Earth Issue 4 Moving Image moves mountains June 2014

Edition 4 – June 2014

Isaac Julien, artist and filmmaker, was recently interviewed in relation to his film installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) which completed an extensive world tour at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Here is a transcript from that interview which can be seen online as uploaded by MoMAVideos.

It is a work which is very much about entering into an immersive environment.

Using nine screens, where you are able to move between screens, or view them from different angles, we’ve tried to encapsulate this idea of movement both in the work and also how you view the work…

The inspiration for ‘Ten Thousand Waves’ begins in Morecambe Bay in 2004 when 23 Chinese cockle shell pickers from the Fujian Province from China died when they were trying to pick for cockle shells in the north of England.

I felt very moved by the tragedy because people had come from such a far distance (only) to meet this kind of horrid end and I thought it would be very interesting to try to view this tragedy not from the kind of European point of view but from the Chinese point of view and it took us about three years to discover the Mazu fables.

Mazu is the sea goddess from the Fujian Province where the Chinese cockle shell pickers originated (from) and one of the things I thought that would

be very interesting (was) I tried to view this from Mazu’s point of view and in bringing the lost souls back to China, so-to-speak, through Mazu’s journey which spans over say 400 years of Chinese history… having Maggie Cheung play ‘Mazu’ was very important…

One of the important collaborations is working with different composers. Jah Wobble has a band called the Chinese Dub Orchestra and so there’s this marry between East and West in his work and then of course there’s the work that was done by the sound designer Mukul Patel and also Adam Finch who is the multiple screen editor of all my works and then the 9.2 surround sound dubbing that we made for the work was very (sic) unique; we tried to make a piece of work to have sound become more sculptural in the space and also become more foregrounded as well as the image and, in a way, when you make a multiple screen work you are able to make those decisions in a much more creative manner; there are all of these aesthetic quests that we wanted to pursue in making the work to make it a unique experience. [1] Isaac Julien, Artist and Filmmaker

[1] Behind the Scenes | Isaac Julien: Ten Thousand Waves | MoMAvideos | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM32TL7VnOw | November 25, 2013 - February 17, 2014 Images and video courtesy of the artist. Installation photos by Jonathan Muzikar and Scott Rudd. Filmed by J6 Media Works. Edited by Corinne Colgan.

More information can also be found at http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1417

2

inspired art

Isaac Julien, Ten Thousand Waves, 2010, nine-screen film installation, 35mm film transferred to High Definition, 9.2 surround sound, duration 49 mins 41 secs installation view 17th Biennale of Sydney | Cockatoo Island | 12 May - 1 August 2010 Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

Isaac Julien Photograph: Johan Persson Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

Moving Image – moves mountains

3

15

TEN THOUSAND WAVES ~ London | China

ANGELICA’S CALLING ~ Northern Turkey | Greece | The Canary Islands

26

30

40

FIRST WORD ~ London | Caribbean | China

SPECTACULAR SPECTACLE ~ World Music Video

44

CRAIG WALSH ~ All over the world

46

DOLLY PARTON ~ Tennessee tales

49

‘REEL’ INITIATIVES ~ University for the Real World

GREEN CUISINE ~ Raw food roars

GO FIGURE ~ LA to the Sunny Coast

54

61

68

What on eARTh? 4

6

2

inspired art

VISION SPLENDID ~ Outback Australia

THE LAST WORD

FRONT COVER: Isaac Julien, ‘Mazu, Turning’ (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010 Endura Ultra photograph 80 x 60.3 cm Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia.

BACK COVER: Mystery Road, 2013. Film. 112 mins.

Directed by Ivan SEN. AUSTRALIA: Screen Australia.

Filmed in Winton, Outback Queensland, Australia.

CONTRIBUTORS: Producer: Sandra Conte Guest Contributing Designer: Farley Cameron Social Media Advisor: Zandalee Web Guru: Declan Holt Food Critic and online advisor: Bethaney Gray Music: Jaia

Happy ‘eARThday’! eARTh e-mag celebrates its fourth edition and first birthday.

Sandra Conte Producer eARTh e-mag Photograph by Heenam Kim

‘Moving for moving image’ eARTh bids farewell to foundation designer, Alana Hall, who after the three initial editions of the e-mag, has moved on to pursue her passion for film through full time studies. eARTh looks forward to seeing Alana’s name on the big screen.

Launched one year ago at the Balance Unbalance International Conference 2013, the e-mag continues to find joy and inspiration in those who are working at the intersect of art and environment.

This issue presents moving image which, when incorporating music, is an extremely powerful force.

The stunning cover and ‘First Word’ by Isaac Julien, London-born filmmaker and installation artist of Caribbean descent, provides insight and sensitivity about filmic responses to the world. Our last pages from the musical ‘Marley kingdom’ also brings a London/Caribbean representation while the ‘The Last Word’ pays respect to the Sherpa community on their recent loss.

Environmental awareness continues to be at the forefront of eARTh and each issue is curated as if it were an art exhibition – the interrelationship and seguing of stories aims to provide ‘arm-chair travel’ through a virtual gallery. The emphasis remains moreso on images than words, providing stories as didactics (ie extended exhibition labels) to give the images space to do the talking.

As a project of passion, certainly not profit, eARTh thanks all who provide contributions and support. This issue is a ‘shout-out’ to the moving image artists profiled in the pages beyond, who will take you on a journey ‘out of this world’ but of this eARTh. Yours in eARTh Sandi Moving Image – moves mountains

5

6

inspired art

Isaac Julien’s Genius Ten Thousand Waves

True to its name, the definition of moving image can be shifting – it can be any one or a combination of video art, animation, installation and projections, documentary, environmental, experimental, dramatic short and feature films. Mastery of all is a rarity. The work of Isaac Julien, renowned artist and filmmaker provides a portal for understanding the genre.

Julien’s is a poetic practice and his work Ten Thousand Waves (2010) a prime, acclaimed example of the artist’s oeuvre which orchestrates a deep synchronicity between visual and sound scapes.

From here Julien travels the viewer to the Fujian Province, the origin of those real migrant workers, to interweave myth and legend in the Goddess Mazu, said to lead fishermen to safety. The section titled the Tale of Yishan Island introduces 16th Century fishermen at the mercy of the sea under the gaze of Mazu, played by Maggie Cheung, whose voice along with those of visual artist Yang Fudong and director Zhao Toa represents China. Interspersed is a documentary piece from Hong Kong about the Morecambe Bay tragedy.

Ten Thousand Waves (2010), the fifty-minute (specifically 49:41 min.), nine channel video installation (colour, sound) projected onto nine double-sided screens, premiered at the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia in 2010; this was the launch of a world tour which completed in 2014 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, an institution which had also acquired the work in 2012.

Richly textured with scenes of cinematic reference to the 1930’s classic ‘The Goddess’, re-enacted by actress Zhao Tao, new and old Shanghai streets are merged to represent a fusion of east and west through the soundscape of music and sounds. This powerful combination means the audio is as immersive as is the visual sequencing to effect a cinematic meshing of myth and tragedy.

Of epic scale and beauty, Ten Thousand Waves provides gallerygoers access to multiple screens and perspectives, transporting the viewer beyond the cinematic mountainscapes to be emotionally moved by the human, industrial tragedy which inspired the work – this dates back to 2004, in Julien’s birth country at the site of Morecambe Bay off the coast of northwest England; there 23 Chinese cockle pickers aged between 18 and 45 years, forced to work in dangerous conditions, drowned on a flooded sandbank.

Collaboration is integral to Julien’s process. Engaging calligrapher Zhao Xiaoshi, to present additional layering to the still images, is a masterstroke of visual completion along with a sound design that resonates with cultural identities and environmental references. The commissioning of poet Wang Ping to produce the poem ‘Small Boats’, as recited in Ten Thousand Waves, provides a sense of movement across continents and, like much of Julien’s work, there is visual referencing to the migrant experience.

Isaac Julien ‘Maiden of Silence’ (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010 Endura Ultra photograph 180 x 240 cm Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

Moving Image – moves mountains

7

‘Xu Yu Hua’ Tossed on the Communist road We chose Capitalism through great perils All we want is a life like others TVs, cars, a house bigger than our neighbors’ Now the tide is rising to our necks Ice forming in our throats No moon shining on our path No exit from the wrath of the North Wales Sea Excerpt from Wang Ping “Small Boats” cycle for Ten Thousand Waves

Employing 9.2 surround sound dubbing, the artist’s intent is for a sculptural work in the gallery space and, for this, Julien engaged London-based musician Jah Wobble, with performance by the Chinese Dub Orchestra and an original score by Spanish contemporary classical composer Maria de Alvear.

When Ten Thousand Waves launched at the 17th Sydney Biennale in 2010, the dates overlapped with TEN THOUSAND WAVES | RELATED WORKS which showed from June 10 – July 10, 2010 at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and was inclusive of photographic and light box works. The Gallery also recently exhibited Julien’s newest work PLAYTIME which grew out of Ten Thousand Waves, bringing Isaac Julien, the artist and his work, back to Australian shores. Isaac Julien, the artist and the work has been very much a part of the consistent, dynamic international program run by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Julien’s genius in the sophisticated pairing of moving image and sound incorporates a level of inseparable environmental and emotional awareness in Ten Thousand Waves. www.roslynoxley9.com.au/ www.isaacjulien.com/tenthousandwaves/index.php To hear Isaac Julien speak go to www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1417 www.isaacjulien.com/home eARTh e-mag congratulate Isaac Julien who was last month awarded The Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award, for his outstanding film work outside of narrative cinema, at The San Francisco International Film Fest (SFIFF).

Isaac Julien ‘Mazu, Silence’ (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010 Endura Ultra photograph 180 x 240cm Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 8 of the artist andinspired art Gallery, Sydney.

ABOUT THE ARTIST Isaac Julien was born and raised in London, of migrant parents from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. He lives and works in London.

A student of fine art, film and painting, he graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art and co-found a film and video collective while also becoming a founding member of Normal Films. Early works include Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996) and Young Soul Rebels (1991) which was awarded the Semaine de la Critique Prize at the Cannes Film Festival; his acclaimed poetic documentary Looking for Langston (1989) was winner of several international awards.

Between 1998 and 2002 Julien was visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies. He was also a research fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2000-2005), and is currently faculty member at the Whitney Museum of American Arts and Professor of Media Art at Staatliche Hoscschule fur Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Germany.

Isaac Julien was a 2001 Turner Prize nominee for his films The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), made in collaboration

Isaac Julien HORIZON / ELSEWHERE (PLAYTIME), 2013 Endura Ultra photograph 160 x 240cm Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

with Javier de Frutos and Vagabondia (2000), choreographed by Javier de Frutos. The recipient of numerous awards, Julien has had solo shows at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (2005), MOCA Miami (2005), Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2006), the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado, Lisbon, Portugal (2009), Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2011) and most recently at SESC Pompeia in Brazil (2012).

Isaac Julien is represented in both public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern; Centre Pompidou; Guggenheim Collection; Hirshhorn Collection, Albright-Knox; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; the National Museum of Norway; Brandhorst Collection; Fundación Helga de Alvear, Madrid; Goetz Collection; the Louis Vuitton Art Foundation; LUMA Foundation; and the Zeitz Foundation.

Isaac Julien ‘Blue Goddess’ (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010 Endura Ultra photograph 2 parts: 180 x 245 cm each (overall dimensions approx. 180 x 490 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

Moving Image – moves mountains

9

OVERVIEW

19TH BIENNALE OF SYDNEY

‘You Imagine What You Desire’ Artists bring awareness to our world in transformation.

They seek the possibilities of better worlds – Juliana Engberg, Artistic Director, 19th Biennale of Sydney The 19th Biennale of Sydney with its array of artists held true to its tradition of presenting new and provocative work. Since its inception in 1973, the Biennale of Sydney has provided an international platform for innovative and challenging contemporary art, showcasing the work of numerous artists from over 100 countries.

Running through June 9, 2014 across five venues, with a range of more than 200 artworks, the moving image components of the 19th Biennale of Sydney prove to be ‘out of this world’ set to the cultural theme of ‘You Imagine What You Desire’. eARTh provides an overview highlighting such works:Cockatoo Island billed as a ‘fantasy location’, showed a number of adventurous new commissions and artworks for their first time in Australia. Inside the resonant Turbine Shop, Danish artist Eva Koch presents I AM THE RIVER (2012), an all-encompassing projection of Gljufrabui, the Icelandic waterfall, accompanied by a roaring soundtrack.

