the time i get to berlin, i'll spend a destructive month dancing until daylight in an attempt to shake the last of regret, sadness and fear from my booty.

and before you all try for pithy consolations, i do know that i can come back.  i know that 'if it's meant to be, it will be'. and that i am doing the right thing.

but it doesn't mean that this kind of decision isn't fuckin' hard.



stupid pop songs that suck right now:

adele: someone like you
maximo park: going missing
peter gabriel: here comes the flood
nick cave: as i sat sadly by her side
jay-z and beyonce: '03 bonnie and clyde
billy bragg: the price i pay

Give Me Something To Listen To: Alaska (Sydney)

Wow! What a year this has been for this little work of mine.

On my way to Berlin, (via Sydney, via Melbourne) I'll be doing a Sydney iteration of this work at the ever-fabulous Alaska Projects. If you're in Sydney, or close enough, do come on down and join us for a Sunday afternoon performance of the work.

deets

Sunday 20 May, 2012

3pm - 5pm

Alaska Projects

Level 2, Kings Cross Car Park
9A Elizabeth Bay Rd, E.Sydney

And, as usual, if you can't make it, send a proxy.

Alaska projects

Facebook event

she sees red

And while you're there, you can check out the end of the current (amazing) exhibition, Empty Gesture by Sarah Rodigari.

tumblr ♥

holy mother of assumption

i've been moving around a lot in the last 2 years. in fact, i think the longest i've stayed in the one place has been the 4 months i lived in perth for the first time in 2011 (including a couple of side-trips to sydney and melbourne).

life is pretty dynamic when you don't have a sense of static 'home' and, up until last week, i really enjoyed it. i loved the excitement of being outside regular living arrangements and the challenge to the ongoing question 'where do you live?' or 'where's home?'.

i've also been packing up my life, in preparation for moving to berlin on a more-permanent basis (visa-gods willing) and reminiscing over nostalgic objects that have been packed up into boxes.

through that process, i have come to an impasse in feeling excited by my gypsy lifestyle. at the moment, i'm craving a sense of static. of 'stop'. 

and this craving had me asking about the role of assumption in my life.

moving around, constantly shifting cities, accommodation, making yourself vulnerable by having to lean on people has been excellent for shaking up my perspective of the world/my life. it has had me in an ongoing state of questioning, enquiry and analysis.

now, i feel the need to have some complacency, to not have to question, to assume certain aspects about my life (like where my belongings are for longer than 4 weeks, or the fact that i have a 'home').

it's quite an odd thing to crave, complacency, or assumption. i was always taught to think that assumptions were bad. but perhaps 'jumping to conclusions' is what we mean by 'asumption' and that, actually, having a balanced amount of assumption in ones life is good.

scientifically, progress is based on proof - one has a hypothesis, controlled experiments, proves/disproves and publishes findings. those findings then become the assumption for the next stage of experiment. you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. you assume that it's round and moves.

civilisation is also a static construct and, given that we're not all a society of gypsies, bedouin or nomads, there must be a powerful social pull for security or static place - a sense of structure and firmness outside of the regularity of seasons.

politically, how does assumption work? that, i'm not sure of.

and i guess in terms of relationships with people, we always - whether in friendship or intimate relationships - move towards that place of not having to question. of just knowing, based on previous experience.

well, a little bit of knowledge, and a little bit of faith in there too. not a spiritual faith, per se, but a faith in ones own sense of knowledge. 

faith in my own sense of knowledge. i'm sure there's a single german word for that. 

How To Do Things With Words

it's on again:

in love

ok, so i've talked a lot about love lately. and i could go into the gag-inducing details of a new love affair - kisses and romance, etc.


but today i'm going to gush over my even newer love: haught. like an erudite love-child of fitzroyalty and helen razer, jonathan has swept me off my cynical and critical intellectual feet and has me gasping with joy at his gentle caresses of cutting prose.


it all started with the repartee between him and yarra trams. including beautiful moments like this:


"If Jim Beam want to know how to make something go viral they can put aside their  incomprehensible, cacophonous clusterfuck of an ad and take a leaf out of Yarra Trams’ book"


then it escalated when i read his beautiful letter of note to jim beam. i think i fell hard.


