ArtCast 25th October 2007 Track Listing
Track Listing:
Forward Backward Railroad Track Blues 2 – mikewindy – 3 min 42 sec
between stations – Mark Cooley – 5 min 11 sec
Jing Shan Park 01 [detail] - Catherine Clover – 6 min 44 sec
Passages MP3 – Roz Mortimer – 19 min 31 sec
Forward Backward Railroad Track Blues 2 - mikewindy
mikewindy is an artist who lives with his wife and son in Hastings Florida. Across the street from their house are the old railroad tracks. The county recreational department is going to pave over these old tracks to create a walking and biking path that will lead west to Palatka and east towards St. Augustine. Rails to Trails. “We will have lots of good times and talks on this trail I’m sure but I wish that it was going to be used for a passenger train so we wouldn’t have to drive our cars so much.”
between stations – Mark Cooley
The public airways are mapped almost entirely to the mandates of consumer demographics, psychographics and other methods of locating, courting and creating compliant consumers and citizens. This sad context provides an aesthetic space where the mash-up and obliteration of those tired fictitious sites of meaning becomes a satisfying experience.
These recordings, created for podcasti distribution, were made in the southeast of the United States on various points along Interstate 95 from Richmond Virginia and Fayetteville North Carolina. They capture profiles of American consciousness as competing sectors of the consciousness industry represents them and simultaneously they are the decomposition of preconfigured and seemingly stable consciousness moving at high velocity toward utter decay and slippage into forbidden, unclaimed and contested spaces.
The artist’s automobile acted as crude mixing instrument as it was driven recklessly between competing frequencies sliding in and out of coherence and exploring the spaces between stations, colonized electromagnetic frequencies and codified identities.
Mark Cooley is an interdisciplinary artist interested in exploring the intersections of art, activism, popular culture and institutional critique in a variety of contexts. Subjects of particular interest are U.S. foreign policy, the fine art culture industry and the political economy of new technologies. Mark’s work has been featured internationally in online and offline venues such as Exit Art, NY, Rhizome.org, Furtherield.org, the World Social Forum, MediaLabMadrid, Postmasters Gallery, NY, and many other international venues. Mark is currently a professor in the Department of Art and Visual Technology at George Mason University in the suburbs of Washington D.C.
Jing Shan Park 01 [detail] - Catherine Clover
Australia-based artist Catherine Clover's current practice concentrates on the mediums of sound, digitali imaging and installation. Interests in found objects, including found sound [field recordings] in particular, have led to a focus on contemporary landscape and ideas surrounding our relationship with wilderness, technology and art. The daily, the ordinary and the everyday inform this exploration.
A group of women gather under the trees of Jing Shan Park, central Beijing, to sing together in the afternoon heat. Using pre-recorded instrumentation from traditional songs and microphones to amplify their voices, the women attract an appreciative audience. High above in the trees and competing for sonic attention are two groups of cicadas. These cicadas are common in Beijing and are known locally as hei za chan [roughly, black noisy cicada] and hui gu [roughly, dedicated group of insects].
Passages MP3 – Roz Mortimer
Passages (is this a love letter or a suicide note?)
Created during a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy, this podcast takes us on a disembodied journey through the labyrinthine gardens and ruins over looking Lake Como.
The passage of time, light, and people is central to this work where location and landscape become devices to explore enclosure and isolation – both physical and psychological states.
Intersecting paths open out into seemingly impossible locations, mysterious doors set into the rock reveal secret passageways, and as the cicadas call, a sense of languor gives way to obsession and an unravelling of sanity. During the residency Mortimer mapped the grounds through thousands of still photographs, recorded each day's weather through timelapse photography and further documented the location with video. Her diary forms the narrative base of this work, a confessional and intimate text recording a personal response to the isolation and beauty of this place. This podcast originated from the soundtrack of the video piece Passages.
Roz Mortimer is an artist and filmmaker who lives and works in London. She has lectured at universities across the UK and was senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, London before setting up her own independent production company, Wonderdog Productions in 2001.
Her work is focused on expanded and experimental forms of documentary across a range of media; from film and video to photography, sound, installation, performance and sculpture.
Her award winning films have been widely screened around the world at film festivals, galleries, cinemas and on television. They include Passages (2007), Invisible (2006), Tales from the Arctic Circle (2005), Safety Tips for Kids (2003), Gender Trouble (2002), Dog of My Dreams (2001), Neverland (2000), Airshow (1999), Wormcharmer (1998) and Bloodsports for Girls (1995). Her work has been supported by Arts Council England, The British Council, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Wellcome Trust, Film London, LFVDA, LAFVA, Eastern Arts and Channel 4 Television.
Passages has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Arts Council England with the support of Film London Artists Moving Image Networki