10

inspired art

Eva Koch, I AM THE RIVER, 2012 (video still), video installation, dimensions variable.

Courtesy the artist; Martin Asbaek Gallery, Copenhagen; and Gallerie Magda Bellotti, Madrid. Photograph: Högni Marzellius Pórdarson

Moving Image – moves mountains

11

19TH BIENNALE OF SYDNEY CONTINUES….

Also exhibited on Cockatoo Island, in the Industrial Precinct, Mikhail Karikis’ video work Children of Unquiet (2013–14), takes place in an abandoned workers’ village in a southern Tuscan region known as Valle del Diavolo – The Devil’s Valley. The ominous name comes from the overwhelming smell of sulphur released by the region’s natural fountains, where escaping steam leaves the ground under very high pressure and temperatures. Fascinated by the unusual sounds of the terrain, Karikis enlisted local children to respond to the unique soundscape. In the work, they chant with geysers, harmonise with industrial drones, and listen intently to twisted pipes as if guarding long-held secrets. From the early 1900’s, the region was used for pioneering experiments that explored the production of green energy from geothermal sources.

Until recently, the area was inhabited by thousands of workers and their families but unemployment following the introduction of automated technologies resulted in rapid depopulation and abandonment. Entire villages, iconic in their modernist architecture and utopian urban planning, were sold off.

Mikhail Karikis, Children of Unquiet, 2013–14 (video still), single-channel video, 16:30 mins, stereo sound.

Courtesy the artist

Engaging with sound as a feature of the work, the human voice is explored as being sculptural and this, the final in a project quartet, uses acoustic immersion to explore social themes; with the emphasis of Karikis’ work on the auditory, singing and vocal expression are highlighted for their role in acts of community resistance.

This artist is strong on collaboration with high profile groups inclusive of ambitious remixes of contemporary pop musicians such as Björk.

Shift to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) where works are presented across two floors, including a major site-specific immersive video installation by renowned Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist in the double-height gallery space.

Pipilotti Rist, Mercy Garden Retour Skin, 2014, six-channel HD video installation, sound, carpet, pillows, Installation view of the 19th Biennale of Sydney at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Courtesy the artist; Hauser & Wirth; and Luhring Augustine Music: Heinz Rohrer. Atelier Rist Project Team: Judith Lava, Antshi von Moos, Tamara Voser. Created for the 19th Biennale of Sydney and made possible through the generous support of the Andrew Cameron Family Foundation. Photograph: Ben Symons.

12

inspired art

Broersen & Lukács, Mastering Bambi, 2010 (video still), HD video, 12:30 mins, Courtesy the artists and AKINCI, Amsterdam

Carriageworks exhibited works investigating the language, materials and narratives of the theatre and film worlds. In Netherlands duo Broersen & Lukács Mastering Bambi (2010), the artists have re-created scenes from the 1942 Disney film Bambi; by retaining the flora and erasing the fauna, the result is scenic with not a deer to be found. By presenting only the landscape, its cascading waterfalls, trees and foreboding skies, an environment of pristine proportions is presented to the viewer. This is a landscape to imagine what the viewer might desire in terms of ecology and humanity and therefore has no convergence with Disney’s romanticism which once interpreted the 1923 Austrian story of Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten. Mastering Bambi (2010) combines footage, digital animation and media images. www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/broersen-lukacs/#sthash.0ryu8eOJ.dpuf

David Claerbout, The Quiet Shore, 2011 (video still), single-channel video projection, 36:32 mins (looped), black and white, silent, Courtesy the artist; Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris; and Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp Copyright © the artist

Also at the Museum of Contemporary Art, David Claerbout’s, The Quiet Shore (2011) set on coastal France presents as a slow-moving, beautifully shot 36-minute silent, black-and-white film capturing scenes ranging from moments of minute detail to panoramic expanses of coastal landscape, providing a frame-by-frame viewer experience and a multitude of different perspectives and viewpoints from a single moment.

With a mood reflective of its title, the silence of still photography is adopted by Claerbout with people populating his frame, gazing with a shared desire, the nature of which is unclear. Using film, photography and digital media to blur the boundaries between still and moving images, as with his earlier works, it is an exploration of the nature of time. Claerbout who was born in Belgium, has exhibited worldwide, with solo exhibitions in Paris, Vienna, San Francisco and Munich along with prestigious international group exhibitions.

Moving Image – moves mountains

13

19TH BIENNALE OF SYDNEY CONTINUES….

Angelica Mesiti The Art Gallery of News South Wales presents a new video installation ‘In the Ear of the Tyrant’ (2013-2014) by Angelica Mesiti. Collaborating with Italian vocalist Enza Pagliara, Mesiti re-imagines the grieving ritual depicting a vocal performance on location at the Ear of Dionysius, an ancient limestone cave carved out of the Temenites Hill in the Sicilian city of Syracuse.

Inspired by songs of lamentation from southern Italy and women known as Prefiche, who were traditionally employed to sing songs of mourning on behalf of a community after the death of one of its members, Mesiti draws on her own southern Italian heritage. According to legend, the tyrant Dionysius the Elder once used the cave to incarcerate political captives. Due to the flawless acoustics – the cave is famed for its extraordinary aural properties – Dionysius was able to eavesdrop on his prisoners’ covert plans.

Sung in its language of origin, this ancient funeral lament connects to another layer of the history of the cave, which was quarried when Syracuse was a Greek territory. ‘In the Ear of the Tyrant’ honours a musical and cultural tradition on the edge of extinction; Pagliara’s evocative singing is not only an expression of the ritualisation of corporeal death, but also a lament for the death of the tradition itself. ‘In the Ear of the Tyrant’ continues the artist, Mesiti’s, interest in, as she notes, “performed cultural traditions in a state of transformation, or at risk of extinction due to complex social, economic or cultural shifts”.

Working from Sydney to Sicily, to produce ‘In the Ear of the Tyrant’, Mesiti honours a musical and cultural tradition on the edge of extinction. http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/mesiti/#sthash WWW.BIENNALEOFSYDNEY.COM.AU Read more about Mesiti’s work on the following pages.

14

inspired art

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling, 2013-2014, Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery. Produced by Felix Media. Image courtesy: Ian Potter Moving Image Commission. Photography Mark Gambino.

Angelica’s Calling Angelica Mesiti works with video and installation, incorporating performance and musicality to explore ideas of community, cultural tradition and spirituality. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales and in December 2012, was awarded the inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission valued at $100 000.

The Calling premiered at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, in February 2014 and prior, in 2009, Mesiti was the first video artist to win the Blake Prize for religious and spiritual art with her single-channel video work titled Rapture (Silent Anthem) (2009); in 2013 she also won the Anne Landa Award for video and new media arts.

Utilising a variety of methods to create her video pieces, including staged situations, site-specific performances and documentary-style footage, Mesiti has become increasingly well known for pieces that observe collective behaviour and the dynamics of group activity. Rapture (Silent Anthem) features slow-motion footage of a crowd of young people at a concert, set to a soundtrack of silence. Shot from a concealed location beneath the stage, the film focuses on the faces of the crowd as they collectively fixate on the unseen performance. Wide-eyed, with hands raised in the misty afternoon sunlight, they appear as a mass of worshippers revelling in the throes of religious fervour.

Music and performance are recurring themes in Mesiti’s films. In Citizens Band (2012), a four-channel video installation, the artist examines the preservation of cultural traditions and identity through music. The four short films, filmed in both Paris and Sydney, feature different musicians who are also immigrants. Each gives a musical performance in an unexpected urban environment, drawing on traditions from their heritage. The performers carry their customs with them; even though they are a long way from their place of birth, their cultural traditions are an integral part of their individuality and identity.

Born 1976 in Sydney, Australia, Mesiti lives and works in Sydney and Paris.

Moving Image – moves mountains

15

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling (production still), 2013-2014. Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery. Produced by Felix Media.

The inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission: a collaboration between ACMI and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

16

inspired art

More than words

Mesiti, mountains and moving image

by Sandra Conte

Moving Image – moves mountains

17

Working from her two bases of Paris and Sydney, moving image/video artist, Angelica Mesiti, manages her practice and responds to the exposure experienced as recipient of the 2012 inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission; valued at $100 000 and a joint initiative of The Ian Potter Cultural Trust (IPCT) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the commission realised Mesiti’s work entitled The Calling, which presents the artist’s exploration of traditional whistling languages still used in some parts of the world across great distances.

and survival. Depicting the impact of technology on this traditional tool of communication, the work is about evolution, adaptation, tenacity and preservation within contemporary society. It represents the high level of sophistication of seemingly primitive cultures, where a whistled reply can outpace a typed email or the mountain valley acoustics supersede mobile ‘phone connectivity.

Indeed, the moving image of Mesiti introduces the viewer to another kind of language, wordless, whistling and wonderful.

For this project, Mesiti elected to film at the remote locations of Kuskoy (known as the ‘’village of the birds’’ in reference to the humans who sound like birds when they whistle to one another across the valleys) in Northern Turkey, the island of Evia in Greece and the island of La Gomera in The Canary Islands. The communities are all mountainous regions, with valleys acting as acoustic enablers for effective communication via the whistle.

Angelica Mesiti is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

The Calling was produced by Jodie Passmore and executive produced by Bridget Ikin of Felix Media and shows through to Sunday July 13, 2014 in a purpose built environment of Gallery 2, ACMI in Melbourne, Australia. An edition of The Calling will enter the ACMI Collection to sit alongside works by renowned artists such as Johan Grimonprez, Mona Hatoum, Anthony McCall, Bill Viola, and new commissions

by Candice Breitz, Ian Burns and Warwick Thornton.

As a three channel video installation with sound, the artist operates outside of documentary or cinematic conventions providing an immersive viewer experience with insight to people, place and tradition across three communities, and the whistling languages symbolic of cultural change

18

inspired art

Angelica Mesiti www.angelicamesiti.com/ ACMI www.acmi.net.au/ IPCT www.ianpotterculturaltrust.org.au/

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling (production still), 2013-2014. Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery. Produced by Felix Media.

The inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission: a collaboration between ACMI and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

Moving Image – moves mountains

19

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling (production stills), 2013-2014.

Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery. Produced by Felix Media.

The inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission: a collaboration between ACMI and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

Angelica Mesiti has a string of awards to her credit. In most of her works Mesiti explores sound, music and performance along with human connectivity to the environment. eARTh e-mag’s interview follows with ACMI Curator Amita Kirpalani around the context and content of Angelica Mesiti’s work and creative process, providing greater understanding of the level of development and production in the scale of work that is The Calling.

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling, 2013-2014. Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery. Produced by Felix Media. Image courtesy: Ian Potter Moving Image Commission.

Photography: Mark Gambino The inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission: a collaboration between ACMI and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

Calling moving image artists - the second Ian Potter Moving Image Commission is now open. The successful applicant will receive a $100,000 grant and an exhibition at ACMI in 2016. Applications close June 17, 2014 www.acmi.net.au/Ian-Potter-Moving-Image-Commission-Applications-Open.htm

20

inspired art

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling, 2013-2014.

Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Produced by Felix Media. Image courtesy: Ian Potter Moving Image Commission.

Photography: Mark Gambino The inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission: a collaboration between ACMI and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

Moving Image – moves mountains

21

Curating Moving Image Interviewing Amita from ACMI So just what is involved in presenting moving image from the perspective of an art institution and its curators? Amita Kirpalani, Assistant Curator of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) shared her experiences around the commission and display of Angelica Mesiti’s The Calling, which is featured on the previous pages. Amita also speaks about ACMI’s recent hosting and involvement in music video and animation exhibitions.

22

inspired art

eARTh speaks to Amita: eARTh: What is your role as Curator (is that title correct?) in relation to the inaugural commission which selected Angelica Mesiti to produce the work The Calling?

Amita: The Ian Potter Moving Image Commission employs a multi-disciplinary selection panel. I was not involved in selecting Angelica Mesiti for the inaugural project since the panel does not comprise ACMI curators. The panel selects a shortlist who then present their project in consultation with the ACMI team in order to map out the technical and in some cases conceptual parameters for the final artwork.

