Helen & Gwenneth's first update

Dear All,
We would like to give you an update on our process:

The two of us have been emailing and skyping over the past months, currently 10-20 times a week. As a starting point we discussed previous works, made both inside and outside our collaboration, that are somehow related to the kind of approach and conceptual concerns we are forming. We've been talking a lot about a project (titled Choreography) we began last time Gwenneth was in Melbourne in 2006, of which there are now two versions. We showed the latter version last year in a big project space at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, enabling us to be specific and ambitious with the installation - which has become integral to this work. Installed as such, the work has become a point of departure into extended experiments and discussions. We plan to make a new work following this process and perhaps similar in mechanisms.

There are a few matters we can distil from our collaboration and that we would like to address in a new work for We Are Hidden …: the conditions and mechanisms of spectatorship, visuality and space, dialogue and the use of a transparent medium or apparatus. All points mentioned are related to a bodily observation and experience. Photography and choreography have been initial and key tools so far and have inspired the dialogue between us. We thought about using other media and methods now, perhaps revisiting previous performance and installation works from a different angle. Now that we sink into the process, we are more and more focused on what conceptually will function most strongly. We are beginning the process with experiments in photographic installation, but are open to the possibility that the process may arrive somewhere else. There is quite a degree of unknown - and this is very exciting.

(If anyone would like to see the large installation version of Choreography its on Gwen's site: Il faut.nl)

It Begins?

So the documentation of process begins, and we get to see if we can pull this thing off! I shall now document the meeting we had on 10 Jan. We all met up at the builders arms and generally had a chat and got to know one another. It was great to see everyone gelling really well having a good time, likewise it was great to finally have everyone together so we could probe what the project entails.

Essentially we plan to bring the process out from behind the work - we want to open up the finished work. Writing, photographing, recording; can these ultimately be effective tools of discussion and dissection?

What I wanted to bring up in this post was Tess's suggestion of the book format for our documentation. I hadn't really thought of this until know and it's an excellent idea. Considering the way that placing the documentation within the gallery space could create an aesthetic contrary to what is desired, a book (or expanded catalog) would certainly be a simpler and easier contained way of presenting a record. Likewise I think articulating ideas and and aesthetic in detail would be far easier in a book. Beyond this, the actual idea of the concrete document, the object, is immensely appealing to me. Who wouldn't want a whole published book with their writing in it?

I wonder though, how the nature of the book would effect the place of the process? A whole new set of concerns would present themselves when dealing with a book format - design choices, aesthetic decisions - but are they in keeping with the idea of opening up the process? I think this leads back to a basic idea surrounding process; are we dealing with something that is clean and easily ordered? Is that an aesthetic that is desirable? Or is creative action more of a messy, chaotic experience? Or is it beyond either of these things - is creativity simply the Newtonian "Ah-ha!"?

These questions will be invaluable to informing whether or not a book is a good idea and not only that, they will inform the overall aesthetic of the show.

That felt like I was talking in irritating circles, but hopefully something valuable came out of it. Peace out.

The First Post

Welcome everyone to the blog of the upcoming Next Wave / GCAS show "We Are Hidden And We Can See You. We Are Hidden And You Can See Us", featuring Eric Demetriou, Helen Grogan & Gwenneth Boelens, Tess McKenzie, Nick Selenitsch, Jacob Weiss and Nicki Wynnychuk and curated by Shae Nagorcka.