Walkshop Feldafing (free)
Walkshop Feldafing (free)
CHALLENGING ‘GETTING THERE’ AND EXPLORING ‘BEING HERE’
Starting Place: Feldafing Railway Station Time: 3–6pm Date: Sunday, August 13, 2017 Cost: Free Contact: James -- mob: 0176 6841 4086
Suzon Fuks and James Cunningham (Co-Artistic Directors, Igneous) will lead participants through a series of processes developed since 2007 and deepened during their 2014–15 project ‘FLUIDATA’ which included over 2 dozen slow creek walks throughout Queensland, Australia.
‘Seeking alternatives to the received lifestyle of instantaneousness, productivity, and “getting there” (the straight line), we make the deliberate decision to slow down, allowing our bodies—and our digital devices—to absorb the landscape and the moment–”being here”. Unhurriedly, we walk “the way of the water” (the meander).’
The workshop involves grounding through body-based awareness, slowing down, being deliberately still, and allowing one’s body to absorb the surroundings and the moment, and includes walking “the way of the water” down a section of Starzenbach creek in Feldafing.
The session will allow for discussion around the ways in which the manufactured infrastructures we traverse daily, corral us into lives of instantaneousness, productivity, and “getting there”—and exploration of alternative notions, such as “being here”, reversibility, curiosity and wonder in what already exists, and making connections between inner and outer worlds.
Participants need to have somewhere secure they can leave their bags so they are free of them when doing the activity (eg. car at station or Villa Waldberta, 10min walk away).
Note: we may be walking in the natural creek bed with water up to knee level.
WHAT TO WEAR:
- Pants: appropriate for “muddy explorations” or shorts
- Footwear: gumboots or well-soled sandals
- Sunscreen, hat and long sleeves.
- Have towel ready for change of outfit after activity.
FACILITATOR’S BIOGRAPHIES:
SUZON FUKS is an artist bridging art, science and the environment, using body-based practices, the moving image, photography and interactive technologies. She initiated the Water-wheel.net global community and platform. Her current focuses are water issues, refugees and knowledge transmission.
JAMES CUNNINGHAM is a performance, movement, video and networked performance practitioner working in social, environmental and architectural surroundings, exploring the limits of bodily perception, performativity and the relationality of one’s self with others, objects, and environments.
IGNEOUS, Australian multi-arts organisation established in 1997, has been directed by James Cunningham and Suzon Fuks since its inception. Igneous’ work has received national and international recognition across a broad spectrum including networked performance, dance, screendance, new media, disability, puppetry, live art and visual theatre. Their interests lay in research, processes, interaction and diversity.
Residencies 2017
Residencies 2017
Igneous co-artistic directors have begun a series of artistic residencies abroad. Both Suzon and James are spending three months at Villa Waldberta outside Munich, then Suzon will go on to Holstebro, Denmark, and to Brazil. They are attending conferences, collaborating with local artists, developing new works and presenting in various contexts. See their blogs for updates and more info.
https://suzonfuks.net
https://cunningham.igneous.org.
Already, Suzon has completed a new book-sculpture, and James has been documenting his creek walks. Tuesday, 18 July, they perform together in a group show in the underground storm-water canals of Munich. Facebook event
Go team! Suzon and James in Munich Underground, collaborating in the OVERFLOW project
Suzon Fuks and James Cunningham have been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Suzon Fuks is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
Water Works! Open call
Water Works! Open call
Are your projects or artworks linked to water? Have you always wanted to do something on Waterwheel but never had time? Celebrate this final large event organised by the current Waterwheel team of Suzon Fuks, Inkahoots, and Igneous.
Artists, scientists, activists, teachers and young people are invited to celebrate World Water Day 2016 by contributing to an online exhibition with short digital media (including performances, poems or texts) on the theme of “Water Works!” Deadline: 28 February 2016
Following a quick turn around and selection process, a fantastic group of curators will discuss contributions, and respond to the online audience, in a streaming event on the Waterwheel video-collaboration system, the Tap, on 19/20 March 2016. Accepted formats are video (mp4), images (jpeg, png), animation (swf), audio (mp3), text (doc, txt, xls, pdf) or slideshows (pdf). Curators, link to the Tap and time will be announced closer to the date in the Waterwheel newsletter, blog, twitter and Facebook group.
Think of the myriad jobs that are overlooked when you turn on the tap, no matter where you live, in the city or a rural area: from digging wells, to drawing, fetching, purifying, and distributing water, to studying its ecosystems, analysing its composition, to its use in washing, the production of our food, the management of sewage and waste, the caring for equitable access to water, the ensuring of environmental health and sustainability, paying homage to and highlighting water’s qualities or conditions…
Climate change, financial crises, war, and global environmental damage, have all put pressures on water forcing it to “work” as commodity, capital and resource for growing and shifting human populations.While non-human species and natural processes such as coral reefs, wetlands and beavers “work”in the maintenance and transformation of water, there are also the “works”created by the passing actions of floods, tides and storms. How can art, science, design, and activism reinstate the social, cultural and environmental value of water? How can we give recognition to the indispensable and invaluable ways that water works?
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HOW TO PROCEED
– Prepare your media
– Register / log in at waterwheel (former online platform)
– Go to Media Centre
– Upload file (s)
IMPORTANT: while ‘processing’, please complete: title, keywords, and short description (once that’s done, please leave the window open)
– SAVE when upload is finished
That’s all! easy!
NOTE: if you need to change info details or upload a new version of the file, once logged in you go to Media Centre > My Media > click on the little pencil at bottom right (next to the cross), and you can edit. At the end, SAVE!