My colleagues, Curators Sarah Tutton and Ulanda Blair worked closely with the shortlisted artists to develop these final proposals for the panel – from which Angelica’s project was selected. From all accounts it was an extremely difficult decision but one that the panel and both organisations are extremely proud of. eARTh: Can you please explain the significance of this commission to moving image artists both nationally and overseas?

Amita: The Ian Potter Moving Image Commission is a rare opportunity for Australian mid-career artists to develop and undertake a new and ambitious project over a twelve month period. The partnership with ACMI also ensures that the selected artist is supported by our excellent AV team and assisted by our Curatorial team throughout the process to ensure that the project is delivered to the highest possible standard.

eARTh: How have you worked with Angelica with this process and the presentation of her work at ACMI? Amita: The way that we’ve worked together is to think carefully and closely over time about how the work will sit in the space. Most crucially we’ve spent time talking through the ways in which viewers experience the work.

We also have an amazing team of Audio Visual technicians here at ACMI who do an incredible job of working closely with artists. Incidentally we have also worked with Angelica to prepare a commission of The Calling which will enter the ACMI collection which has been an exciting part of the project. eARTh: How do you best define Moving Image to anyone who asks what it is?

Amita: I rarely have to define it because it’s such a common feature in our experience of contemporary art – however, moving image artwork generally comprises film, video, sculpture or installation or combinations of all these things. eARTh: What is it about the work The Calling which captivates you the most?

Amita: I think I found the intricate nuances of the language really fascinating. Before I started to see snippets of what Angelica had filmed, I’d imagined that the whistling language was really basic, like a simple alert system. But as viewers can see and experience, the language is far more complex

Moving Image – moves mountains

23

than this, whole sentences are possible, including people’s names, which was really surprising. Of course Angelica’s portrait of the language and the way that she has shot the work heightens these nuances and draws out a complexity as she represents villagers interacting while they undertake daily tasks. eARTh: eARTh e-mag is about the intersection of art and environment and supports artists who support the eARTh. This current issue is dedicated to moving image, would you like to suggest how The Calling works at the intersect of art and environment?

Amita: I think this is for viewers to decide and what I love about the work are the many, many ways that Angelica has sought to examine the complex and unique relationships we all have to a changing environment. eARTh: Will The Calling be showing anywhere after ACMI and what has the public response been to the work?

Amita: The work will enter the ACMI collection for loan to colleague institutions and organisations in Australia and around the world. There has been a huge amount of interest in the work and we are excited about where the whistling might travel next! eARTh: ACMI recently hosted ‘Spectacle: The Music Video Exhibition’ which showcased music video as moving image; can you talk a little about Natasha Pincus’ produced/

24

inspired art

directed video ‘Somebody that I used to know’ along with Gotye’s response/amalgamation of all posted videos of renditions of that song?

Amita: I worked as one of the curators on ‘Spectacle: The Music Video Exhibition’. As part of the ACMI iteration of this project we, the ACMI team, worked to include and highlight the importance of the Australian contribution to music video history – not just as far as the musicians are concerned, but crucially the filmmakers and directors who work with this medium. One such director is the inspiring Natasha Pincus who worked closely with us to identify key Australian directors in the field.

Natasha is a force of nature and her own work, (which extends beyond music video making into film making), represents the ingenuity, resourcefulness and poetry that the medium brims with. Natasha worked with Gotye to conceptualise and direct ‘Somebody that I used to know’ – which as we now know has inspired an abundance of YouTube cover versions which were then collaged together by Gotye. This is a really fantastic example of the ways in which the medium is cannabalising itself and perhaps more than that, an example of the ways in which technology facilitates a ‘creative conversation’ between fan and musician, which has never before been possible. eARTh: Thank-you Amita Kirpalani, Assistant Curator ACMI for this terrific insight into curating moving image.

Gotye ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ featuring Kimbra (2011) directed by Natasha Pincus, Photograph supplied courtesy of ACMI.

Did you know that the video ‘Somebody that I used to know’, Directed by Natasha Pincus, one of the many music videos in the ‘Spectacle’ exhibition, received 450 million views? Creating a worldwide phenomenon, the collaboration of music artists Gotye and Kimbra depicts the story of a relationship ‘break-up’. Pincus, explains how she used stop motion and video techniques focussing on a naked male

who is sequentially covered in paint followed by a wider shot reveal to form a sharing of that painting with the female figure; as such, Pincus has employed technological strategies to articulate a unity. Listen to the Director explain the process of allowing a song and lyrics to drive the visuals. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNOf8EMurM8 Moving Image – moves mountains

25

REVIEW

Spectacular Spectacle - music video as art ‘Spectacle: The Music Video Exhibition’ previously showing at ACMI in Melbourne, Australia is now showing at the EMP Museum in Seattle through January 25, 2015.

Co-organised by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and FLUX with Curators Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells of FLUX, the exhibition provides an immersive environment, a journey through surround sound, potent images and installations of props. and costumes and objects that have never been displayed outside of the video making.

Radiohead are a band conscious of minimising their emissions and wastage resulting from the process of touring; as such they use tour water flasks to drink from, not disposable cups, and it has been reported that their tour buses and tour tucks run on biofuel and that the band ban air freight.

‘Spectacle: The Music Video Exhibition’ presents over 300 clips, spanning nine decades, and pioneers as a ‘museum first’ in the celebration of art and history of the music video, in relation to sight and sound. Exploring how the art of the music video has been progressed and is varied with experimental, arthouse, the provocative and the political, short film and epic productions along with special effects in production, the exhibition presents the genre of music video in all its leading edge glory.

The music video for House of Cards, directed by James Frost and Aaron Koblin, was produced using lidar (a remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analysing the reflected light) technology and released in June 2008. Featuring rendered images of Thom Yorke’s and several other people’s face it is interspersed with images of suburban landscapes and a party. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ 26

inspired art

Radiohead House of Cards (2008) Directed by James Frost.

Photo supplied courtesy of Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

As a form of moving image, filmmakers are highlighted such as those responsible for an innovative marrying of sound and vision, like Michel Gondry who directed videos for The Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk, Spike Jonze (Björk, Fatboy Slim) and Mark Romanek (Lenny Kravitz, Jay Z).

A standout for surrealism and experimentalism is the music video of Wanderlust, a song written and recorded

by Icelandic singer Björk. The singer has described the single as being about searching for something with the knowledge that you will not find it and takes you on a journey through fantasy rivers, mountainscapes, and waterfalls. The music video was awarded for Best Art Direction, Best Alternative/Indie Video and Video Of The Year at the 2008 UK Music Video Awards, and was also nominated for Best Special Effects. Produced in stereoscopic 3D, it involves a combination of large scale puppeteering, live action acrobatics, miniatures, and CG, needing to be viewed on DVD quality rendition to achieve the full effect. It combines the depiction of nomads, yaks, a humanised backpack and Rivergod. Commissioned by Paul McKee at One Little Indian, the team behind the filming and animation is significant with directors from Encyclopedia Pictura (Isaiah Saxon and Sean Hellfritsch) via Ghost Robot with associate director/practical effects supervisor Daren Rabinovitch, producer Mark de Pace, fabrication supervisor Tirsh Hunter, CGI supervisor Damijan Saccio and executive producer Zachary Mortensen. Post production was done at UVPHACTORY by Principals/ cofounders Scott Sindorf and Damijan Saccio, creative director Alexandre Moors, and executive producer Brian Welsh. The two Yak dancers, Coco Karol and Brynne Billingsley, were choreographed by Chris Elam. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyhMzQXLFEU

Björk, Wanderlust (2008) Directed by Encyclopedia Pictura. Photograph supplied courtesy of Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Excerpt of lyrics from Wanderlust by Björk

I am leaving this harbour, giving urban a farewell… rather sailing into nature’s laws and be held by ocean’s paws; wanderlust! relentlessly craving wanderlust, peel off the layers, until you get to the core… lust for comfort, suffocates the soul…

‘Spectacle: The Music Video Exhibition’, provides a vibrant history lesson tracking from early jazz sound films through to jukebox musicals, rock performances, landmark collaborative pieces, MTV, YouTube and hip-hop, revealing the music video as a serious form of artistic expression, with a team of creatives behind each production. With the power to change people’s perspectives on life, art and the universe, ‘Spectacle’, the exhibition reveals how the music video has more than earned its stripes as a part of the stable of the genre that is classified as ‘moving image’. http://contemporaryartscenter.org/exhibitions/2012/03/ spectacle http://flux.net/spectacle-the-art-of-music-video-cincinnati Moving Image – moves mountains

27

Video Art

To the Horizon LANDSEASKY: revisiting spatiality in video art is a MAAP (Media Art Asia Pacific) exhibition of video art and screen media installation by 20 artists from many countries. Currently touring throughout Asia and Australia, the exhibition theme is centred on the motif of the horizon, whether it be as a single line across a plane or the exploration of it in complex aspects of art.

The list of contemporary artists showing reads like a ‘who’s who’ of video art: Jan Dibbets (The Netherlands), Paul Bai (Australia), Lauren Brincat (Australia), Barbara Campbell (Australia), Wang Gongxin (China), Shilpa Gupta (India), Yeondoo Jung (South Korea), Derek Kreckler (Australia), Giovanni Ozzola (Italy), Joao Vasco Paiva (Portugal/Hong Kong), Wang Peng (China), Kimsooja (South Korea), Craig Walsh (Australia), Sim Cheol Woong (South Korea), Heimo Zobernig (Austria), Yang Zhenzhong (China), Zhu Jia (China).

The exhibition tours to South Korea, China and Australia, with exhibiting venues ranging across multiple prestigious museums and galleries. LANDSEASKY exhibited in Seoul, Korea in early 2014, moved to Shanghai, China through June 20 and from September 18 to November 23, 2014 will show at the Griffith University Art Gallery and MAAP SPACE in Australia.

The exhibition is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts; the Australia Korea Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

The organisers also wish to acknowledge the Australian Embassy, Seoul and Australian Embassy, Beijing.

MAAP was established in 1998 to bring focus to “unmapped” 28

inspired art

media art activity from Australia, Asia and the Pacific and has cultivated an international reputation for media art festivals and a program of special international collaborations. www.maap.org.au MAAP’s ongoing relationship with and commitment to artists such as those featured in LANDSEASKY is revealed in its history with both Yeondoo Jung (South Korea) and Craig Walsh (Australia).

Yeondoo Jung (South Korea) In LANDSEASKY Yeondoo Jung exhibited the work entitled Handmade Memories – On the Dividing Line between Body and Soul, dual channel HD video on wall mounted displays, 9’ : 16”, 2008. This forms part of his work, in both video and still photographs, about the recollection of others with an emphasis on producing and depicting scenery in real time.

In 2013 MAAP hosted Yeondoo Jung’s first Australian solo exhibition about the elaborate artificial environments the artist constructs for video and photographs. Combining handmade theatrical sets with analogue special effects, he creates slick, detailed worlds with a hint of imperfection. Two such video works presented by MAAP were Documentary Nostalgia (2007) and Twilight Seoul (2012). Documentary Nostalgia (2007) was filmed in a single, unedited take over 84 minutes with an empty gallery space serving as the stage for a sequence of moving scenery. The video, recorded from a fixed camera position, shows a smoothly choreographed construction team installing multiple backdrops, props and furniture effecting six completely

on the MAAP varied sets from start to finish. Taking the proposition that nostalgia can not be documented, episodes and places from the artist’s memory are physically reconstructed, starting with his father’s living room. Recorded as if it were a stage show under a set designer’s direction the props and multiple backdrops are substituted, vacated and created as domestic, street, country and urban environments (with grass, tree and a live cow) rather than just scenes. Yeondoo’s transparency in sharing his processes in no way dissolves the mystique brought to the viewer by the artist’s created world.

Yeondoo first exhibited in the late 1990’s followed by internationally acclaimed exhibitions with museums such as MoMA, New York; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea along with Venice and Istanbul Biennales. His award as Korean ‘Artist of the Year’ in 2008 is one of many.

Yeondoo Jung, Documentary Nostalgia (2007). Video stills.

Craig Walsh (Australia) showed previously with the ‘MAAP in Beijing’ 2002 exhibition and in the more recent LANDSEASKY presents his Standing stone site, a single channel digital animation 10:00, 2012, part of his oeuvre which includes projection and photography in relation to the environments he experiences. This particular work centres on the Burrup Peninsula, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, a site sacred to the Aboriginal community; with its 96 standing stones Walsh filmed the changing light across the rock forms using time lapse technique from sunrise to sunset across a rugged landscape. Here, a handmade jagged horizon line is depicted, the result of iron ore mining. Read more on Walsh in the feature overleaf.