"It doesn’t matter if the ads are annoying – as long as they’re getting people’s attention, they’re more brilliant than a peacock having sex with a bird of paradise in front of a bird of paradise (plant) on a beach on Daydream Island."


and, having read the email to disgraced wankpot, ben polis, former bigwig of energywatch, i have found myself struck - completely smitten by haught's regard for the absurd in australian public relations.


i'm already daydreaming, wistfully imagining the haught reponse to this beautiful line of fuckery from andrew demetriou (upstanding head of the AFL) and fantasising that it might be dedicated to me. like a groupie in the front row of a rapier wit gig.


"I mean they are offensive, they are ridiculous. You've only got to see them on the front page of the Herald Sun to understand how outrageously offensive they are," he said"


(um...  yes, andrew, the front page of the herald sun is the only place to see just how offensive they are)




look, i don't really want to share my new-found love, dare i sully it. but please, make a difference to your love life and read this blog.

new music objects

i have lots to add about this news. but, of course, i'm currently 7 minutes away from an all-day meeting with web designers and director peeps (geeking it out at the moment). thanks to charlie gower for the zOMG of it.

but i just wanted to post this little snippet so you can read about it. then, when i start my mutterings, it'll make a little more sense :)

not vinyl, tape, CD or even MP3 - a format-open box of goodness that is just a silver headphone jack. for me, the possibilities are endless and really do ask questions about the role of form/format in music and what that means for the commerce of listening.

anyway, read about it in creative review first. i pinched the image from their website too.

she sings a love song

so, i've been all sentimental and romantic lately, serenaded by some really beautiful and soppy songs of romance and love. 

in trying to find music that expresses my feelings of love and affection in return, i've discovered that i have distinct lack of songs that express how i feel at the moment.

one of the reasons is clearly because i've been a stonecold ice queen for far too long and my musical taste hasn't had to express my voice in that way. i've been focused on rhythm, fucking with musical discourse, dance music, social voices, angry voices or the fantasy voice of a boy's love song to me.

but not one that i imagine singing to another. until now.

so, in trying to rectify the problem (no, not stick it up my arse -  fix it), i've been trying to find some shit hot love songs by women. ones that will get stuck in your throat, that pierce the heart and make you cry; songs that express the feelings of the heart in such a poetic way that you don't even want to say them, you want that woman to sing them to him.

but when it comes to finding a soulful, heartfelt female voice singing for mine, i'm finding it extremely difficult.  it seems that the boys really know how to really woo us with songs about love, hope, endearment and promises for the future.

songs sung by women about loneliness, heartbreak and being wronged? i've got a stack of 'em! we know how to express hurt in song, that's for sure. 

don't get me wrong - there are a lot of the soppy love songs out there sung by women, but they're all terrible there are tacky, poppy crap sung either by little girls (taylor swift, ke$ha, katy perry,) or the matriarchs from yesteryear: (cher, babs, maddie, tiffany).

i don't mind chucking a bit of beyonce's crazy or love on top into a playlist, maybe adele if i'm stretching it, but i clearly need help filling out my love song dedications. i'm looking for one that expresses love without also expressing a desire to become a wet fish at the first corner.

here's my playlist as it stands.

Salt'n'Pepa - Whatta Man

Ladyhawke - Magic

PJ Harvey - Is This Desire

XX - Heart Skipped a Beat

The Simon Sound - Between the Wake and The Sleep

Ghostface Killah feat. Otherized Fam - Love Stories

Clairy Browne and the Rackettes - Love Letter

Billie Holiday - The Man I Love

Janis Martin - Love and Kisses

see? a few cool and heartfelt tracks, but it's pretty short.

please, dear readers with full hearts, romantic incline and street cred, i'd be very grateful for the suggestion of a lady's love song.

public institutions

Often my work about art in public space has more of an art leaning - sound, performance, space, etc.

