CIRCUIT CAST

In this end of year podcast panellists Heather Galbraith, Shannon Te Ao, Simon Gennard join host Mark Amery to discuss the highs and lows of 2018, charting shifting tides, the artworld's 'Complicated Love', and a year of diverse perspectives moving to the centre.

Part 1: Personal Highlights of 2018, Trends of the year, Best show.

Part 2: Biggest surprises, Best publication, Best writing, Best moving image work

Part 2: https://soundcloud.com/circuit-2/2018-eoy-part-2-of-2?in=circuit-2/

Image: Still from Ziarah (2018) Bridget Reweti. Commissioned by CIRCUIT with the support of Creative New Zealand

In this end of year podcast panellists Heather Galbraith, Shannon Te Ao, Simon Gennard join host Mark Amery to discuss the highs and lows of 2018, charting shifting tides, the artworld's 'Complicated Love', and a year of diverse perspectives moving to the centre.

Part 1: Personal Highlights of 2018, Trends of the year, Best show. Part 2: Biggest surprises, Best publication, Best writing, Best moving image work

Image: Still from Ziarah (2018) Bridget Reweti. Commissioned by CIRCUIT with the support of Creative New Zealand

"The most interesting way to follow an artist is to do the opposite of what they did"

This is not film-making. Artists work for cinema was our 2016 programme of Artist Cinema Commissions. As we launch a limited screening season online, we revisit a 2016 podcast interview with curator George Clark, who discusses the legacy and inspiration of conceptual artist Julian Dashper, whose work Clark positioned as a point of response for six artists from New Zealand and Australia.

“What is true to you may not be true to your neighbour.” -Vea Mafile`o

Ahead of the premiere of Truth or Consequences, CIRCUIT’s 2018 programme of Artist Cinema Commissions, Vea Mafile`o and Jeremy Leatinu’u discuss responding to curator Erika Balsom’s brief which challenged the artists to consider personal and public ‘realities’.

Truth and Consequences premieres 6.30pm, Friday 14 September,

Ellen Melville Centre, Pioneer Women's Hall, 1 Freyberg Pl, Auckland, 1000

Tickets from Eventbrite - https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/truth-or-consequences-tickets-49316063674

00:00 - Introductions. Mark Amery (MA) Introduces the venue for the recording, the setting, the Wānanga in Mangare.

01:23 - MA: to Jeremy Leatinu’u (JL): “What are you doing here, (Jeremy)?” JA: Discusses learning Te Reo Māori via full immersion, and a subsequently enriched understanding of stories and histories of Aotearoa New Zealand

03:28 - Vea Mafile’o (VM): On her upcoming feature film, her general Film/TV industry background. Describes the place of her Art practice alongside her other work

05:39 - MA: Introduces CIRCUIT’s 2018 Artist Cinema Commissions programme Truth or Consequences. Reads out curator Erika Balsom’s provocation “We’re an empire now and when we act we create our own reality…”.

06:15 - VM: Discusses her video Toa`ipuapuagā (Strength in Suffering) and response to the provocation. Discusses using existing footage of stigmata and question of “Is this real?”

08:07 - MA: Notes international news coverage of the stigmata event

09:08 - VM: “It divided the community, it divided Samoa, some people were for it some people were against it…. she (Toa) was caught in this situation of these events happening to her, out of her control… or are they in her control?”

09:49 - VM: “I’m not an overly religious person…for a lot of Samoan’s, it was a case of ‘Is this good or is this bad?’ For me, it’s a case of ‘Is this real or not real?’’ Discusses the subjects conversion to Catholicism, in order to go to Rome “to get an audience” with the Pope

12:32 - JL: Notes the role of VM’s work in relation to broader media coverage

13:00 - MA: Asks about JL’s response to the curatorial provocation, “Mai i te kei o te waka ki te ihu o te waka”

13:27 - JL: Discusses the influence of the book Nga Iwi O Tainui: The Traditional History of the Tainui People. Makes analogy of between the formal structure of the film (two contradicting accounts of a journey) and his education in Te Reo Māori - “You are introduced to a whole bunch of stories from all over the country, and you’re also introduced to different accounts of the same story”

15:05 - JL: Discusses the visual language of the film, describes “pick(ing) parts of the land that could be potential traces of a part in the story” and the films attempt to “massage the imagination of the (viewer)”

16:30 - MA: Asks about the question of truth versus cultural perspective, language

16:56 - VM: “...Truth is totally dependent on your own perceptions … what is true to you may not be true to your neighbour”

18:36 - ENDS

Image: Detail from Toa`ipuapuagā (Strength in Suffering) (2018) Vea Mafile'o

“The terrorist spectacle accommodates a dirtier game underneath” - Johan Grimonprez. On his 24 hour trip to Wellington, New Zealand we caught up Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez to discuss his films Blue Orchids and Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, showing at City Gallery Wellington as part of the exhibition 'Iconography Of Revolt'. Made 20 years apart, Grimonprez describes both films as part of the timeline of 9/11, and the construction of the 'war on terror'. He discusses the historical role of the media before and after the Cold War, and the digital commons as a newly contested space. With host Mark Williams.