Moving Image – moves mountains

29

All over the world Craig Walsh 30

inspired art

Craig Walsh’s video projections are often displayed outside of the traditional gallery context. From the 1990’s, the artist’s star was on the rise, trajecting across the globe through numerous commissions.

A site-responsive, and a more recently collaborative process, has seen Walsh’s work span a range of media from digital video, projection and sound to sculpture and photography to produce multiple dimensions and perspectives to his work. Walsh’s projection work is adept at centering on the artist and viewers’ immediate experience of context, landscape and environment.

Most recently, a major solo exhibition entitled Embedded was curated through a collaboration between the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Museum of Contemporary Art based in Sydney, (two Australian institutions which have also produced publications on the artist).

Embedded engaged with First Nations custodians from an Australian community where their land was being mined for iron ore and with the results installed and projected in the gallery context. As an artistic enquiry into the impact of mining on the Murujuga people, this project was the natural progression from Walsh’s Digital Odyssey (a series of residency-based works made in rural, regional, and remote Australia exploring the relationship of the Pilbara’s local Indigenous communities to Country). Digital Odyssey saw the combination of a residency and 11 destination tour program, resulting in intensive community collaborations undertaken with his wife, artist Hiromi Tango.

The artistic pairing of Craig Walsh and Hiromi Tango is also found in the 2013 collaboration with the people of Teshima Island with a residency in the Kou village on Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, to create a collaborative piece entitled Traces – Blue 2013 for the Setouchi Triennale. It is an island where the fishing industry is in decline and the majority of the population, of only several hundred people, are

retired and life is slow paced with emphasis on tradition.

The artists wished to spark discourse, understanding and expression of how such a community retains its way of life.

There were many stages and components to the project, one being the highlighting of the Honki-dori flags, given to fishermen when they launch new boats to herald bountiful catches and prosperity. With the tradition of the flag flying over newly made boats prior to their launch, the reality is few if any boats are now being made and so local fishermen constructed a bamboo flagpole and each day at 7.00am raise the flag in honour to a project-constructed, symbolic mirrored boat. A disused traditional house is also part of

the project with two video works: a three-screen video of the mirrored boat adrift at sea, as if searching a direction and future; a second video projected onto an old timber door, shows fishermen from different villages talking about rope and the sea. There are also five photos: four, made by the artists, showing fisherman draped with honki-dori flags staring out across the sea, along with a historical photograph with traditional boat and honki-dori flags. A fantastic sculpture, produced by the hands of villagers interweaves old and new ropes, the latter made from donated recycled cloth and materials such as octopus traps and fishing nets.

Community Portraiture, Traces – Blue 2013 with Hiromi Tango for Setouchi Triennale, Kou, Teshima Island, Japan. Curator Fram Kitagawa.

Digital colour photograph; Three-channel video on monitors (22-minute loop), supporters Art Setouchi Executive Committee, Australia-Japan Foundation, Australian Embassy (Japan) and Australia Council for the Arts. Production Shintarou Miyawaki and Koebi-Tai (Little Shrimp Squad).

Moving Image – moves mountains

31

Cross-Reference 2004 Rear-projection, rear-projection screen, existing doorway, production Steven Thomasson for Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Curator Julie Robinson.

32

inspired art

The highly visual and heightened experiential impact of Craig Walsh installations and video projections are to be found in the Emergence series which commenced in 1994 projecting faces onto trees; in a subsequent version, Walsh used live video and sound feeds to engage in conversation between viewer and the projected image, even combining music and whistling to provide a potent soundscape.

Providing viewer immersion with the work via optional interactivity and participation has become a trademark of Walsh’s public art works, as highlighted in the following potted history.

Cross-Reference which showed at the 2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, resulted from Walsh making a model of the space at the said Gallery where he showed his work and took it to the Gold Coast, Queensland, ‘Australia’s Big Day Out’ music festival. Utilising a concealed camera to video people looking into the model and at the gallery, the artist and his team edited footage which was rear-projected onto a screen suspended in a halfopened gallery doorway as presented among other artists’ works. As a result, the concert punters appear, on a gigantic scale, to be inspecting the gallery within its internal walls, to the surprise of unwitting gallery visitors.

Moving Image – moves mountains

33

During 2007 Walsh staged a series of Incursions with coordinates, referring to the work’s exhibiting location, accommodated in the title. In one instance, Walsh took a vacant Toronto shopfront, making it appear to fill with water and oversized swimming crayfish and barramundi; in the process, viewers were relegated to a street vantage point to observe in awe, helplessness and wonder at the macabre overtaking of a familiar space with identifiable but gigantic creatures. Similar installations presented in San Jose and Taipei.

Incursion 37:20:15.71” N – 121:53:09.51” W 2008 for Zero1 Biennale, San Jose City Hall Rotunda, San Jose, US saw Walsh subsume the San Jose City Hall Rotunda, which occupies a Incursion 43:38:36.19N/79:25:19.89W 2007, Toronto, Canada, on September 29-30th 2007 at Nuit Blanche Supernatural City. 2-channel synchronized data digital video projection.

34

inspired art

historic site where in the 1960’s, the renowned band, ‘The Grateful Dead’, held their first performance; in that era, the psychedelic movement also embraced new media such as ‘liquid-light shows’, projected over musicians and controlled to respond to their music. Incursion 37:20:15.71” N – 121:53:09.51” was where Walsh created the illusion of the Rotunda filling up with vines, like psychedelic veins, taking half an hour for the tendrils to take over the space, followed by the same amount of time to retreat.

Incursion 25.033” N – 121.633” E 2011 For the Zhonggang Main Drain, Taipei, as commissioned by the New Taipei City Government, Walsh incorporated a fourchannel synchronised projection over a 40-minute loop to

transform a former open Taipei sewer into parkland. Only operating as a stormwater drain, the once toxic location was cleaned up with pathways, lighting and water features also being installed. Walsh’s projection into the concrete channel commenced with a light speck turning into vines growing from the water and up the wall. A gecko-like creature, vines and flowers eventually disintegrate into pixels, and into the water.

Craig Walsh bases himself in Tweed Heads, Australia and continues to travel, engage with and bathe the world, its architecture, galleries and landscapes in his unique, stunning, public, video projections. The work of Craig Walsh has ‘wow’ factor with substance, with the capacity to Incursion 37:20:15.71” N – 121:53:09.51” W 2008 for Zero1 Biennale, San Jose City Hall Rotunda, San Jose, US. Curator Steve Dietz. 12-channel synchronised rear-projection, 3D animation, rear projection screen, existing architecture; 60-minute loop. Commissioner - Applied Materials and City of San Jose. Supporter Australia Council. Production Steven Thomasson.

transcend any cultural barriers. I, for one, wait with bated breath for what is yet to come.

www.craigwalsh.net The most recent publication on Walsh’s work is a monograph entitled Craig Walsh, Embedded, 2013 jointly published by the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane and Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia, Sydney with support from Arts Queensland. www.ima.org.au/craig-walsh/ Incursion 25.033” N – 121.633” E 2011 for Zhonggang Main Drain, Taipei. Curator Rita Chang.

Four-channel synchronised projection; 40-minute loop. Commissioner New Taipei City Government.

Production Steven Thomasson.

Moving Image – moves mountains

35

Natural Projections For over a decade I have been privileged to view ‘live’ moving image projections by James Muller (Earth Base Productions) at a variety of events and I remain fascinated. [1] James’ collaborative work with world renowned artists such as sonic musician and curator Leah Barclay, Michel Tuffery MNZM (Aotearoa) – New Zealand and Aboriginal artist and curator Lyndon Davis (Gubbi Gubbi, South East Queensland, Australia) presents in multiple layers and sculptural dimensions, mostly pivoting on an environmental rationale.

Both modest and expert in his practise, James’ work is reflective of a gracious, calm temperament and the capacity to articulate moving image free of affectation.Still images of recent projection installations underscore the visually stunning nature of his many collaborations.

Collaborations Ship of Fools, (at left) a grand scaled installation positioned centrally on Lake Cootharaba for the 2012 Floating Land festival, employed natural fibres, sound and video exploring the concept of rights versus responsibility.

Collaborators with James were Kris Martin and Simon McVerry.

Reading Clouds – Floating Middens, a work presented in the subsequent iteration of the biennial Floating Land, in 2013, was a collaboration between James and artist Michel Tuffery (http://www.micheltuffery.co.nz) including fibre artists Jamie Parkin and Kris Martin.

36

inspired art

Earth Base Productions

by Sandra Conte

Reading Clouds – Floating Middens. Principal collaborators James Muller, Michel Tuffery with Jamie Parkin and Kris Martin.

Moving Image – moves mountains

37

As the first collaborative artwork by James Muller (Australia) and Michel Tuffery MNZM (Aotearoa – New Zealand) the two layered installation acknowledged the history, geography and navigational links of the wider Pacific region and its peoples. The ‘Reading Clouds’ component considers ideas of perception, sensory cartography and how genuine knowledge of place can define movement in physical and cultural forms. The sculpture responds to the elements of wind, water and light. ‘Floating Middens’ is a literal reference to the shell being a revered child of Tangaroa, a wellknown creator God embedded throughout Pacific mythology and the use of the hyper-sized shell forms are a reference to an archeological midden and prior occupation. From shore to sky, ‘Reading Clouds – Floating Middens’ defines a trace between the past and present. Both installations exert natural materials and man-made technologies and transform from day to night with video projection or LED lighting. [2] Strongly collaborative with Indigenous artists and their communities, James understands and respects

cultural protocols and has formed strong working links with Lyndon Davis, Elder of the Gubbi Gubbi community. James projected Lyndon’s image onto the State Library of Queensland building for the Australian South Sea Island 150 Celebration 2013 project, using one of only two projectors available in Australia for such large scale work. He has also worked with Lyndon and the Gubbi Gubbi Dance Troupe at various global festivals and continues to explore projects and projections with the community.

Lyndon Davis, State Library of Queensland, for the Australian South Sea Island 150 Celebration Project, 2013, courtesy Earth Base Productions

38

inspired art

These illustrated examples provide but one aspect of the many capabilities offered by Earth Base Productions, for instance, James Muller is also adept at ‘Vjing’. Irrespective of the project, communing with James Muller’s work provides natural entry to the world of synesthesia in art.

[1] With a string of performance and installation projects to his

name, James Muller’s Earth Base Productions have showcased at repeat iterations of the Floating Land Festival, Noosa and Caloundra Regional Gallery, Sunshine Coast Show, Gympie Gold Rush festival, Mornington Island Dancers and all major performance venues in Brisbane. Other live events and documentation have seen projects completed with Woodford International Folk Festival and the former International Festival of the Dreaming.

[2]’ Floating Land nature’s dialogue’, program booklet, Sunshine Coast

Regional Council, Friday 31 May – Sunday 9 June, 2013, page 37.

Earth Base Productions (EBP) is a multi-disciplinary, creative media studio, producing a diverse range of projects utilising screen technologies and emerging digital media, also collaborating in cross sector and cross platform environments. James Muller has worked on 16mm, 35mm and 70mm film productions including the AFI award winning ‘Cybergirl’ TV series he has further awards to his credit as Winner of The Glossies – Greening the Arts Award, Sunshine Coast 2011 and 2012 as well as being a finalist for his role as editor for the documentary ‘Keeping Noosa Natural’ at the 2012 Wildlife Film Festival (USA) in 2010.

For further information go to www.earthbase.net.au Explorative projections with the Gubbi Gubbi Dance Troupe.

Courtesy James Muller, Earth Base Productions.

Moving Image – moves mountains

39

Dolly Parton “These are my mountains, my valleys, these are my rivers, flowing like a song, these are my people, my memories, these are my mountains, this is my home”.

Dolly Parton [1]

Dolly Parton serenades with harpsichord about her mountain home, Blue Smoke World Tour, Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Photograph Kyle Bryce.

