Info
Archiving
Alta Forma
8-31 May
Opening event Saturday 10 May, 3-5pm.
Performance event Saturday 24 May, 2-4pm.
Images courtesy of Alta Forma.
Project statement
Turning point, horizontal: I blend some shredded paper and water in a food processor, and it turns to a pasty spew. I let some water drip out, mix in some glue, and bring a bowl of the oatmeal-looking mixture to my desk. I’ve already laid out some thin seagrass twine, and I set out to fastidiously coat the lines of the seagrass with the watery gluey paper pulp. Once covered sufficiently, a corresponding calm arises in me (a satisfaction I’m not proud of), and I set the pulpy wet seagrass lines aside for later. I leave the studio to run other errands, and much later return to find the seagrass has twisted itself into an unlikely range of shapes, knots even, twists and turns that I cannot comprehend or explain. First, I think an intruder has come in and done some sculpture, or some kind of possession is taking place. But, it’s the seagrass remembering water, it’s nothing less than the seagrass remembering 140 million years of wetness.
Turning point, vertical: my algorithm showed me something magical for once apart from muscular bodies and bulges. I immediately searched online for sound clips of electromagnetic chorus waves and listened to their chirping rising tones. I felt the sonic coincidence that can be perceived between the tiny sounds of magnetic waves in Earth’s outer atmosphere and the sounds of dawn and dusk bird, frog and insect choruses. It is as if the birds, insects and amphibians of the wetland choruses are reverberations of these atmospheric magnetic happenings, or vice versa. This coincidence has made me cry. It opened my heart to the cosmic. That’s all. I have played in this coincidence by improvising bass sounds and making sculpture, in awe, breathing in a bit of the grace of connection that it has brought. I’m thinking this might be a culture of the infinite sublime, but I prefer Lygia Clark’s radicalisation of the cosmic for anti-fascist resistance: can that be done?
For this show I serendipitously returned to an unfettered joy in the ongoing formation and transformation of materials in sculpture, at the same time as improvising double bass. I engaged in a kind of speculation between a way of improvising sound inspired by Simone Forti, and a way of engaging with sculpture as a sensorial object inspired by Brazilian Modernism, Lygia Clark and her legacies in performative and installation art practice. I wish I could just let the seagrass twirl, but these sculptures suggest otherwise. In response to materials, I hold tensions that cannot be let go. I hope each work sustains a little grace, a little bit of a twirl, while also uncovering some hierarchies of attention. The composer Arvo Pärt’s words sum up my gut feeling and desire for this show when he says: I had a need to focus on every sound, so that every blade of grass would be as important as a flower.