Synopsis: in-between writing, performative writing, affect theory and ficto-criticism; continuously-searching movement; decentering ‘vision’, making room for other modes of encounter and perception; spaces, and holes and pauses.

Characters (in order of appearance): Andrew Brooks, Beth Caird and Aodhan Madden, Kelly Fliedner, Benjamin Forster, Astrid Lorange, Sarah Rodigari, Stephanie Rosenthal, Adrian Heathfield, Gerry Bibby, Heman Chong, Eileen Myles, Rhiannon Newton, Della Pollack.

Biennale of Sydney: Fan Fiction has been written for The Bureau of Writing, a collaborative writing program designed for artists and presented alongside the 20th Biennale in association with Artspace, Sydney.

BoS Fan Fiction — Episode 4

How do we communicate with each other? How can we subvert the ocular centricity of the “visual” arts? How can we create audio descriptions that are about more than accessibility, that are about further and more meaningful understanding, that are about enriched connection? 

In Objectivity & Language: the power of empathy in audio description Mayma Awaida and Tony Sarre discuss the language of audio description in the context of John Prince Siddon’s All Mixed Up at Fremantle Art Centre. Mayma and Tony question the didactic way that audio description represents exhibitions and instead argue for the inclusion of abstract and speculative as well as literal narrations. This is the first in a multi-part series in which they will examine disability culture and the arts within a Perth-specific context.

Mayma and Tony have been collaborators for two years. Tony is a script writer, director and film maker. His current body of work centres accessibility and the arts. Mayma is an Australia-Lebanese first generation immigrant, and writer and producer specialising in critical theory and identity politics. 

Mayma and Tony are both participants in the inaugural Perth Festival Visual Arts Writing Group, which is convened by Semaphore editor Kelly Fliedner. Objectivity & Language is presented in association with the 2020 Perth Festival, and is supported by the Visual Arts Program Partner Wesfarmers Arts.

For full audio transcript visit: https://semaphoreart.net/Objectivity-Language-1

Objectivity & Language: The power of empathy in audio description

8 April 2020
Agatha Gothe-Snape

These devices are the narrow gate through which your metabolism passes.1 They are also the doorways through which the world outside now travels through to you. The door is one of the most basic of all cultural techniques, being a switch that constitutes inside and outside spaces.2 The door gives humans the ability to both separate and to connect, to divide or conjoin what is inside and what is out, what is personal territory and what belongs to the wider world. As limina or thresholds, doors not only demarcate and delimit, but also allow the joining of different spaces.3

As we close physical doorways in acts of solidarity, love and collective care, I have left this virtual door ajar4 in the hope that something may still pass through. So that something of another realm may flow into our concrete material world. Or verso, that a concrete world, no longer physically accessible, is animated in that most private and electric of places—the imagination.

If you choose, consider putting on headphones, closing your eyes as you allow this exhibition to accumulate via the linked audio file. The longer and slower you listen, the more uncertainty you listen with, the more this world will bloom.

The full details of each work are available in the linked PDF:
https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/2171455/AGS_03_Works-List.pdf

Composition and sound design by Alyx Dennison, 1–7 April 2020, including fragments of Wet Matter, 2020 (composition and sound design by Evelyn Ida Morris with contributions from Alyx Dennison, Brian Fuata, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Evelyn Ida Morris, Lizzie Thomson); extracted Microsoft PowerPoint sound effects; at-home iPhone recording of select names from Every Artist Remembered, 2009, by Agatha Gothe-Snape; and an extract of Five Columns, 2019, by Wrong Solo with Sonya Holowell, Ruark Lewis, Sarah Rodigari, Brooke Stamp and Lizzie Thomson.

Agatha Gothe-Snape is represented by The Commercial, Sydney.

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1 John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds, Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2015, p. 26.
2 Ibid., p. 152.
3 Georgina Cole, ‘Painting the Threshold: Doors, Space and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Genre Painting’, PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2010.
4 To borrow from artist Mitchel Cumming’s project AJAR, https://cargocollective.com/mitchelcumming/AJAR.

Featured as part of MUMA ONLINE: http://createsend.com/t/d-DFD376A77B3DD74B2540EF23F30FEDED

#MUMAONLINE

MUMA ONLINE: AGATHA GOTHE-SNAPE

'Frames of Reference' is a series of conversations considering ideas of identity and governance, bureaucracy and power, creativity in light of regulation, the role of text to other arts, and collaborative relationships. It's a project about how creative work grows from initial ideas and personal practices, into collectives, groups, and projects larger than were originally imagined.

As part of the 'Fair Isle' exhibition at DADAA in Fremantle, Semaphore editors Kelly Fliedner and Melissa McGrath will meet with and gather information from industry leaders, peers and community members regarding processes for supporting arts practice in WA. We will record these exchanges and publish our reflections to share the process of thinking through making and document local histories and knowledge.

You can learn more about Frames of Reference here: https://semaphoreart.net/Frames-of-Reference-1

This recording is the 'Frames of Reference' introductory conversation, which took place in Kaarta Gar-up (Kings Park) between Kelly and Melissa. This is the first of many conversations we will host and record over the coming months. It aims to give some context to our thinking and hopes for how we consult with our community to solidify and define Semaphore’s movement into the future.

These conversations happen for us alongside the everyday. So, likewise, we encourage you to listen to this as you clean the dishes, wait for the bus or walk your dog—listen as you go about your day.

You can read the transcript here: https://semaphoreart.net/Introduction

Frames of Reference — Introduction

Semaphore is a weekly newsletter and publication. 

We publish individual and collective opinions, reviews, commentary and creative responses to art from Western Australia. We are interested in writing that reflects upon artistic practice, broader cultural themes and issues, and also examines the formal structures and mode of writing itself — what writing can be, and what it can offer visual art. We want to create a space where people can experiment with discursive responses ranging from contemporary and art historical analysis, to fictocriticism, poetry and prose.

We are interested in writing that creates conversation. How do we engage with art critically and creatively, avoid didacticism, grapple with ideas and uncertainty, and speak through dynamic subjectivities? How can we do this through conversation? How do we commune with each other? What is conversation as opposed to discourse, as opposed to speech-acts, as opposed to monologue, as opposed to dialogue, as opposed to narrative, as opposed to poetry?

Go to: https://semaphoreart.net/