Dolly Parton plays multiple instruments in her Blue Smoke Tour, Photograph Kyle Bryce

Dolly Parton grew up at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Sevier County, Tennessee and through her prolific songwriting makes regular reference to that context with songs such as ‘My Mountains, My Home’, ‘Tennessee Mountain Home’ and ‘Smoky Mountain Memories’. In 2009, she was requested and accepted to be Ambassador for the 75th Anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park as its most recognised advocate who has herself described the Smokies as being part of her DNA. Having written an album entitled ‘Sha-Kon-O-Hey’, which is the phonetic spelling for the Cherokee word, ‘Shaconage’, or ‘Land of the Blue Smoke’, Parton’s resulting CD and eight songs constituting the musical of the same name, sees all proceeds from CD sales going to benefit the Friends of the Smokies and their new Trails Forever Great Smokies National Park program.

[1] ‘My Mountains, My Home’ by Dolly Parton from her the special album ‘ShaKon-O-Hey! Land of Blue Smoke’ sold exclusively at Dollywood and through the Great Smoky Mountains Association. The song “Sha-Kon-O-Hey!” can be heard in Dolly’s Dixie Dinner Stampede Theatre Attraction and is a form of dinner theater with three locations in the Southern United States. Dixie Stampede is owned by Dolly Parton and The Dollywood Company, a branch of the Herschend Family Entertainment. From Dollymania Official website http://www.dollymania.net/

www.dollyparton.com

40

inspired art

Dolly Parton with moving image, photographs by Sandra Conte.

Doing what comes naturally

by Sandra Conte and Zandalee

Moving Image in Popular Culture – music,

video and performance

Dolly Parton is prolific, possibly beyond the realisation of many people.

For over five decades, she has written and sung about the country she knows and ‘hits’ of her work have brought good fortune to many artists who have covered them; her ongoing, world ‘Blue Smoke Tour’ is providing the same magic she has always passed down to her fans with an added dimension – Moving Image.

The simple yet spectacular stage-set allows the artist to bring the audience into her songline, to travel her mountain roads. Standing or perched front centre stage of two large scale screens shaped like butterfly wings, Dolly Parton takes on a positively angelic appearance.

Later in the Blue Smoke concert, showcasing this her 42nd studio album, the songstress is enveloped in a moving image backdrop, poignant with the soft descent of a singular, white feather as she sings the mournful , technically flawless ‘Little Sparrow’, bringing such rich, heartfelt sensitivity to her delivery that you can hear a pin drop.

Dolly has a genuine connection with her environment, its flora and fauna. In fact all creatures great and small do not escape the watchful eye of this seemingly ageless woman who sometimes comes across as a regular ‘Little Sparrow’, performed by Dolly Snow White; this is Parton, photograph especially so with her

by Kyle Bryce Imagination Library which has taken off around the world to ensure no page goes unturned for children entitled to experience a love of reading through receiving their own books posted by Dolly’s dream organisation.

The Imagination Library ‘Bookish’ is not a word one would readily use to describe Ms Dolly Parton but take a moment to listen to her speak passionately about her world-beating Imagination Library and you will see why she is drawn to literature.

Dolly writes and sings her own lyrics and for the last several years has been dancing to the added tune of her Imagination Library.

Dolly explains through her Imagination Library website – “When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.

I hope you’ll agree to become a champion of the Imagination Library in your community. You will be amazed at the impact this simple gift can have on the lives of children and their families. We have seen it work in our backyard and I’m certain it can do the same in your community too! I appreciate your interest in my Imagination Library and thank you for all you continue to do for children.” www.imaginationlibrary.com/

Dolly Parton and representatives from the American Printing House for the Blind present Braille copies of The Little Engine That Could and Parton’s children’s book I Am A Rainbow to visually-impaired child Cameron Burkett to celebrate the Imagination Library literacy program’s expansion to include a limited selection of Braille books. Photograph by Duane Gordon of www.dollymania.net

Moving Image – moves mountains

41

Kung Fu Panda (2008), artists Christophe Lautrette and Bill Kaufmann Courtesy: © 2014 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Imagination to Animation: Sketch to Screen ‘DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition’, is showing at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, Australia through to October 5, 2014. It provides a unique insight into the creative process behind the company’s onscreen magic and a rare glimpse into the studio’s artistic and visionary approach to animation. It even unpacks aspects of how the team have created landscapes and forests with detail to match ‘the real thing’.

From the award-winning studio that brought you the animated classics Shrek, Madagascar and the awesome Kung Fu Panda comes the biggest exhibition in ACMI’s history – a world-first behind the scenes celebration of 20 years of DreamWorks Animation! Featuring over 400 items including rare and neverbefore-shown concept drawings, models and original artworks, interviews and interactive displays from DreamWorks much-loved and favourite animated classics.

Take a fascinating and exciting journey from original sketches through to grumpy ogres and friendly dragons, and experience the extraordinary characters, stories and worlds created by DreamWorks’ award-winning artists. Over the years DreamWorks Animation’s Production Designers have included Kendal Cronkhite (Madagascar) and Christophe Lautrette (The Croods, King Fu Panda), and Visual Effects Supervisor Doug Cooper (The Prince of Egypt, Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron).

You will learn about the detailed research into the landscapes of certain film productions where teams have travelled to places like Mexico and swatted up on the Mayan culture to ensure integrity in the animation. Studies were also undertaken underwater in order to better understand ecosystems and how to create a realistic forest.

The exhibition was developed by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and DreamWorks Animation.

To book online go to www.acmi.net.au/dreamworks.aspx 42

inspired art

Our Dreaming: animating country through to June 9 | Free exhibition Explore the vibrant, animated world of ‘Our Dreaming‘ celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories re-told through exhibitions, events, workshops, children’s spaces and learning activities at the State Library of Queensland.

Traditional stories are brought to life through a glowing wonderland featuring large scale projection screens showing the award-winning series by Aboriginal Nation Australia’s The Dreaming series, and a showcase of films from the next generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytellers in kuril dhagun.

State Librarian Janette Wright said the exhibition was a great way for visitors to learn more about Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. “The animated stories in Our Dreaming: animating country are visually spectacular and significant to the story of Queensland.

Many of these stories have been passed through the years from generation to generation. They are a fascinating part of Queensland’s history and they can help us to understand the importance of the land and teach us about the rich Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures of our state.”

Our Dreaming: animating country in SLQ Gallery, photo by Josef Ruckli.

You can also make your own stop-motion or computer-drawn animation or record your story with augmented reality software and hide it in the exhibition for other visitors to discover. www.slq.qld.gov.au/our-dreaming/ourdreaming-animating-country Moving Image – moves mountains

43

Reel Initiatives for the Real World

was very excited to receive an official invitation to a red carpet event for an annual student film competition themed around ‘environmental action in our region’. Right up our alley, we readily accepted and the team strutted the seemingly longest read carpet in the world (nice touch) at QUT, ‘A University for the Real World.

QUT (Queensland University of Technology), Faculty of Creative Industries also delivers from the attractively manicured Caboolture Campus in Queensland, Australia.

The outdoor setting provided the perfect backdrop for introducing a film evening. Guests were greeted by budding young filmmakers, paparazzi style photographers and lecturers of industry renown.

The QUT Student Film Competition brings both glamour and the true grind of film making to the lives of young people.

Harnessing youthful passion by mentoring teams of aspiring filmmakers means the lecturers are working to situate students to take on a University degree focussing on film.

It is the second year running that QUT (Queensland University of Technology) Faculty of Creative Industries, Caboolture Campus in Queensland, Australia has staged the Student Film Competition. Each school is invited to put together a team of 6-8 year 12 students to do film battle.

44

inspired art

As preparation, the teams attend campus for a full day of intensive workshopping where leading experts from QUT Faculty of Creative Industries guide participants through the process of writing and producing an effective short film, as well as providing hints on how to impress the judges! Given this year’s environment theme, part of the immersive workshop was viewing the film ‘Rise of the Eco-Warriors’.

The students had a fortnight, following the workshop, to capture footage and edit a three to five minute documentary on the ‘Environmental Action in Our Region’ topic, in this case referring to the regions of Moreton Bay, Sunshine Coast and Somerset. Completed films were delivered to campus in mid-May, prior to the screening and awards ceremony.

Each team experienced the buzz of walking the red carpet, dining on canapés with their invited guests and sitting down to a public screening of their work prior to the allimportant Judges’ announcements. Although all teams were recognised for their hard work and time, there could only be one team to take the coveted title and this year it was Grace Lutheran College, Caboolture campus. With over $5,000 in cash prizes handed out over the evening this is an annual event full of excitement.

FILM JUDGES & WORKSHOP PRESENTERS

Associate Professor Geoff Portmann

Kenneth Lyons

Head of Discipline, Creative Industries Faculty, School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts, Film, Screen and Animation

Academic Coordinator - Creative Industries Program

Discovery and problem solving are very effective ways of learning.

By setting the students the task of creating a documentary that explores an issue within the region’s environment, not only are they having to research and articulate the issue of the “environment” but they are also being asked to take the audience on an emotional journey. To tell a truly emotional journey requires the filmmaker to connect to the issues that they are exploring in a unique and personal way. I couldn’t think of a more potent learning experience.

Dr Cathy Henkel Adjunct Professor Creative Industries Faculty School of Media, Entertainment, Creative Arts, Film & ScreenWriter and Director of Rise of the Eco Warriors Everywhere we look, we can see evidence of environmental damage and degradation of our natural world. It is easy to become overwhelmed and feel powerless and despondent. The role of the documentary filmmaker is to take a clear hard look at the world around us, find the stories and people that inspire, engage and enlighten us in some way, and bring those stories to life. In my view, it is also our job to dig and delve for new ideas or solutions to the perplexing problems of the world. My hope is that students entering this competition will uncover curious, thought-provoking, and as-yet untold stories about people or places in their local environment. Although their stories will need to be very short, the aim should be to connect us emotionally to their characters and places, to reveal something surprising and enlightening about their world, and if possible inspire us to take some action.

I’m always reminded that I could be seeing the next generation of emerging Creative Industries professionals and future leaders each time I witness a group of local high school students on the QUT Caboolture campus engaging thoughtfully with their peers and our academic instructors. Sponsored events such as this are vital for the social well-being of the region as they foster a culture of connectedness with local community and also develop significant educational aspiration. They make the university context an accessible and desirable destination within the present and into the future via the authentic and experiential approach of instruction that is delivered by industry professionals in such a welcoming, challenging and highly collaborative environment beyond the schoolyard.

www.qut.edu.au/caboolture

Grace Lutheran College Caboolture Campus Queensland takes out first prize in the QUT Student Film Competition.

Moving Image – moves mountains

45

Green Cuisine

Welcome to the new ‘Green Cuisine’ section of eARTh which will be a regular feature in each issue.

Raw Food Revival

It presents ‘green cuisine’ in all its artistic and health-giving properties. eARTh introduces our newest team member, foodie and food critic Bethaney Gray who knows all about Living Raw and will introduce the section with each issue of eARTh. Here’s an insight to Bethaney’s passion as part of the global raw food revolution.

‘Living Raw Café’ offers patrons the opportunity to easily transition into a lifestyle rich in healthy benefits.

According to owners Bethaney and Jeanette Gray, “We believe it is an art to create exciting and nourishing culinary experiences which uniquely express the flavours, textures and colours of each element; this not only excites the taste buds but is also delivered through the art of visual impact”.

Bethaney says, “While eating ‘clean’ shouldn’t be complicated it seems to be human nature that we do complicate it. We are gathering more and more patrons who are hungry to return to the simple and natural beginnings of what they consume, realising the benefit and 46

inspired art

gift our earth provides to us”.

Part of the worldwide realisation that a raw food revival is changing lives for the better, ‘Living Raw Café’ integrates high quality organic fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains into a carefully constructed menu with equal emphasis on presenting it in an artistic manner.

As such, ‘Living Raw’ is a meeting place for art and earth in its tasty, prettily presented raw treats and its recent addition of music to their menu on their ‘dessert nights’.

Sample the product of ‘Living Raw Café’, 1/46 Beerburrum Road, Caboolture, Queensland, Australia, also on Facebook.

Real Food Festival reveals headliner Christine Manfield, world renowned chef and author, is appearing at the fourth iteration of the Real Food Festival in the rolling green hills of Maleny on Queensland, Australia’s Sunshine Coast.

The annual event, showcasing the ‘best of’ local produce and food services over the weekend of September 13 and 14, presents a colourful array of beautifully crafted cuisine.

