Áki

For me the main focus for this residency was working on a script for a multimedia stage-performance set for premiere in April 2027.

The performance is in part inspired by the layered and dreamlike short-stories of Jorge Luis Borges and countless recordings and interviews I conducted in recent years with people about their dreams. (Sort of a dream-harvest if you wish).

Another major inspiration is the story of Danish seafarer and adventurer Jorgen Jorgensen who briefly ruled Iceland for a few months in 1809. He and his crew weren’t allowed to sell their merchandise in Reykjavík, resulting in them arresting the highest ranking Danish official without any shots fired and effectively taking over the country.

Later in life, Jorgen was sent as a convict to Hobart, Tasmania after having collected a huge debt because of his gambling addiction — ironically since as a young sailor he had partaken in the founding of Hobart.

His story ties together these two distant parts of the world which I am personally tied to: Iceland and Australia.

In Mparntwe, Alice Springs I got to know a community that quickly became very dear to me. I experienced the best of the Australian share-house setting, and met incredible people that became my friends throughout my stay.

I thank Watch This Space for the opportunity and I am sure to return to this town for longer next time.

Milly

The land doesn’t know you. You are a stranger to it. I tried to grow a mountain, inside of a room. But six weeks wasn’t enough time to raise the floor or pierce the roof.

Either way, only half that studio was mine.

My starting point was a block of clay and a roll of canvas. It was brought with the intention to be finished, before the open doors of the studio, closed with our departure. Each day, I chased the first light that caught on the rocks, and the last light that escaped through the tree lines, and if I missed a day there was always the next.

The mountains always waited.

To speak in the language of the stones.

The hues and textures of the rocks mesmerised me in Mparntwe. I spent a long time gazing into them, hoping to absorb the unique range of their colour combinations.

On the ceramics, I used a method that tried to mirror the skins of the mountains. Experimenting with underglazes on bone dry clay, through applying thin washes of warm hues. These were gently scraped away with the side of a razor, before more thin layers were applied. The stones gently singing in the back of my mind.

On the canvas, I cut up the roll into small rectangles (film format), and made a series of quick paintings, that could be taken down and rearranged into new combinations - In my mind they were fragments of a larger storyboard. The white spaces on the wall, were a film yet to reveal itself.

In Animation, I did a brief 72 hours challenge that tried to interpret some of the metaphors explored on both materials into one 30 second animated clip.

The mountains are all restless. Their eyes are ancient, that cast deep shadows. To dress in their skins and mirror their movements, would only be perceived as mockery ..What I found from the residency wasn’t completion, but rather a foundation. What I left with was the beginning of a story I would like to re-articulate into hand-painted animation.

At the last light of the sun, by the night time we were already old.