“There's something inevitably fascistic about a perfect world” - Stella Brennan. UK academic Sean Cubitt joins Stella Brennan and host Mark Amery to discuss 'Object Permanence', Stella's new solo show at Trish Clark gallery, plus technological utopias and making dialogue with the non-human.

“If the essay film has become a trope…and these strategies that we’re using have become formulaic, how do we negotiate our way through that?” - Gavin Hipkins. In the fourth of our conversation series artists Sonya Lacey and Gavin Hipkins come together to discuss working methodologies, a shared interest in failed modernist utopias, and the moving image as a distribution mode of sculpture. Hosted by Mark Amery.

Points of Discussion:

00:00: Introductions

1:00 SL: on recent residency in Singapore researching Cambodian print cultures

2:30 GH: on recent survey at Dowse Art Museum, and sequel to The Homely at City Gallery Wellington, discusses spending time with the work whilst ‘in exhibition form’

3:55 GH: on shift from photography to film, formal and thematic synergies between the two mediums

6.00 SL: on making moving images from a design and sculpture background. Discusses the making of Newspaper for Vignelli (2015); and making films as an act of distribution for the sculptural object

7:50 GH: engagement with modernism and failed utopias, unrealized and realized projects.

9:32 GH: on SL’s practice of ‘making and staging’, makes comparison with Thomas Demand’s use of miniature / maquette and use of stills as means to document; the idea of ‘metamorphosis’

10:20 GH: asks SL about her CIRCUIT commissioned work By Sea (2015), describes it as ‘exquisite’ but “I don’t understand the connection to the commission”. Mentions his own commission in response to the writing of Julian Dashper.

11:00: SL: on the geometry and architecture Joanna Paul’s letterforms and poems as inspiration for By Sea. Question of how dependent to be on the source material.

13:00 MA: What is the resonance of these failed utopias today? GH: On City of Tomorrow (2017), inspired by Courbisier’s architectural vision of Chandigargh. Discusses Leisure Valley (2014) and The Port (2014).

16:00 SL: Modernist history as ‘foil’ in her work, modernist design as ‘pure transmission of content’. Discusses Infinitesmals (2016) - ‘Almost like making the found object I wish existed’.

18:00 SL: Discusses making work for cinema context versus installation. Use of script /text for By Sea to bring ‘sense of intimacy’.

20:50: GH: describes shared ‘essayistic’ practice with SL. “If the essay film has become a trope…and these strategies that we’re using have become formulaic, how do we negotiate our way through that?”

22:00 GH: asks SL about use of the voice in her work Infinitesimals - “Within the heterotopian space what does it mean for (the actor/readers) voice to be present?”

24:30 SL: Discusses working a Japanese New Zealander to voice By Sea. Discusses attempt to use subtitles.

26:15 SL & GH: Discusses working with actors for Erewhon (2014). Use of visual prompts. GH on working with reader Mia Blake.

29:00 GH: on collaboration in moving image projects and with jeweller Karl Fritsch, sound designer Ben Sinclair.

31:30: SL: on collaboration, instructions to musicians. Discusses Lightreading collaboration with Sarah Rose “we can overwrite anything that each other have done…there’s nothing that’s untouchable”. Discusses Courtenay Place commissions and new negotiation of collaboration between Lightreading and others.

35:13: GH: on working with Karl Fritsch and giving up authorship. On recent soundtrack for City of Tomorrow by Torben Tilly, and presenting the audio in an installation context. Activating a single channel work through performance.

"It's about bringing the conversation into the stuff people don't bother talking about" - Marie Shannon

In this pod, host Thomasin Sleigh welcomes Marie Shannon and Megan Dunn for an extended discussion about 'Rooms Found Only In The Home' Marie's survey at the Adam Art Gallery, Megan's new book 'Tinderbox', navigating the decisive moment, the plight of the submerging artist, and being subversive... but in a mild way.

More info on Marie's exhibition: http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/

and Megan's book: https://www.megandunn.org/2017/09/17/tinderbox/

“I would like to see thinking understood as a materiality.” - Bridget Riggir-Cuddy

On the occasion of the exhibition Starling recently installed at Artspace, artist Sorawit Songsataya and Artspace Assistant Curator Bridget Riggir-Cuddy sit down to unpack their six-year collaborative relationship, the ethics of making, and post-humanist theory. With podcast host Mark Amery.

"It doesn't matter if you're in a bloody gallery or not as long as you're making stuff" - Phil Dadson

In the first episode of our new long-form podcast series Artists In Conversation, we present a discussion between Phil Dadson and Sean Kerr. Topics covered include intermedia practice in New Zealand from past to present, open source art and the recently installed From Scratch exhibition and performance series 546 Moons, now on at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery as part of Auckland Arts Festival.

More info here: http://www.teuru.org.nz/index.cfm/whats-on/calendar/from-scratch-546-moons/