Christine Manfield, author, chef and food festival headliner

T a s t Le e a r n

Laugh

Festival Director, Julie Shelton, who is excited to have scored Christine as a headline guest said, “We are so pleased that Christine is taking the time to visit the festival and do some presentations in the Real Food Kitchen tent, working with local producers”.

As a food and travel writer with eight accclaimed books to her credit, Christine Manfield states, “I strongly believe in the complementary and sustaining nature of good food, wine, people, pleasure and learning and I think the Real Food Festival embraces all those things”. Having travelled the world focusing on food, Christine sees the Sunshine Coast region as a place for celebrating its international class produce.

Maleny Showgrounds

Maleny, Queensland, Australia

The Saturday night festival event entitled ‘A Local and Unusual Feast’ will host Christine while the greater festival will showcase more than 120 exhibitors and a full schedule of chefs, speakers and presenters across six different venues.

ENTRY Adult $20 per day Children under 16 FREE

The Real Food Festival, Maleny Showgrounds, 13 Stanley River Road, Maleny, Queesland, Australia, September 13-14, 9am – 4pm.

Entry fee with children under 16 free. For further information go to www.sunshinecoast.realfoodfestival.com.au or the Facebook page //RealFoodFestival

The Real Food Festival is a fantastic celebration of the wonderful variety of food that Sunshine Coast producers, manufacturers and restaurants have to offer, and a brilliant way to talk, taste and buy from them.

Connect with us

sunshinecoast.realfoodfestival.com.au Moving Image – moves mountains

47

30

th

ANNIVERSARY

1984-­2014

11+12+13

july'14

JOIN US AT QUEENSLAND ’S PREMIER GARDENING EVENT

NAMBOUR SHOWGROUNDS SUNSHINE COAST

Life is a Garden WHAT’S ON...

See. Smell. Touch.

Taste. Listen.

More than 360 exhibitors including 60 nurseries 40,000 plants for sale daily Landscape garden displays Giant organic kitchen garden Over 120 free lectures Free advice from leading gardening experts 7 hectares of gardening inspiration Great food and entertainment

Visit our website for more information

Learn how to create valuable food gardens in the Giant Organic Kitchen Garden Be inspired by nature in The Living Backyard Pick up some tips on preparing this season ’s harvest at the Gardeners and Gourmets stage

30 years of gardening Queensland Garden Expo is this year celebrating its 30th anniversary and, over that time, the event has always aimed to be responsive to changing trends in gardening and environmental issues. It has introduced, over a number of years, a series of ways to reduce waste to landfill, and one of the most significant of these is recycling cardboard.

This year all food outlets will be asked to consider packaging and will be provided with bins for food scraps that can be used for worm farms, chooks or compost.

Looking to involve Expo visitors in this initiative in 2014, the event will be promoting recycling/upcycling and the idea that many common items can be repurposed. Along with demonstrations on how this can be done a “Repurpose Your Coffee Cup” station will be run where visitors can bring their used takeaway coffee cups and have them filled with potting mix and a small plant.

The Queensland Garden Expo has registered excitement about this new project, introducing this initiative to get visitors thinking about ways they can recycle used objects in their own homes.

Happy 30th Anniversary Queensland Garden Expo, running July 11, 12, 13 with the theme of ‘Everything old is new again’. www.qldgardenexpo.com.au

48 inspired art www.qldgardenexpo.com.au

Go figure with Green June

Institute For Figuring’s Crochet Coral Reef project, 2005-present. Margaret Wertheim with the Foehr Satellite Reef, Germany. Photo © the IFF.

Moving Image – moves mountains

49

Institute For Figuring’s Crochet Coral Reef project, 2005-present. Plastic anemones made from New York Times plastic wrappers by Clare O’Callaghan.

Photo © the IFF.

Green June, a month-long celebration of eco-focused events, festivals and activities from across the Sunshine Coast region on the east coast of Australia is aimed at giving residents fun and engaging forums to learn more, connect more and gain more skills to live sustainably.

Festivals and events cater for those who are already environmentally aware as well as those who are just considering change and looking for guidance and information.

Whether you are interested in Arts, Gardening, Movies, Wildlife, Energy savings or connecting with local networks and like-minded people, Green June offers something for everyone and more information can be found on the Sunshine Coast Council’s website of www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au

Institute For Figuring’s Crochet Coral Reef project, 2005-present. Photo © the IFF.

50

inspired art

One of the many events on offer in the rich Green June programming is the Sunshine Coast Satellite Reef launch, an ambitious creative, regional community project which is part of the worldwide Crochet Coral Reef Project created by the Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles. Spawning on Sunday, June 8 at the World Environment Day Festival, University of the Sunshine Coast, the Sunshine Coast Satellite Reef will be accessible for the entire day from 10am to 4pm for festival-goers to learn about the technique of making the crochet corals and participate in the process as well as finding out other ways to get involved in the project. It is free and no bookings are required.

Background to the project can be found at http:// crochetcoralreef.org/about/index.php which describes it

Institute For Figuring’s Crochet Coral Reef project, 2005-present.

Jellyfish made from plastic bin liners by Margaret Wertheim.

Photo © the IFF.

as “a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world” created and curated by Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring; drawing inspiration from the ‘hyperbolic crochet’ technique of Cornell University mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina, further information about these techniques and instructions for making specific forms are available in a handbook published by the Institute called A Field Guide to Hyperbolic Space, purchased from their site.

Sunshine Coast Council’s Caloundra Regional Art Gallery invites participation from community organisations, schools, individuals and groups who may be interested in teaching or crocheting corals, for the Satellite Reef to register at http://gallery.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/sitePage. cfm?code=coral-reef The Sunshine Coast World Environment Day Festival is an entertaining day for the whole family. Learn about the latest green technology, visit more than 100 exhibitors and take part in interactive challenges and competitions. For more information on WED Festival visit www.wed.org.au/

INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING

8 June th

Sunday

2014

University of the Sunshine Coast

Recognising the Great Barrier Reef as unique, the Queensland raised artists present aspects of its fragility, degradation and impending devastation. By crocheting a reef from their Los Angeles living room, it has expanded worldwide to Chicago, New York and London, to Melbourne, Dublin and Capetown raising awareness of the life form, wherever it wends its way as a satellite reef.

Moving Image – moves mountains

51

May Days

REVIEW

The Planting Festival, Woodfordia The Planting Festival at Woodfordia, site of the famed International Woodford Folk Festival, wrapped up in May with eARTh e-mag present and accounted for to report on the success of this annual event. eARTh ‘hand-holds’ year round with Woodfordia, as an ongoing celebration of its pristine location, rich program and committed team, all ‘just up the road’ from our e-mag’s global bush headquarters in the Glasshouse Mountains of the land-down-under.

‘The Planting’ is a community and artistic convergence to ensure regeneration of the annual Australian summer Festival site.

This year’s program was replete with workshops and demonstrations, nature photography, bushfood walks, wetlands and understory plantings, revegetation of waterways and ponds, chemical free weed control, the Woodford Compost Project, no-dig gardening, creating food forest, myths around native plants and even treehugging!

BAMBOO TO YOU At the creative end of the spectrum there were return visitors to the site, such as Georges Cuvillier, Belgian artist, climber and cellist. Having discovered the structural possibilities of bamboo in 2004, Georges has committed to bamboo installations in a quest for shape, rhythm and movement. At the 2012 Woodford Folk Festival, Georges collaborated with Cave Urban to create and install a large-scale sculptural bridge.

His Masterclasses were certainly a hit.

Other bamboo aficionados included Don Corben, from Bamboo Yurts, who has come from a traditional building background but has been working with bamboo since 1989; he demonstrated basic techniques to utilise bamboo for a functional structure and also led a practical 52

inspired art

workshop on how to make your own bamboo cutlery!

Kirsten Daly of Bello Bamboo gave a presentation on ‘Building from the Backyard’, talking listeners through the types of bamboo to grow to harvest for multiple uses, indicating no backyard is too small. Architect Jed Long had a different take on the humble bamboo, as a member of Cave Urban, a grass roots design collective who create stunning installations, temporary and permanent structures, he shared examples of international innovative bamboo design.

Georges Cuvillier, courtesy Woodford Folk Festival.

CONSERVATION AND CREATIVITY Conservation and creativity joined forces in workshops on coil stitched baskets where participants used weeds to produce functional, environmental art. There was also a ‘wearable weaves workshop’ for fun clothing involving education about weeds which can be fashioned into head pieces, jewellery and costumes.

‘Musos’ were integral to the program and the Formidable Vegetable Sound System, having toured both hemispheres in 2013, were billed as an international success in ecological electroswing ukelele experimentation. The program scheduled them across both the children’s festival and larger event for their energetic vintage style mash-ups of speakeasy antique ‘beets’, glitch ukelele wonk and horns, pounding simple solutions for sustainability all without any requirement for dreadlocks or sarong tie-dying! In short, a fun, informative, comedic and sassy performance.

Formidable Vegetable Sound System, courtesy Woodford Folk Festival

BACKYARD BREW Food was high on the agenda, as with any planting weekend, and a workshop on backyard coffee, with John and Jeanette Isaacs-Young, gave insight to their joint quest for self-sufficiency. eARTh’s music reviewer, Jaia, got into the groove of this workshop learning how to grow coffee beans for the office backyard among the gum trees and how to take them from harvest to roast to a delicious cup of coffee.

This led to a separate demonstration on how to get to know your garden as a sacred balance of the four elements of nature: earth, fire, wind and water offered as a simple, analytical framework to use as the primary tool to improve a garden’s productivity.

Festival Director Bill Hauritz, announced in The Planting program 2014, that the event, “has seeded environmental responsibility across our festival culture. Tens of thousands have been involved now who’s collective contribution has embedded an environmental ethic in Woodfordia’s DNA.” The weekend was immersive, relaxing and restorative with the site bathed in a mood of ‘Happiness’, an aspiration articulated in the closing page of the Festival program quoting John Lennon – ‘When I went to school. They asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I wrote down, ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.’ www.theplantingfestival.com

Note ~ Early-Bird Tickets for the 29th Woodford Folk Festival have been released and are available until June 30, 2014 for the Dec 27 2014 – Jan 1 2015 event, representing great savings; the promising, official program is being released in October 2014. http://www. woodfordfolkfestival.com/ buy-tickets.html

Moving Image – moves mountains

53

Environmentally connected artistic happenings around the globe…

Until June 9 19th BIENNALE OF SYDNEY ‘You Imagine What you Desire’, opened on March 21, under the artistic direction of Juliana Engberg, in five venues across the city, all free to the public; exhibiting the work of more than 90 artists from 31 countries it is billed as Australia’s largest and most exciting contemporary visual arts festival. www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/ Until June 9 OUR DREAMING: animating country Exhibitions, events and workshops showcasing Queensland’s vibrant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories as they are retold through animation, while sharing and bringing community stories to life. State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia SLQ, www.slq. qld.gov.au/

June 4 - June 30 NIKON-WALKLEY PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION The Walkley Awards have been presented each year since 1956 as the highest honour in Australian journalism, with the photojournalism section of the awards recognising the work of photographers across a range of genres, including news photography, sport, portraits, feature/photo essay and community/regional photography.

Showing at Rockhampton Regional Library, Australia http://walkleys.com/about/photographygalleries/the-nikon-walkley-pressphotography-exhibition/

June 25-29 GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL of Contemporary Performing Arts, has been billed as the UK’s largest festival. Over five days and more than 100 stages, its draws on a variety of acts including Dolly Parton on June 29. Glastonbury Festival has green commitments such as ‘GO GREEN’ festival transport and sponsors including WaterAid, Oxfam and Greenpeace who come together to promote their common goal to make the world a safer and more sustainable place to live.

Read more on the worthy causes.

Dolly Parton is playing at Glastonbury Festival 2014 Photograph by Kyle Bryce.

Marc McCormack, ‘Newly hatched Krefft’s turtle’, Winner Community and Regional category from the Cairns Post.

54

inspired art

www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/worthycauses/ www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/

June 27 - July 6 THE VISION SPLENDID OUTBACK FILM FESTIVAL, Australia Set in Winton, Outback Queensland over 10 days, 50 films and 1000 scenes. The first outback open-air festival of its kind, The Vision Splendid celebrates Australian film and culture under the stars of the Outback. The Festival will present an incomparable program of classic Australian films, workshops, film making competitions and social activities. www.visionsplendidfilmfest.com

Until June 28 JARDINIÈRE by Julie-Anne Milinski, an exploration of the blur between built and natural environments in contemporary consumer society. For Milinski, domesticated plants inspire drawings, sculpture and installations that use materials associated with construction and consumer packaging.

