----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Bundanon and Tate are two ideals, utopian places that actually exist. As an
artist who has had the pleasure of working at Bundanon twice I am very
appreciative of its qualities, especially in respect of how that facilitate
intense research and creative practice. As a regular visitor to Tate Modern I
am also appreciative of its strengths (The Tanks initiative, in particular, was
terrific).
Perhaps the dystopian 'other side of the coin' here is Marc Auge's notion of
the non-place - those places that are more and more pervasive in our daily
experience; the airport, shopping mall, university library or worker's
lunchtime atrium. The non-place offers a simulacrum of the familiar and safe
but strips out anything particular. It is a desolate space that can only
inspire through highlighting what it lacks.
Bundanon is the very opposite of this, as is the Tate with its out of the
ordinary scale and architectural style. Sadly, at the Tate, once you are in the
exhibition galleries it pretty much resembles any other white cube museum space
and becomes something of a non-place itself. The Tanks were interesting as
their industrial purpose was not cloaked with white paint and deodoriser. The
raw concrete, oil stains and sweet scent remained, the art co-existing with the
place it temporarily inhabited.
How many of our mediale spaces, the social and other media platforms we use,
are similarly non-places? Is facebook itself a large scale virtual non-place?
That idea seems pregnant with redundancy and subsequent loss.
best
Simon
On 16 Jul 2013, at 13:09, Deborah Ely <debo...@bundanon.com.au> wrote:
Coming away from ISEA 2013 I’m left wondering about the term genius loci – a
concept we engage with at Bundanon to describe this place. A kind of
‘heterotopia’ which human geographer Sue Beyer articulate as ‘places of
otherness... that are neither here nor there, that are simultaneously physical
and mental, like an idyllic home – an escape - separate from the world.”
How does the mediation of technology change the perception of place? Does it
transform and enhance it? Can we really go there on an app, on the web or on
facebook? Is the technological experience of visiting a lesser version of being
somewhere, or just a different one?
Since most people won’t come to Bundanon, and there are such controls about who
can come (only on Sundays, only for events, only if you are invited, only if
you are accepted into the artist program, only if your school is funded) then
the digital visit is a legitimate alternative. You can save your carbon
footprint and go somewhere you can reach on foot or push bike and just talk to
us on line. Or work with your artistic collaborators in residence through skype.
Chris Dercon, who is in Australia this week, talks of the Tate Modern (of which
he is Director) as being a campus for aspirational learning. Like a self
sustaining village he sees the museum is a social sanctuary in the surrounding
metropolis. This redefinition of the (physical) public spaces of art, and the
recognition that people want to come together to have a deeper experience, to
learn and participate, sets a challenge to the digital. The social spaces of
the virtual are relentlessly trivial, and while we can sometimes have deep
conversations on line it’s doubtful whether we can have deep experiences.
The clouds descend and wrap themselves around the hills at Riversdale and
darkness falls like a curtain. The computer screens are illuminated in the
nineteenth century buildings. The weekly electronic update has just been sent
to all the artists in their cottages spread across the landscape and the
wombats are out of their burrows.
Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk @SimonBiggsUK http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php
http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/simon-biggs%285dfcaf34-56b1-4452-9100-aaab96935e31%29.html
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/
http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/ http://designinaction.com/
MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices
http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
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