My Tasting Station is truly a traveler. Its form allows for it. It loves mobility and, this is a new favored word for me, motility. While the station was made for a performance show in Brooklyn over a year ago, it has meandered down to North Carolina and then recently over to the home base, my alma matter in Los Angeles. Well, if you are a fan of such nomadism, I’m happy to report that the station has floated over, in part, beyond the comforts of its country of inception. So if you find yourself in Wales, I’d recommend checking out Klang Canteen, curated by Barnaby Dickey. It is there where you will find an audio-only iteration of the piece in question among other works-to-be-heard.
Barnaby contacted me completely out of the blue and it has been an awesome pleasure working with him, morphing an element of the station into a suitable context for the show. Morphing and translating. Yes, translating is a good word. The re-organization of elements, some lost, some added for another place, person or pet. The photos seem to show that the opening was a good time, so that’s a plus. Please check out the show press release below. It’s a pretty fantastic idea. Who knows where the station will go next?
The ideas within it in great part are most certainly influencing the thesis, the written element, which I’m happy to report is going … well. My wrists hurt and I have developed a camping site at the Tufts Library. A routine. A comfortable chair. I’ll be getting to my twenty-fifth single spaced page tonight with one more body chapter to go. Not bad - most of it nonsense though. But the editing will come. My wrists hurt!
Klang Canteen. Curated by Barnaby Dicker for Art’s Birthday, Wales
Elysium Gallery, Craddock Street, Swansea
Opened Saturday 14th January 7pm
Arts Birthday event Tuesday 17th January 3-5pm
runs until 28th January
Marking five years of activity Art’s Birthday, Wales presents its first exhibition. As with all Art’s Birthday celebrations, it belongs to a more or less informal worldwide network of artists who, each year, pick up the baton(s) left by Robert Filliou. Based around this community of interest, the exhibition draws together work by associates and collaborators old and new.
Klang Canteen. Klang is German for ‘sound.’ A Canteen is both a place where nourishment is served and a container where such nourishment is kept. There will be tables and chairs in the gallery, but the nourishment offered at the exhibition will not be edible; it will be audible. Visitors will be greeted by the sounds of one or more of the works on show playing through a cassette deck. (It is the perfect place to bring a packed lunch or hot drink.)
The artists were invited to present a piece of work that would fit on one, maybe two sides of a cassette. They have been at absolute liberty to do this however they please. Beyond local and national, there is also work from Belgium, Canada and the USA.
Belgian arts collective Théâtre de la Liberté will be in residency on Art’s (“actual”) Birthday (Tuesday 17th January) – experience their intervention between 3–5pm. David Pitt will close the show with a unique gong experiment on Saturday 28th January 4.30-5.30pm.
Exhibiting Artists:
Barrie Hole’s Hitlist Presents… (Tim John, Aled Simons), Erik Benjamins, BpOlar (Dirk Driesen), Annike Cassidy, Peter Courtemanche & Anna Friz , Common Culture (David Campbell, Mark Durden, Ian Brown), Rhys Davies, Glenn Harvey, Hedsor (Karl & Kimberly Foster), Arran Hodgson, Matt Hulse , Joan Jones, Lyndon Jones, Bella Kerr, Steven Paige , David Pitt, Théâtre de la Liberté, Fern Thomas, Ward Weiss, Nick Lee
