Tag: art
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Un(in)tended Garden
Notes on that which grows without us Urbs en Horto – City in a Garden – that is my town’s motto. To its architects, this was a matter of greenspace and planned esplanades sprinkled throughout the sprawl of a relentless grid. To me, it is more a statement of symmetry, if not synonymity, in the…
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Feral Phytocracy
Vegetal Apparitions for the 21st Century Late May, about a month into my three-month residency at the Nida Art Colony (NAC) in Lithuania, a thought from my incessant internal monologue stopped me dead in my tracks. As most afternoons, if the swarms of mosquitoes permitted, I had been wandering along the sandy paths criss-crossing the…
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Gardens Speak
The Political Performance of Mourning Gardens Speak is an interactive sound installation based on the oral histories of ten ordinary people who were buried in gardens across Syria during the first two years of the uprising. Each narrative has been carefully constructed with the friends and family members of the deceased to retell their stories,…
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Archiving garden sounds
Every time I visit Australia, my home country, my senses are overwhelmed with the smell of native plants and the sound of native animals. The morning after I arrive, I am usually woken by a fury of local bird going about their morning ritual, perched in a tree in the garden just outside my window….
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Editorial: Tuin Stemmen (Garden Voices)
Situated in the small town of Hummelo in the east of the Netherlands is the private garden of the renown Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf, that poignantly reflects his usual loosely planted meadow style. The surrounding landscape is however a characteristic polder: flat and wet. Walking into the garden of Oudolf is like entering a…
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Common Salt
This is an instrument I have never seen before. A slender dark wooden box, one side opening to become a bellow, pushed back and forth in a solemn rhythm by the hand of the performer. It emits an uncompromising, steady monotone drone, which accompanies a sombre and melancholic chant: ‘This is a la……-ment’. Common Salt…
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Unsent Letter to an Old Art Teacher
Dear Adrian, I’m not drawing anymore. There, I’ve said it. I didn’t become an artist like you always said I could. I write stories now instead. I have always wanted to write a story for you in fact, but no matter how many times I try, or think of trying, I never seem to strike…
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Carnevale
On the morning of April 21st, my phone showed several missed calls. My colleague Cath had been burgled in the early hours. We spoke briefly as she waited for the police to arrive, and then a text came through, ‘The car’s gone, I’m catching the bus.’ I text back, ‘Forget it, we can postpone’. She…
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What is it like to be a pig?
Most people know little about the characters and habits of the farm animals that live around us, often hidden away from view in large industrial sheds. What are they like, how do they live? Through careful observation we can learn more. Take, for example pigs. Pigs are quite like dogs – friendly, playful, tactile, really…
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Pig Dreams Pig Life
In some dreams we are dead. It is never a surprise. Life doesn’t last long after all. Someone did ask, what is a life? Does it feel like something? Is it solid or a shadow? Comfortable? Forgiveable? ‘A pig is an unlikely bird’, grunted a pig. It couldn’t speak the answers and it wanted to…
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VIDEO: Pigs at Play
This is part of CARNEVALE, a collaborative art-science project that explores animal welfare questions and the enthusiasm of pigs for investigative play. Click to see the rest.