Not that I’m counting, but I’m estimating it’s about seven months until Cementa 15 kicks off in Kandos. I’ve had a work in development since a three-month residency at the Fire Station Arts Centre in Dubbo last year, but the work has stalled for most of this year due to not knowing where in Kandos the installation might be housed. I’ve got a week at Kandos Projects in the calendar for early December to sort this out.
In the meantime, I’ve decided that with less than a year to go, elements of the work need to progress regardless. So, after an order of motion sensors arrived from the UK a couple of weeks ago, I’m now getting the technical elements of the work sorted as well as weather watching for the video shoot (hoping to find a wind free day before the fire season starts). So, the wheels are in motion again.
Titled Indicatus, this particular installation has been pared down considerably since the residency experimentation, which I felt had taken the work in several directions – some of which have come back together again. I feel confident that the important elements remain and thanks to a brilliant idea from a creative friend (thanks B.), there’s possibly even an element of smell that I’m quietly excited about.
So, this afternoon I’ve been enjoying the warm spring sun and stalking birds around my patch…White-plumed honeyeaters, Rufous whistlers, Babblers and Apostle birds to name a few (they don’t cooperate well, calling out over the top of each other, along with a few roosters, which makes isolating the sounds a tad tricky). I’ve got a few more recordings to complete before I feel I have the full gamut of sounds I want to layer within this work.
I put out a call for some old atlases and the donations have been coming in. These will be used along with the charcoal drawings I’ve been doing of birds in the video component of the installation (hint: it involves a pyre). It’s amazing how quickly some have withdrawn their offers of atlases once they find out they’re being burnt. I have to admit, there’s a reluctance to set fire to them…something I’ll have to work through as I have with the idea of burning my drawings.
There’s one final component to put in place to get this work to where I want it by the time April 2015 rolls around, which will provide a direct line of communication with the project and the issues being explored through this work. More details to come on that.
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