The last twelve months have been extraordinarily productive. Over 2022/23 I have also been involved in another fine project, A Partnership for Uncertain Times.
Media Release
A Partnership for Uncertain Times features four exceptional South Australian artists working at the intersections of art, science & technology:
BRAD DARKSON, DEIRDRE FEENEY, NIKI SPEROU & CATHERINE TRUMAN
The project features a workshop, an exhibition, artist talks as well as text and video essays.
Artists working with science and technology constantly grapple with uncertainty during and through their processes of creating. A Partnership for Uncertain Times offers a rare opportunity for the commissioned artists to take a deep dive into exploratory process over a 12-month period. The post-pandemic timeframe when uncertainty was a constant.
The project focuses on process and creative inquiry, placing emphasis on courageous experimental development over ‘perfecting’ finished artworks.
This Arts South Australia funded collaboration between the University of South Australia (UniSA) and ANAT (Australian Network for Art and Technology), lifts the curtain of cross-disciplinary practice revealing insight into cross-disciplinary artistic process.
Co-developed by Dr Deirdre Feeney (UniSA) and ANAT, the project launched with an in-person student-focused workshop on 22 October, 2022 at UniSA.
The Taken Path: a durational project
August 2022 – July 2023
Catherine Truman in collaboration with Ian Gibbins
I worked in collaboration with Ian Gibbins on a durational project titled The Taken Path, also based at Carrick Hill.
The Taken Path is an open-ended experiment in observation and embodied experience. The project revolves around the repetitive action of walking and filming a defined path that traverses both the cultivated and uncultivated landscape of the Carrick Hill estate.
Each month, over the past year, Ian and I randomly chose a day and time to film using two main devices; a video camera and an iPhone.
We walked the centre of path in both directions, holding the devices the same way each time, filming whatever conditions were present on that day. This repetitive action created the control films and the raw material for experimental footage and stills.
I chose Carrick Hill because of my familiarity with this estate. It is a vast conundrum of shifting, delicate connections between humans and the greater environment. It is a vast estate where pure fantasy and the hard reality of both ancient and present life can be encountered at once. It is like a microcosm of the wider world.
There seems to be an innate drive in us to intervene in, alter and reorder the natural environments around us, even if we have no place in them.
If we keep to the path already taken what will happen to our powers of observation?
If we walk it many times does our awareness shift or is it be-calmed?
Can we learn anew from this repetition?
This has been such a generative process. Our films shown side by side on the same screen map the intricate shifts that occur across a range of landscapes, cultivated and less structured over the course of a year. Working in this open-ended way has meant we have a bounty of raw material for future work.
Glass Gloves- the separation
Amongst the flood of themes we are investigating is a phenomenon we both felt whilst filming over the year. Our devices seemed to separate us from the very environment we were trying to document. Both of us felt that our experience was mediated through the screens we held. I have begun experimenting with glass glove forms that are heavy and dislocating to wear, I am in the one in the glass vitrine, not able to extend my touch to decipher the very environment I seek to understand. They are like miniature wearable bio-spheres and as I move, and expend precious energy, they collect my fluid.
The slow and unexpected unfolding has been deeply satisfying and staying open to the process, constantly reviewing it, discussing It with others, has made me realise that here is where the real work lies- stepping back more, getting out of the way, not filling the gaps with solutions, allowing direct experience and actions to lead my creative responses.
The relationships established across creative arts and scientific fields, as a result of projects such as this are important and rare. They are the catalyst for dialogue that tests the boundaries of language and our understanding and representation of held and new frontiers of knowledge about the natural world we share.
More about The Taken Path
https://www.iangibbins.com.au/2023/06/22/the-taken-path-a-durational-project-with-catherine-truman/
ANAT links to films and catalogue A Partnership for Uncertain Times
https://www.anat.org.au/program/a-partnership-for-uncertain-times/
https://issuu.com/marchellematthew/docs/a-partnership-for-uncertain-times
Artlink article link
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/5096/a-partnership-for-uncertain-times-art-science-and-/