Real and constructed flora entangle to muddy dualities of nature/culture, masculine/ feminine, hand-made/mass-produced, craft/ art and organic/inorganic. http://artisan.org.au/news-inspire/2014exhibition-program/ July 11, 12, 13 QUEENSLAND GARDEN EXPO, 30th Anniversary theme of “Everything old can be new again” programs upcycling and repurposing displays, several new features and the past favourites like The Living Backyard, The Giant Kitchen Garden and the floral design displays. www.qldgardenexpo.com.au/

July 20 SOLID Screen Free International Festival of the screen, includes a range of screenings from invited artists, responding to important transformations that have reconfigured opportunities for experimental arts, remix and media arts practice, in recent times.

The screen makers are interdisciplinary practitioners from artforms such as animation, video, interactive media, photography, writing, performance and new media arts backgrounds. Held at Innot Springs near Ravenshoe in Queensland, Australia. http://solidscreen.com.au/ July 24-27 WOMAD: The World’s Festival Established in the 1980’s by musician Peter Gabriel and taking place at Charlton Park, United Kingdom, line up includes Youssou Ndour (famed Sengalese singer who first appeared at WOMAD almost 30 years ago), Bobby Womack, Trombone Shorty and others.

Green enlightenment is brought to the festival with the presence of Ecotricity, who converse with festival goers about a green Britain. http://womad.co.uk/news/ Queensland Garden Expo

Moving Image – moves mountains

55

July 25, 26, 27 SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS Australia’s largest winter festival and an internationally recognised event. Three massive days located at Byron Bay including sensational sounds from around the globe with numerous venues as seasoned punters know and love, plus a few new places to explore!

With a consistently stellar lineup and a festival famed for its addiction to environmental friendliness, you won’t be disappointed.

Located at Byron Bay. Last year’s 30,000 tickets sold out in an outrageous 43 minutes.

Splendour includes art installations and gourmet food but the emphasis is music. http://splendourinthegrass.com/ July 25, 26, 27 FUJIROCK FESTIVAL, Japan Originally held at the base of Mount Fuji in 1997, Japan’s largest outdoor festival is now held high in the mountains of the Naeba Ski Resort near Niigata. With close to 100,000 attendees every year, there are seven stages, sometimes with long walks between forests and over streams; has the world’s longest gondola lift and a Festival aim to be the “cleanest festival in the world”. http://fujirock-eng.com/ August 1-4 GARMA FESTIVAL OF TRADITIONAL CULTURE Annual festival held in north-east Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia as a celebration of the cultural inheritance of the Yolngu people. www.yyf.com.au/

56

inspired art

August 7-10 WILDERNESS FESTIVAL ‘Wilderness’, combining nature and culture, is the multi-award winning four-day festival comprising live music, contemporary arts, an array of theatre, craftsmanship and dining experiences. Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire. www.wildernessfestival.com/ Until August 24 PLASTIC OCEAN: A TONY RICE EXHIBITION Bribie Island Seaside Museum Plastic is creating a huge environmental concern in our world. ‘Plastic Ocean’ explores the issue of plastic polluting waterways, featuring works by artist Tony Rice whose creations consist of replicated sea animals such as dolphins and turtles; structures have a skeletal appearance and an internal digestive system made from the plastic that Tony has collected from beaches. www.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/seaside-museum/

Tony Rice, Turtle, bamboo, cane, water bottles, plastic bags and acrylic paint

August 25 - September 1 BURNING MAN FESTIVAL , Black Rock Desert, Nevada USA Annual week-long festival where multitudes gather in the desert to create a city out of art as a celebration of radical self-expression, leaving no trace at the Festival’s end. The Festival economy is built on giving people gifts without the incentive of reward. http://www.burningman.com/ August 28 - September 13 HELSINKI EXPEDITION The Sound Development City Summer Expedition 2014 will take place engaging with this year’s theme of ‘Mind the Gap!’ The 2014 expedition will explore Riga, Helsinki and the Baltic Sea area. http://sound-development-city.com/2014/en/ focus-2014/ August 31 - September 3 COMMUNICATION FUTURES CONFERENCE, London Communication Futures: Connecting interdisciplinary design practices in arts/ culture, academia and the creative industries, University of Greenwich http://www.drha2014.co.uk/ August 31 Entries Close AESTHETICA ART PRIZE 2014 An annual celebration of outstanding contemporary art from across the world now open for entries, offering both budding and established artists the opportunity to showcase their work to an international audience and influential figures from the arts sector. Submissions for the Art Prize welcomed in the following categories: Photographic and Digital Art, Three Dimensional Design and Sculpture, Painting

and Drawing, Video, Installation and Performance. Prizes include a 12-week group show; up to £1000 in cash; publication in the Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology and editorial coverage in Aesthetica: Art and Culture Magazine (readership of 140,000 worldwide); art supplies and art books. www.aestheticamagazine.com September 12-21 SWELL SCULPTURE FESTIVAL A vibrant, annual, free, public outdoor exhibition of up to 55 artist exhibits over ten days. Set between two iconic headlands at Currumbin Beach, the vast coastal landscape encourages entries of large art forms, artworks that have a substantial footprint, ephemeral or site-specific works by national and international artists in all career stages and working in all media. Audience numbers around 215 000 with awards amounting to $25 000. 2013 recipient of the $15 0000 cash award was artist Chris Bennie who drew inspiration from the devastation of floods. www.swellsculpture.com.au September 13-14 THE REAL FOOD FESTIVAL, a celebration of the variety of food that Sunshine Coast producers, manufacturers and restaurants have to offer, and a brilliant way to talk, taste and buy from them. The fourth annual festival will be held in the hinterland locale of the Maleny Showground and includes a full program with chefs, speakers and presenters in six different venues within the festival as well as great entertainment throughout the weekend.

Entry is $20 per day for adults and free for children under 16. www.sunshinecoast.realfoodfestival.com.au

October 30 to November 8 ISEA2014 20th International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA is an annual event that moves around the world each year. Dedicated program of ISEA2014 Conference is ‘My Location, My Sense of Belonging’, recognising the importance of public space and the interrelationship of art, technology, design and the city. ISEA 2014 will be held in a range of venues around Dubai, United Arab Emirates. www.ISEA2014@zu.ac.ae

over the world to submit moving-image-based works which deal with the Wild as a space of possibility for new ways of thinking, seeing and being aware. Works exhibited will compete for the Videonale Prize of the KfW Foundation, worth 5.000 euros, and the KfW Public Prize, worth 3.000 euros.

All types of experimental moving-image-based works eligible with no restrictions on work duration, geographical location of the artist or their age. v15.videonale.org/en/application-forvideonale-15/?lang=en

November 30 Call for Entries deadline to Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2015, Scotland.

Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival is an international festival of experimental film and artists’ moving image with the 2015 theme yet to be set. The Festival usually prefers work of an experimental nature, though narrative films that show uniqueness in form and structure, or strong relevance to set themes.

Submissions accepted of short films, feature films, installations and expanded cinema events (both digital and 16/35mm). Stay tuned for any changes and the announcement of the 2015 theme at www.alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk/2013/2014film-submissions/ INVITATION TO SUBMIT NOW for February 27 – April 19 2015 VIDEONALE – Festival for Contemporary Video Art 2015 Videonale, an international platform for video art and time-based art forms, celebrating its 30th anniversary with an exhibition and festival programme in the Kunstmuseum Bonn and the city of Bonn. With “The Call of the Wild” as its subject, VIDEONALE.15 invites artists from all

Moving Image – moves mountains

57

Enter Eumundi Arriving in the main, expansive tree-lined street of Eumundi in hinterland Australia, you’re swept into a relaxed village atmosphere, that’s any day except Wednesdays and weekends when the famous Eumundi Markets bring an influx of festival proportions.

The town has a rich history, mainly built on timber; archival photographs attest to tree felling, bullock teams and two commanding hotel buildings evocative of a wide-screen western movie.

The inaugural Eumundi Sculpture Prize will honour the history of Eumundi – a town that came into being because of the need to supply timber to help build Queensland. The winning work will be permanently displayed in Caplick Park, the location of Etheridge’s Sawmill and which was named after one of Eumundi’s well known timber fellers, Dick Caplick, who spent much of his later years replanting trees on this land. Caplick Park is also near where the bullock teams turned, laden with felled timber to be cut at the mill and sent on the nearby train line. This early timber industry was largely responsible for shaping the development of the town and surrounding district.

Timber was in great demand throughout the fledgling cities and towns of Queensland, Australia in the early 1900’s. It was inevitable that pioneers would begin to move into and harvest such areas for their very valuable timber. Today Eumundi is known for its fabulous Memorial trees and aforementioned markets that have grown up in and around these gigantic trees.

58 58

inspired art art inspired

The sculpture prize aims to become an annual event to create, over time, a large number of outdoor sculptures that will enhance the town streetscape and become an Eumundi attraction.

This will be the first of many projects the Eumundi Historical Foundation plans to auspice over coming years.

The Foundation which also oversees the Discover Eumundi Heritage and Visitor Centre welcomes ECCO (Eumundi Combined Community Organisation) as the first $15,000 ‘naming rights’ sponsor and thanks the Sunshine Coast Council for its grant funding and support towards this project. The Prize has a management committee and a project manager has been appointed.

Expressions of Interest from artists close on June 27. Full details for the inaugural Eumundi Sculpture Prize available at www.eumundisculptureprize.com and follow on www.fb.com/eumundisculptureprize

$15,000 First Prize National Acquisitive Outdoor Public Art Prize More information - www.eumundisculptureprize.com

Expressions of Interest are now open Close Friday 27 June Major Sponsors

Moving Image – moves mountains

59

Follow us on Facebook - www.fb.com/eumundisculptureprize

Hayes Inlet wetland online for world viewing Festival music concert with mascot characters ‘Fred’ and ‘Fiona’ (Photo by Pete Johnson)

‘Dragonfly in Net’ (Photo by Liana Tarr, past category winner)

Hayes Inlet Festival, a biennial event, offered across the Pine Rivers and Hays Inlet catchments in Australia, runs through June 5.

The week-long art, culture and environment festival includes 30 community activities such as a Concert for the Koalas, arts workshops, kite flying, bush walking, tree plantings, clean-ups and canoeing the waterways. The program attracts well over 1500 people, of all ages, including many family groups.

In its fifth iteration, the diverse program draws people into a natural playground to learn about the environment. Other program highlights include bushcare community tree planting, happy horses and healthy land workshops, Family Fly Day (kite flying), Pine River estuary clean up on Sunday, June 1, and Hays Inlet boat cruise, Wednesday, June 4.

Budding nature photographers and videographers enter an online festival competition of four categories, split across video and photos and adults and students grades 7-12 for their work to be viewed by people from all over the world, this provides the means of connecting online and from afar with the wildlife and scenery of Hays Inlet. Voting is through Tuesday, June 3 at www.haysinlet.com

Wader birds in Hays Inlet (Photo by John Mewett)

60

inspired art

Starry, Starry Nights The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.

Stanza from ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ by A.B. Paterson, 1889 A.B. Paterson, commonly known and referred to as Banjo, is Australia’s prized poet of folklore who also penned the famous poem ‘Waltzing Matilda’ on a property near Winton where The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival is taking place.

Sometimes considered to be Australia’s unofficial national anthem, the poet is said to have first publicly recited ‘Waltzing Matilda’ in 1895 at The North Gregory Hotel in Winton.

Winton, a relatively small town with a residency of less than 1000, prides itself on having retained the aura of a

quintessential Australian Outback town. Boasting town and country landscapes, it has enticed many a filmmaker, as evidenced in major film productions such as Nick Cave’s movie The Proposition and Indigenous Australian filmmaker, Ivan Sven’s Mystery Road. Of tremendous excitement is news that Producer Bill Leimbach is filming his next movie, the $12 million production of Waltzing Matilda, around Winton and Longreach later in 2014. That the town is also the birthplace of QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services), seals its reputation as “Hollywood in the Outback”, something

Moving Image – moves mountains

61

of a title to have emerged with major productions having been filmed on location.

