Junction 2010
Junction 2010 will unleash an explosion of creativity through a stimulating and intellectual conference program that encourages celebration, dialogue and connections.
It will provide an opportunity for artistic and cultural exchange, cross cultural collaboration and best practice approaches to working in the arts.
Artists, academics, arts workers, students, volunteers, all levels of government and the wider community will gather in Launceston to discuss, celebrate and experience the arts and cultural achievements of regional Australia.
Together we will explore a range of critically important questions, issues and ideas such as:
- How can we ensure the arts are part of conversations about how we live in a fragmented and fragile world?
- What new ideas and approaches are there for developing sustainable communities?
- What should we be doing to attract and engage new generations?
- How can we preserve and learn traditional skills and adopt these in contemporary practice?
- How do we make the arts a meaningful part of social and community enterprise?
- What can we learn from the experience and knowledge of other sectors?
- How should we forge stronger alliances between art forms and artists, between communities and regions, and between arts and non-arts organisations?
- How can we talk about innovation without resorting to meaningless rhetoric and tokenism?
- How can we measure and argue arts benefits effectively to governments and communities?
- Where are all the men in regional arts?
Barcelona Blog
Coming soon…
Gowanus On Tap
Gowanus On Tap is a Creative Community Consultation project initiated by TRAX, which will bring together a diverse group of local residents who will make the water of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal potable. The project will host a series of community workshops which will develop a filtration unit & sculpture with Adam Katzman & Brian Cohen. The creative & scientific process will become part of an episodic broadcast documentary.
The water remediation unit produced will tour area schools & conferences, presenting to audiences the story of a community living on a canal eligible for Superfund status. The chemical & biological breakdown of contaminants will be exorcised from the water & audiences will be invited to drink from the chalice of purified industrial waste.
This is a grassroots human ecology project which investigates the environmental & cultural value of an invisible waterway. The project will consider solutions to treating canal sewage using surplus elements in our environment as contributing stages in filtration.
We document this process & present the findings to various audiences through narrative (the community’s reflections & stories via film), scientific data (the story of the water & sediment), sculpture (the filtration unit) & experience (drinking the gowanus).
This project will empower local communities to take interest in urban renewal and create a highly public symbol of what the residents living around the Gowanus Canal value both on shore & off.
Market Crossings Book
Launch & Distribution Coming Very Soon…
Stay tuned!
Creative Friction
Creative Friction, Disrupting The Boundaries Of ‘Art’ And ‘Community Art’ by Victoria Stead
Outhouse Research
Coming soon…
Outhouse wins First Place!
Jury’s Decision:
“First place is awared to Outhouse, from Brian Cohen and his team from TRAX. Using an outhouse to serve as a semi-public video confessional booth, this project redefines society’s last bastion of privacy and intimacy. Equipped with four doors in but only one door out, this project is not just a humorous gimmick but it is a serious tool for enhancing the knowledge, development and preservation of community. Combining innovation, creativity, originality, and digital techonology, Outhouse unites yesterday and today in a way that cuts to the heart of the ongoing mission of the Future Places Festival.”
First prize is $3k Euro & a 3-month residency in either Austin or Porto. We’ve also been invited to present the Outhouse at the South by Southwest Festival in March 2010.
This is a big and meaningful win to a lot of hard work. It also sends a direct message to the geographic polar opposite point in the world where this project initiated. Creative new media projects can be functional & fun in community settings & excellent tools for engagement and cultural development. We thank the jury for recognising the deeper resonances of our project and for having the chutzpah to award first prize to a toilet. 
Future Places Winding Down.
We’ve had a priveleged time being here with the Outhouse & all the amazing people we’ve met in Porto.
It was especially great to connect with Costah, a Porto street artist of immeasurable talent, who gave the box it’s gaivota (seagull). He reckons although seagulls fly very far, they don’t fly very well. So he gives them balloons to help lift them. The booth is kinda like the balloons. Check out his website by clicking on his name if you’re curious to see some of his other work.
The piece with the little Brazilian girl looking out from the peekhole was done by local artist Luis Ferreira.
We’re trying to find a way to get this bloody box to Barcelona via truck or gaivota. I’ll be attending the 17th Annual Encatc Conference from the 21-23 October. Fingers crossed the Outhouse will make an appearance.
xB.
Porto, Portugal
OUTHOUSE | EUROPE is shaping up to blow away our expectations due to all the amazing people we’ve been meeting in this stunning labyrinth of a city.