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WATERWHEEL MAKE AND SHARE ABOUT WATER
an online collaborative venue for streaming, mixing and sharing media & ideas about water
a free platform for the awareness, celebration, care & accessibility of water everywhere
Waterwheel was initiated by Suzon Fuks and co-founded with Inkahoots and Igneous
Please share and distribute to your networks
image © Water Vagabond
Afloat, awash, and swept away by FLUIDATA
Afloat, awash, and swept away by FLUIDATA
– Author: Andrew Kettle –
The work of Igneous has long intrigued me. The diversity of experimentation and topic in their work is highly recommended to explore in their online archive. So it was with some consternation that I have been following their continued interest in WATER. Their dedication to WATERWHEEL is truly admirable, but had they focussed, like a medieval alchemist, on one element to the sacrifice of a greater work? My doubts and concerns for their artistic obsessions crumpled into the dust of misunderstanding that they honestly where in hindsight at the opening night of FLUIDATA. For in FLUIDATA by Igneous, the work is far from an insular single element. In fact it is through the strong foundation of their focus on WATER that they have been able to exhibit an extraordinary talent and diversity as professional artists. Within FLUIDATA is a de Vincian scope of genius. The FLUIDATA work combined honest and thoughtful community interaction and integration; competent and engaging use of digital media; an outstanding homage to a long history of installation art whilst exquisitely extending the genre; an environment that entices and genuinely invites a rewarding audience participation; and importantly, at the opening night a strong performance art component that reinforces the reputation of Igneous as a master troupe in the field.
Within the FLUIDATA exhibition are multiple installations. A digital waterfall that constantly cascades into a motionless, darkened pond, first greets the viewer. The two components of the initial display give a strong contradiction between the turmoil of the digital content, and a contract of the dynamic nature of the fluid element. Like fluid, data can be both dark and silent, or vigorous and scandalised. The central darkened bladder of the exhibition space has: black washbowls on exhibition plinths that gently speak or whisper fragments of recorded interviews; bottled water samples from numerous sources; numerous dreamlike video projections of watery landscapes, some timeless, some time-free through stop motion capture; and a unifying integration of many elements of artistic endeavour that convincingly engulf the audience into an other sense, transported by the glimpses of FLUIDS captured in DATA. Further exploration of the exhibition space reveals a hallway leading to intimate spaces of additional video installation. The small rooms enable a variety to the whole exhibition by permitting the audience a convincing privacy within a public area. Features within the exhibition also cater for joyful play, such as unexpected dark plinths containing concealed lids that when raised reveal additional video screens presenting more content and contemplation of the FLUIDATA ingredients.
For me, some of the stand-out features of the exhibition were: the seamless integration of complicated digital wizardry and content that made the technology disappear and the content stand central stage; the adept incorporation of community sourced content into the media of the exhibition that convincingly promoted the essence of a message across numerous voices; an exhibition in which I witnessed numerous audience members genuinely interacting with the artwork in unique and diverse ways, that reflected a viewer’s empowerment to thoughtfully engage and not simply mindlessly consume; and within the event of the opening night a thoughtful and powerful performance art act.
FLUIDATA was much more than a discourse of water, it was a reinforcement of the power that an element contains and enables. Igneous has yet again triumphed against waves of media irreverence to produce a space of deep contemplation. FLUIDATA, like the influence of water was both calming and erosive.
Networked Bodies
Networked Bodies
– posted by Suzon –
James and I will be presenting an ONLINE PERFORMATIVE PRESENTATION at the Networked Bodies Symposium in London, at Watermans, on the 9th November 12.30am (Brisbane time).
Title: “Streamed river walk, recounting an embodied environmental networked performance practice”.
We will enact slow walking performance on the bank of Brisbane River, recounting their creek walks around Queensland and the Waterwheel network.
FLUIDATA - Yeppoon, Gympie
FLUIDATA - Yeppoon, Gympie
This is the first in a series of blog posts summarising the sections of our FLUIDATA journey throughout Queensland. Departing in February and returning in March, we (Suzon and James) set off in our red Toyota Hiace for Yeppoon and Gympie. In Yeppoon we stayed at the Poinciana Caravan Park and enacted and captured durational performances, took photos and gathered data on boardwalks, in mangroves and along the banks of Ross Creek and Fig Tree Creek, during tidal changes and at dusk when the flying foxes take off. We met fishermen on the creek’s edge and at the “Beach Bar”, a boat-shed where locals catch up. We conducted a FLUIDATA Workshop held at Fig Tree Creek and Yeppoon Library, organised by the Livingstone Shire Council, during which the council put us up at the Coral Coast Flashpackers. We met people from the Fitzroy Basin Association, the Fitzroy Basin Environment Centre and the North Keppel Island Environment and Education Centre. It was heartening to hear stories of successful creek restoration and care programs, and indigenous and non-indigenous fishing tales. We were gobsmacked by the size of the Fitzroy Basin Catchment, and wondered how environmental concerns can be properly dealt with by organisations funded mostly by mining corporations.
In Gympie we stayed at the homestead of local art gallery co-ordinator JG and partner L in the hills just outside the town. We captured durational performances, photos and data in Deep Creek and Gympie Creek, and conducted a Fluidata Workshop held at the Mary River and Gympie Regional Gallery, with local artists from Gympie, Noosa and Tin Can Bay.
As a result of the workshops, participants from both places went on to create and present live online presentations in the international Waterwheel World Water Day Symposium, March 17-23, 2014.
FLUIDATA Creek walks in Yeppoon.