The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival, inspired by the Sundance Film Festival, was the result of the shared vision of community leaders and film producers who thought it was the ideal location to develop a film festival based on Outback inspired films.

Featuring Australian screen classics that have shaped the country’s outback mythology, including classic dramas, comedies and dark ‘outback gothic’ tales, the program presents sophisticated contemporary short films, international art house hits and the aforementioned films of Mystery Road and The Proposition. There will also be film making competitions and workshops, live entertainment, a special children’s program and social

activities. Importantly, it will share with visitors the stories of the Outback Dreamtime through Winton’s Indigenous Elders.

For the Festival, films will be screened under the open sky in the huge outdoor cinema in Winton’s main street, the Royal Open Air Theatre, one of only two open air theatres still operating in Australia, with smaller screening venues and a dedicated children’s Bean Bag Cinema.

One thing is for certain, the inaugural Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival, running over 10 days (June 27 to July 6) with 50 films and 1000 scenes, will keep movie goers firmly planted in their seats, in the streets of Winton town. www.visionsplendidfilmfest.com www.experiencewinton.com.au Aaron Pederson, actor, in the movie Mystery Road.

27th June – 6th July 2014 Winton, Queensland Australia 62 inspired art

visionsplendidfilmfest.com

BIZ. SUPPORTERS

KIM SCHOENBERGER

CONTEMPORARY ARTIST www.kimschoenberger.com

graphic design and textile art

farley.cameron@bigpond.com

Moving Image – moves mountains

63

Julian Marley, Photograph Courtesy Woodford Folk Festival 2013-2014

Julian Marley His Father’s Son “I am a child of earth... God made the earth and everyone is equal on earth and so I feel free enough to travel the earth. Some people say I am Jamaican, British... African, since it is so many we say I am just a child of earth…”

Julian Marley in interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kunEgbzE8UI

64

inspired art

Julian Marley has been tagged as a musical visionary of ‘Reggae Royalty’ and as a son of the late Bob Marley it all adds up to be true. Clearly his Father’s son but a musician in is own right, eARTh was honoured to cover his concert at the 2013/14 Woodford Folk Festival. His talents abundantly clear, Marley wowed the crowd with his non-stop music, energy and commitment to the stage and fans.

As a Grammy award nominated roots-reggae musician, singer-songwriter, producer and Humanitarian, it may be surprising to learn Julian Marley is a self-taught musician who has mastered the bass, drums, guitar and keyboards.

In 2009, Julian Marley’s career rose to new heights with the success of his Grammy award nominated album entitled ‘Awake’. The Awake world tour flourished and stemmed into major North American, Caribbean and European runs that included the Ragamuffin 2010 tour of Australia and New Zealand. In 2010 the album took the award for ‘Best Album of the Year’ at the International Reggae and World Music Awards (IRAWMA).

Socially conscious, Marley wears the humanitarian label with quiet modesty, building on charitable missions and contributing to the Ghetto Youths Foundation, in the spirit of his father Bob Marley. In February, 2010 Julian and his brother Kymani Marley, alongside the Ghetto Youths Foundation produced a ‘Miami For Haiti’ benefit show with all proceeds going to various charities aimed toward Haitian relief efforts. eARTh interviewed Julian Marley, as made possible by the Woodford Folk Festival, to learn more about the Marley legend, legacy and his roots to the environment.

eARTh Interview with Julian Marley eARTh e-mag How would you describe the connection between your music and the natural environment?

Julian Marley My music is humanitarian music, and one with nature.

“If you keep on taking water from the well, It will all dry up and you end up having nothing for yourself… You’re making a fool of yourself... thinking money can buy you health...”

Lyrics from ‘All I Know’ by Julian Marley Where was the location of the photo taken for the cover of your album ‘Awake’ 2009?

Downtown Miami, it also has other artwork over it.

Having written your first song at 13 and recorded at five years of age, please share what inspired you at such a young age – was it the connection with your musical roots?

That’s part of it, music is in the blood, brain and finger tips; but the roots within, they’re from creation.

Julian Marley cover photo for the Arise Album, courtesy Woodford Folk Festival.

Moving Image – moves mountains

65

Your process for writing music, is it intuitive or even mystical?

Both, you have to know some basics about music in general, but it does take Godly divine inspiration.

Your music is about love, unity, peace and justice so do you feel your music can change the world?

Well, it can be one of the zillions that can try to help

What did you enjoy most about the ‘Marley Magic’ tour of 1996?

I was touring with my brothers and it was my first tour and a great experience.

Is there another album in the pipeline?

Yes,…. in the pipeline for 2014.

How much time do you spend at your home-base of London, and family home-base in Jamaica and do you record in both countries?

Yes, I travel a lot. I record in both countries and spend equal amount of time in both places. With family in both countries, we also work.

You collaborate with your sibling Stephen, what is the process of collaboration like?

There is no process it just happens, everyone is there, music is making depending on the vibe, we almost do it with our eyes closed. That’s the way that we grew.

Can you please explain a little about the lyrics of the song ‘When the sun comes up’ – “I’m gonna be there, when the sun comes up, That’s when we know what’s up”.

That’s like we saying, on the day of armagideon [sic] when the sun comes up and Jah is there, we will be there also.

Could you please share what the experience is like working with your band?

My band comes from Jamaica, I have an nine-piece band.

It’s great, all the sounds are covered just how we record on albums, it takes that to make the sound.

66

inspired art

What do the lyrics of your father’s song ‘Natural Mystic’ mean to you?

It means you can’t stop the cycle of life, can’t stop what God created and can’t stop the natural mystic, from blowing through the air.

Natural Mystic There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air If you listen carefully now you will hear This could be the first trumpet Might as well be the last Many more will have to suffer….don’t ask me why You see things are not the way they used to be I won’t tell no lie One and all have to face reality now.

Natural Mystic by Bob Marley, also performed by Julian Marley

In the same tradition as his father, Julian is a devout Rastafarian whose music is inspired by life and spirituality with an international mission. The ‘Marley Magic’ lives on with Julian and his siblings who have performed, toured and recorded together. Julian held a free concert in February 2014 in honour of Bob Marley’s 69th birth year. www.julianmarley.com www.facebook.com/JulianMarley

THE NEXT ISSUE of eARTh e-mag explores art in the urban environment, from graffiti to roof top gardens… creatives with resilience, artists working on areas of sustainability in their practice and adapting their oeuvre to encourage the grass roots movements that are popping through the gaps in the concrete of man-made environs.

To contribute or for coverage, contact editor@earth-emag.com

‘SIX DEGRE

ES’– Ju

lien and Ju Perhaps eA lian.

RTh e-mag should hav this edition e be commence d and comp en called Six Degrees to London, … leted with the Caribbe stories con an and Chin

by Isaac Ju n e c ted a. The ‘Firs lien, Londo t Word’ sec n born arti descent to tion st and film this last sec maker of C tion about musician Ju a ri b bean B ritish Jama lian Marley ican reggae and his fath Marley. Isa er, the one ac Julien’s and only, B film A Thou while ‘The ob sand Wave Last Word’ s w as rooted in considers th loss of She e China rpa guides on Mt Evere tragedy of the very re Nepal. Man cent st, which str yo addles Chin a ‘shrinking f the stories in each e a and dition of eA ’ world of s RTh reveal ignificant c brought ‘clo ultural geo how ser ’ throug graphies ha h technolo six degrees s b e gy undersc en of separati oring the n on. otion of Moving Image – moves mountains

67

The Last Word

IN MEMORY of the Sherpas Films and Funds

This edition of eARTh commenced with a film by Isaac Julien, inspired by an industrial tragedy resultant from ignorance of the patterns and warnings of nature. Our ‘Last Word’ memorial section looks at a very recent tragedy in the Himalayas. Both cases reference scenarios for ‘employees’ at the mercy of some who do not necessarily respect the workers, environment, its lessons and changeability. In the latter tragedy the struggle continues for fair wages and insurance for Sherpa guides.

Prophetically, in 2012, a major tour company cancelled all expeditions to Mt. Everest because the guides had reported sections of the mountain were unstable and they were fearful of a catastrophe. Sherpa and professional climbers from Italy, UK and Switzerland were reportedly locked in a brawl some 7000 metres up indicating tension in the camps, the guides seeing the signs while other parties ignored their advice.

Sherpa - In the Shadow of the Mountain Writer/Director Jennifer Peedom Produced by Felix Media’s Bridget Ikin and John Maynard 68 and John Smithsoninspired of Arrow-Media. art

Documentary filmmaker Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa: In the Shadow of the Mountain is inspired by these tensions at high altitude in an Everest expedition, from the point of view of the Sherpas. The film is produced by Bridget Ikin, John Smithson (127 Hours, Touching the Void) and John Maynard. Given Peedom could only advance as far as her climbing permit allowed, to second base camp, she enlisted two high-altitude cinematographers from the US, Renan Ozturk and Ken Sauls.

Ozturk reported on social media that as filming was taking place, tragedy struck nearby on April 18, with an avalanche and the death of 13 Sherpas preparing a climbing route for commercial clients in Nepal. In all, 16 men were killed, representing the deadliest day in the history of Everest.

It highlighted the dangerous working conditions in the Everest climbing industry where Sherpas are considered to be illpaid with wages said to have remained the same for the last two decades despite the high risk and gruelling conditions under which they labour. The job description is extensive and the danger reported to be higher than serving in a war. Understandably, the last tragedy has brought calls for unification of stakeholders in building a professional system for equal and fair compensation.

The Sherpa community are well known and embraced by many filmmakers and climbers. As such, when the tragedy ensued, Renan Ozturk, Climber, Painter and Filmmaker, took to raising funds with fellow creatives and climbers to support the Sherpa community with a sea of the most glorious art work attuned to the country in which the guides had perished. In an artistically meritous show of support the following photographers who had worked extensively with the Sherpa people too felt the devastation and loss and created a fund. This was built by donating prints from a selection of their photographs of the region, curated by National Geographic and Outside publication editors, with all proceeds of sales after printing costs going to the Sherpa community via the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation which too had a working relationship with the Sherpas. eARTh salutes the loved ones lost and the following artists who have shown support to the families. These humble artists do not know eARTh e-mag is posting their websites but it is eARTh’s mandate to support artists supporting others.

For additional insight to the beauty of these mountains please

Cory’s works can be found at www.coryrichards.com Jimmy’s work can be found at www.jimmychin.com Renan’s work can be found at www.renanozturk.com Aaron Huey’s work can be found at www.aaronhuey.com James Balog and Earth Vision Trust’s work can be found at www.earthvisiontrust.org or @earthvisiontrust Teru Kuwayama’s work can be found at www.terukuwayama.com Pete’s work can be found at www.petemcbride.com Andy’s work can be found at www.andybardon.com Max’s work can be found at www.maxlowemedia.com Robb’s work can be found at www.robbkendrick.com Gordon’s work can be found at www.alpenimage.com Grayson’s work can be found at www.graysonschaffer.com Tommy’s work can be found at www.tommyheinrich.co

also view Into the Mind: Behind the Scenes: Nepal Vision Quest which, while shot well before the tragedy, shows how a local Sherpa allowed filmmakers to capture the internal world of Nepalese culture and shaped the main vision behind the film Into the Mind.

Into the Mind : Behind the Scenes: Nepal Vision Quest, Eric Crossland Director, Dave Mossop Director, Renan Ozturk, Co-Director http://vimeo.com/82163553 The award winning feature film Into The Mind is available on iTunes: itunes.apple.com/movie/ into-the-mind/id711353038 Follow: facebook.com/sherpascinema facebook.com/ Camp4Collective

Renan Ozturk, a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, was part of all of the above, the two films around Into the Mind, and the Sherpa fund; he was also shooting Sherpa – In the Shadow of the Mountain, (Writer/Director Jennifer Peedom, Producer Bridget Ikin Co-produced by Ikin and John Maynard’s Felix Media and John Smithson of London-based Arrow Media), when tragedy struck. eARTh also salutes the filmmakers and photographers, indeed all artists who have sensitively supported the Sherpa community and understand the culture, people and the spectacular environment they share with the world. In Memory of the late Sherpa Guides, RIP. www.crowdrise.com/TNFHelptheSherpa Moving Image – moves mountains

69

70

inspired art