We’ve started construction on our latest storycatching box here at the school of fine arts in Porto. David, the master builder, is blissin out over every handmade hinge on every door we pass on the way to a coffee. He is in the shadows of master artisans and if this were a different time he’d be one of them, sculpting the stone & wood in shapes that exhausting for me to even consider trying to make. Together we marvel at the little white shiney cobblestones and how much sweat must’ve went into the millions of them that line the streets of the city.
There are so much more to say but it’s time to get back to building. Below are some pictures from the past few days of construction of Outhouse v3.
The opening of our exhibition is 15 October @ 6PM
Outhouse | Portugal Team
Designer: Brian Cohen
Social Researchers: Tara Prowse + Mandy Field
Master Builder: David Whitchurch
Software Designer: Samuel Van Ransbeeck
Live Musicians: Jorge Costa & Cecilia Peçanha
Visual Artists: Costah, Luis Ferreira, Filipa Cruz, Maria
*Extra special thanks goes out to Outback Theatre for Young People for supporting this project.
Lake Mungo Festival
Well, Outhouse MkII has had an interesting life so far. As you can tell from our previous posts the older version looked like a toilet spaceship from the 70s. We decided to trim down & streamline the design with David Whitchurch, a master carpenter from the outback town of Ivanhoe.
We rebuilt a proud new version shown in these pictures in 36 hours & made our way down to show it off at the Regenerating Communities Conference in Melbourne. Unfortunately after putting the finishing touches on the inside of the booth the Mac Mini decided to crash, which apparently is very unusual. We went to those Mac genius dudes in the city who wanted to keep it for a few days in the repair room & spa. So it missed the conference. Sad because it would’ve been perfect.
BUT it was booked to appear at the Lake Mungo Festival in just a few days, so back onto the trailer with a new Mac Mini and off to the bush we went! In Ivanhoe David strapped down our precious cargo for the serious dirt roads en route to Mungo. The Outhouse made a big splash with everyone there. It was slated to operate for two one-hour blocks amidst a very busy festival schedule. To our surprise and perhaps yours, there was a queue across the site lined with young (& older) people wanting to get inside and answer the questions on the walls inside. There was an equally large crowd huddled 10 meters away around the projection screen waiting to see who would go broadcast once inside. There was an eruption of excitement when a person would appear on the screen. And frustrated murmurs when others chose to record privately. It was split down the middle between broadcast & private storytelling.
We cut a quick short film of 3 participants who were across all ages and we projected it at the final festival celebration. It went over really well. This project will still be finding its feet as we adapt it to be responsive to different audiences and events. The organisers and other partners recognised its relevance not only as a engaging & entertaining public activity but it showed its power as a participatory research tool to gather feedback and data. The insights & testimonies were valuable for many outlets and performed by people who may otherwise pass up a written survey with boxes to tick.
Unfortunately Outhouse v2 came to a spectacular end on the road back through the desert. The wind was relentless and the main strap split sending it soaring in slow motion off the back of the trailer and skidding down the track. We were too exhausted to get upset. At least it was on the way home instead of on the way there. We packed the pieces into the back and brought it back to David the carpenter who smiled and said, “It’s time to make v3!”
In a few weeks the funkiest Outhouse will debut at the Future Places Festival in Portugal. It promises to be that much more. Can’t wait.
xB>
Future Places Festival
Digital Media & Local Cultures
Porto, Portugal
13-17 October 2009
The FUTURE PLACES Festival is an international competition celebrating digital media work. FUTURE PLACES explores the potential of Digital Media when applied to specific cultural and social environments.
The festival features exhibitions, conferences, workshops, concerts, performances and parties. We are interested in creative and new languages for interactive and media expression, and their impact on local cultures, society and public space.
We want to reach a generation of creators who are breaking conventions. We are addressing this call to those who are blurring the lines not only between disciplines, but also between the real and the virtual and between the commercial, the artistic, and the academic arenas. Mainly, we want to explore the impact of new technologies in “real life”. How can new technology build local communities, create new identities, new narratives, and new forms of public interaction?
Showtime
The sky was painted in a deep amber for the exhibition & the night began with a crescent moon. The fire drums sent soft clouds of smoke across the stage. It was a memorable & magical night for everyone who attended and exceeded any expectations we had for a preview performance of a new work. We look forward to seeing the narrative seeds of this story continue to blossom.
Here is a photo set from the night of the show.
Bush Cubby Film | Part 1
This is the first part of a film about building bush cubbies.
filmed & edited by Brian Cohen
music by Staffan Svahn
featuring Abby, Alana & Bindi’s old TV
Dust, Rust + Echoes
Stu Liddell arrived in town, put on his headphones & NTG2 mic & wandered around town with a mob of young people capturing the booming empty water silos & squeals of the towns people.