Lately, it's been focused on the public bit. The bios politikos seen in hannah arendt's the human condition.  Gender and sexual identity are a massive part of what drives my high horse, especially when it comes to public insitutions and, unsurprisingly, i've been supporting recent pushes for marriage equality across sexual orientation.

As it stands, i think the institution of marriage is in a bit of a state - it needs to be reconnected to the reasons for having an area of law that governs relationships between people that combine emotion and posessions and effect how succession is legislated (ie: families).


This is a little something of what I wrote to the Senate for their inquiry into the issue:


I have family who have been afforded protection by the Marriage Act who have been violent, abusive, financially negligent and hold complete disregard for the rights of their spouses.

I have family and dear friends who are in loving, committed relationships - who uphold the human rights of their partners, who participate in their communities, who value love, support and financial stability, yet who are not afforded the same rights when it comes to participating in the institution of marriage.

In every other way they uphold the responsibilities of their entitlement to being protected by the Marriage Act. And yet their sexual orientation (something for which their employment, education and citizenship itself cannot be discriminated against) is the only quality which continues to exclude them.

This is not right.

What it says about Australia is that our Marriage Act, and the institution of marriage is only for the protection of a certain percentage of our population, many of whom we allow to continue abusing it and corrupting it without recourse.

I support marriage equality, as it will realign our institution of Marriage with the kind of values it needs to continue: love, committment, participation in the community and upholding the human rights of our loved ones.



I would like Australia's politikos to be as robust as possible.

thank you, part two

Last week i had a second version of Give Me Something To Listen To and it was pretty special, I can tell you.




I had 19 people come through in a steady stream from 6pm. it was quite exhilerating and, again, i got to hear some amazing music and audio pieces - such a diverse stream. and some fantastic conversations about their significance to people, the relationship they had to their experience and what i heard.

OK Gallery is a great white cube space and I set it up with a supremely minimal setting - white chairs for the audience, stand lighting and two stools for me and my participants.

This performance was such an intense one for me because there are no low moments. All of them contain something amazing, shocking, interesting, emotional and intense. I can see a continuing thread of sensory overload in my work.

Some personal highlights included:
Two love songs - one written by one of the participants for her husband and the other a 'hype' song that got this woman through a couple of really tough break-ups. I was the only other person who had been given those songs (apart from the people in the relationship in question) and both became something other than those intensely meaningful songs in the process. I almost cried in both situations.

Kids! 
First time i have listened with children and it was amazing. Tillie danced like a maniac the whole time and we 'sang' the song together (Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious). She didn't need to 'hear' the song like some of the other adults and was completely at ease with enjoying the song. We danced like nobody's business.

Gaming.
I was given a song that was significant in the Swords and Sworcery game, which was an interesting musical piece, but more triggered more interesting discussion afterwards. I'm only a gamer in my imagination, so the song had little direct significance. But the rise of significant game tracks and what that means for people's perception of public space is an interesting one for me to think about.



Humour.
I heard George Carlin speak about the craft of developing humour, which had a lot of similarities with the craft of developing performances. And I also got to hear an hilarious song by Beck - Satan Gave me a Taco, which had me laughing for almost the whole 4 minutes.

Religion. Sohan gave me a sermon from the Bible! An audio book version, read by a woman in a way that made it sound like a science fiction novel. [insert bible-bashing joke here. ahem]. Given its role in shaping culture and the relationship to listening, it was a surprising, but poignant choice.
I was also given a song that sounded like the muezzin from islamic countries singing the call to prayer - it took me straight back to Dubai and the constant musical underpinning of the day there.

Politics. The night finished off with the song Zimbabwe by Bob Marley and a discussion about politics and freedom in that country - on a day in which social activists were convicted for inciting rebellion against the government by showing videos of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. It was an appropriate ending to an intense night.




Interestingly, only one person was disappointed that he had to sit there and wait whilst I got to listen and he had to bide his time. I quite like this controlled denial of sound. And an encouragement for that person to imagine instead.


UPDATE: More images coming soon, and a bit of a video. Some are already on the OK Gallery site.