LOCAL ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
This month we have opened up our Traveling Artist in Residence studio to four local artists/art collectives. The project was spurred on as a response to Covid-19 travel restrictions, affecting many would-be traveling artists in residence. The result is a celebration of local artists who need, just as much, the focused time to work and create.
FRANKIE SNOWDOWN
Frankie will be undertaking research and planning for a new dance work to be developed over the coming 2 years. Frankie is preoccupied the idea that every BODY is a country, and aims to investigate the parameters and possibilities of nationhood when applied to an individual human. Through the research of colonial practices, Western legal and political systems, Indigenous Australian and multicultural systems of organising communities and relationship to land - and the role of women and the feminine in all of these - Frankie will work to propose a practice that can create an alternate reality/future in which the autonomy, desire and empowerment of bodies rules.
Born and raised in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Frankie’s practice as a dance artist spans performance, choreography, teaching, community based work and large-scale dance projects.
2. GEM STONE
An act of recovery ft. intersexuality, mystical Judaism and clay.
Gem Stone is a borderline genderfreak Jew nurse in her late mid thirties. Two years seven months sober, she’s still a baby on the AA clock. She’s a baby artist too, commencing what will be lifetimes’ work of reclaiming Jewish heritage from the violent hands that misshaped it into Zionism. From the clay may there emerge golems, sacred vessels and bria bi’fnei atzmah (a created being of its own).
Gem has lived and worked on unceded Arrente land for the last six years.
3. MARTINA CAPURSO AND GENEVIEVE WALSHE
Genevieve Walshe and Martina Capurso will use their photographic practice to transform and interact with the residency space through use of accessible materials such as office printers and paper. As this residency has come about because of border closures and lockdowns they will be delving into ideas surrounding travel restriction and movement by transforming one room into four different locations that community members can come and have their photograph taken in front of. To travel without restriction but strictly in one room only.
4. SECOND DATES MPARNTWE
The creators of this zine project are both visitors to Arrernte country. Sarah is a settler person, who was born in Mparntwe and Spandu is a settler migrant person who was born in India but has spent the last decade living on Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung lands and more recently on Arrernte country. They acknowledge that the zine is place-oriented, it was created on unceded land and it uses colonised place names for locations. In creating this zine, they have thought about unpicking the idea of “secret” places and ownership over special locations, since these locations are all on stolen land. As non-Indigenous people, perpetually learning how to tread more respectfully on this land, they hope to share places that are appropriate to visit. This zine also hopes to get people thinking about platonic intimacy and community care for each other, as a contributor has said, “you can do this with anyone!”
Spandu and Sarah have started making so many unfinished zines before, but will be actually launching this one with a bit of hype, after putting posters around town for anonymous submissions. They’ve been slowly receiving submissions with imaginative ideas for second dates, that may or may not have happened. They will be spending the week of their residency collating all these submissions into a zine with drawings before the zine fair and launch party.
We hope to bump into you at some of these places soon!
To make a submission to the zine, please email mparntwe.second.dates@gmail.com. And join the launch at the WTS Zine Fair opening night, Friday 3 Sept.