Here are some of the music tracks that eventuated and became the soundtrack for a spectacular live show under a crescent moon.
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Under Me Skin – Media Release
A preview performance of Under Me Skin by award-winning writer Gayle Kennedy, conceived & developed by Brian Cohen & Tara Prowse in partnership with the remote outback town of Ivanhoe, NSW.
Site for the show
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Market Research
The intention of this Cultural Impact Statement is to provide an overview of the existing cultural and social environment of the Preston Market, and explore the potential impacts of the Market Value project upon it. In doing so, this document will provide a foundational basis for the creative development of the project, and the evolving engagement of the artists with the community in and around the Preston Market.
Under Me Skin
Under Me Skin is a working title to the play we are producing & directing with Gayle Kennedy. She’s incorporated the story line as developed by the young people in our workshops & has used it as a push off point for an exciting narrative. We’re lovin’ this collaboration. Just got a draft and here’s an excerpt we’d like to share:
“I don’t even remember wantin to come home. Just seemed to drift back here one day. Now I’m one a those people just standin still. Best thing bout standin still is I git to see and hear everything that goes on here. It aint ever dull. No way is it ever dull. See people from cities and big towns reckon nothin goes on little places like this. But that aint true. Everything that happens in those places happens right here. We got all the lyin and cheatin, and stealin and broken hearts. We also got the good times, the new born babies, the music and the laughter. We got the livin and the dyin too. Time don’t stand still out here. Things is always movin and changin. It’s just ya can’t always see it happenin. But I do. I do all the time!”
Developmental showing of this play will take place in Ivanhoe on 22 August 2009. Come by for a cuppa round the fire drum.
Bush Cubby
There’s so much to say on this topic and bedtime is calling. We’ll get this post started as there’s bound to be a lot more to add as these weeks go on. Most of the kids here have built bush cubbies. They are scattered around the edges of town & beyond, made from thrown aways like old car seats, beads, toys, chicken wire, doors, beds, kitchen appliances, etc. We’ve been lucky enough to get toured around to some of them.
The week before last we made a test film of exploring bush cubbies with Candice and the McKenzie kids. The footage & stills came back so incredible that we took a step back and started to think about what we could do. Most of the elders and adults in town also used to build bush cubbies. So we decided to gather a trailer load of bits & take a whole mob of grown ups & young people out bush to build one together.
There were no shortage of people willing to come, and if they couldn’t they wanted a johnny cake to be brought back to them later. At 11am we had mums, grannies, one grandpa & a heap of kids ready to get stuck into it. I even saw a couple of young people who I’d barely met before cos they’re usually on the PS3.
We hiked out with the car towing the trailer full of goodies, found the cluster of trees we’d scoped out earlier & got to work. All day everyone chatted & sang songs, played & worked together. We read stories from Gayle’s book & took heaps of pictures. The footage we got of the day was golden and will be cut together for the exhibition at the end of August. The day couldn’t have happened without the help of Kiaya who was the only young person to be found the day before. She helped organise the whole thing.
Here are some still from the day. Unfortunately, I could only include photos from young people we have releases from. But there are some truly stunning pictures to follow.
Phyllis’ Water Feature
About a week ago Mack, Daniel & I were scroungin’ round the tip looking for stuff to throw in the trailer to make a bush-cubby-to-end-all-bush-cubbies. After scoring much of what you’d expect they suggested we go to the other tip. What other tip? The one at the end of the dirt track across the road where people go who don’t want to pay to dump stuff. So we went round this spaghetti trail seeing much of the same, only it had a few special items.
World meet Phyllis. She was feeling a little sorry for herself after loosing a foot in a canine-related accident and needed a pick me up. I’m not sure Mack & Daniel were convinced when I placed her on my dash. But I was in love. Given that we’re on stage 12 water restrictions in the middle of the desert it kinda makes sense why someone would’ve tossed her. Who can afford a fancy checkered bikini, slip slap slop, water feature Granny? (Note the hose-in, hose-out)
The next day we packed the family into the Pajero (which means wanker by the way, in fact out here there’s lots of us!) and head out into the dirt. Phyllis wanted to take in a picture show. Pyper suggested Hannah Montana and so we head off towards Wilcannia, Broken Hill, Silverton, Menindee and many back bush roads in between. Much fun was had by all and Phyliss was a laugh a minute. As of tonight she sits in our shop window on the Ivanhoe main street, holding court.
Me, Gayle & Ivanhoe
Good news! we are very excited to announce we will be working with Gayle Kennedy as the writer on the show! Gayle is a talented writer who was born in Ivanhoe and moved to Sydney when she was a teenager. She recently won the prestigious David Uniapon award for Indigenous writers and has written short stories, poetry and prose. She is a member of the Wongaiibon clan of the Ngiyaampaa speaking Nation of South West NSW. She has stories published in newspapers, magazines and broadcast on radio, and was the Indigenous issues writer for Streetwise Comics. She is in demand at literary events and workshops and has spoken in Australia and internationally on the issues of culture and disability.
Her book Me, Antman & Fleabag is full of wonderful characters and deliciously black humour and contains many characters from her family and small town life in Ivanhoe. We are very excited to be working with her on the Ivanhoe project and hope to travel to Sydney sometime before August to meet with her. We think her style will meld really well with the storyline that the young people have been working on and definitely add some great funny moments!
Watch this space for excerpts/updates as the work progresses.
http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book_details.php?id=9780702236174
Technology Schmecknology
So, the wonders of technology have been frustrating and fantastic these last weeks. The website has been having teething problems and we had to put out the call to some Wordpress guru’s to come and help us fix up some coding. It’s great to have a site that is innovative and pushing the boundaries of what open source coding can do, but of course this also comes with its challenges.
The Storybooth has also had its own set of questions, with the purpose-built software coming up against issues in terms of the codecs used to compress the footage and also the ability to directly upload the video. Both were working fine, but messed with the USB audio. So, back to our software geek in Portugal to help fix some problems. I find it exciting that we are collaborating with a PhD student in Portugal, a wordpress guru-ista in India and some wonderful local young people in Ivanhoe. A couple of the boys have really taken it on themselves how to run the Storybooth software which will be a great asset, and B is doing a Wordpres blog class at the school this week with some of the older kids, so that we can facilitate a blog they can keep updating themselves.
The workshops have been continuing in the afternoons after school and there has been a steady stream, sometimes a river, of kids coming through the door. A few have singled themselves out and are keen and motivated to spend extra time both behind the camera and in the edit suite, they have been coming back after hours to work as well as borrowing the cameras, both DSLR and HD, to shoot some of their own pieces and photos.
There have been some really inspiring story-building workshops with the older group and the elements of the show are coming alive. We now have a story outline up on the wall in the hall and are getting all sorts of creative inputs from other community members too. Two of the younger girls, Abbey and Brooke, also devised an excellent story board for a short film which we filmed on Saturday and which we’ll post up here when its edited, watch for how we made Mack fly off into the sky!
This week we will also begin working on the Moving Portraits. We will be producing around 6 x 20sec moving portraits of women of Ivanhoe. They will be shot with the DSLR multi-shot function and a fast 85mm lens. In the edit it will be accompanied by around 15 seconds of an audio quote, a response to some of the great questions the young people have been developing with the Storybooth project. They have multiple outcomes. Each piece will be a small web video, a snap shot of the women and their lives. As well as this, individual Jpgs can be selected to become quality printed photographs in hard copy, perhaps as postcards or blown up exhibition pieces for next years outcome. The 20sec moving images will also form part of the performance as projected portraits, the women of the town whose gaze follows the little boy on his journey.
This week is NAIDOC week and Aunty Joanie Slade, a Paakantji elder who lives here in Ivanhoe, is heading out to nearby Lake Mungo to run some cultural tours. We are hoping to head out there as well on Thursday, hopefully with a couple of the local young people, to listen and meet some of the local mob.
We have also been in touch with Gayle Kennedy, an awesome writer, and Aunty Joanie’s niece, who was born in Ivanhoe, but moved to Sydney. In 2007 she won the David Uniapon Award for her book Me, Antman & Fleabag and we are hoping she will accept our invitation to be the script writer for the show which is shaping up.
I’ll leave you here with some wonderful pictures that Adrian & Mack have taken over the last few days. They were experimenting with long-exposure at night time as well as close ups and have taken some excellent shots. During the school holidays we are setting up TV’s in 3 empty shop fronts, with DVD’s of the young people’s work on loop. Adrian and Mack will be the first featured artists in a series of works in the old shop front windows on the high street. After their work has run for about a week, then will then take on curatorial roles and select the next piece by one of the other young people.
Adrian Forbes’ Photography
Here is a photo set by a local photographer by the name of Adrian Forbes.
Adrian was one of the first adults to approach us with an open & warm smile, wanting to connect & make friends.
Adrian will be working on the show control elements of the production alongside Stu Liddell, who arrives mid-August.
Check out his photos, they’re amazing. If you’d like to know more, or want prints contact him via info@trax.org
Where are we?
A lot of people have been writing wondering where exactly is Ivanhoe? Here is a map you can search live.
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