Radio is a kind of non-place that holds the potential for movements of presence: spurring encount... more Radio is a kind of non-place that holds the potential for movements of presence: spurring encounters across distance and time. Broadcasts from Empty Rooms (Sasha Grbich with Heidi Angove, 2014) utilised the potential of live Internet radio broadcast as a porous boundary between places. The Broadcasts were a series of night-time, live atmospheric sound streams from empty urban buildings that created situations in which unpredictable connected moments between people and sound ecologies were possible. This paper considers Broadcasts from Empty Rooms, alongside Jason Sweeney’s stereopublic: crowdsourcing the quiet in a discussion about listening to quiet places, the unraveling boundaries between people, places and sounds, and the participatory potential of Internet broadcast radio. Making is also considered: both works employ quiet approaches to working with sound that sit between the poles of finding and composing.
Sitting in a field surrounded by slow-moving farm animals and breathing air thick with insects an... more Sitting in a field surrounded by slow-moving farm animals and breathing air thick with insects and airplane exhaust, Qiane Matata-Sipu (artist, activist) introduces the contested land on which we rest. Here the tupuna (ancestor) Hape alighted when he arrived in Aotearoa, travelling by stingray from the ancient homeland of Hawaiki, thereby ending the great journey that saw Polynesian people become Maori.1 The cultural significance of Ihumatao is recognised in the designation of a small, protected zone called the Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve. The field we rest on is a fragile territory that edges that zone and forms a bridge to the settlement where Qiane and her extended family have lived for generations. This land was confiscated and farmed from 1863 and is now slated for a fast-tracked housing initiative to combat Auckland's chronic housing shortage.
I suggest that radio is a kind of 'non-‐place' that holds the potential for movements of presenc... more I suggest that radio is a kind of 'non-‐place' that holds the potential for movements of presence and that opens spaces of encounter. Broadcasts from Empty Rooms (Grbich, with technologist Heidi Angove, 2014) utilised the potential of live Internet radio broadcast as a porous boundary between people and places. The Broadcasts were a series of night-‐time, live atmospheric sound streams from empty urban buildings that created situations in which unpredictable connected moments between audiences and sound ecologies were possible. This paper considers Broadcasts from Empty Rooms, alongside Jason Sweeney's stereopublic: crowdsourcing the quiet (ongoing) in a discussion about listening to quiet places, the unraveling boundaries between people, places and sounds, and the participatory potential of Internet broadcast radio. Art making approaches are also considered: both works employ approaches to working with sound that sit between the poles of finding and composing.
Engaging public, participatory or interactive methods in an art practice invites risk. Practices ... more Engaging public, participatory or interactive methods in an art practice invites risk. Practices that interact with socialities and systems are open to unpredictability, and potentiality, and are sensitive to the behaviour of others. Porous to the world, these works are agentially entangled; formed by the commingled actions of artist, participant, material and institution. These emergent aspects of contemporary practice and form important trajectories in tertiary studio research. Students making works that incorporate different agencies (and by extension, risk) pose a challenge for art schools in how they are assessed and supervised. We consider the degrees of adversity that foster productive risk in studio research, as weighed against the need to shield students, staff and institutions from danger and liability.
This research considers the potential changes implicated in a shift in art making methods from “m... more This research considers the potential changes implicated in a shift in art making methods from “making–from”, towards “making-with” audiences, things and places. This small shift in language has broad implications. It gestures towards a changes in human relation to materials, an understanding of “things” as matter in flux, and perhaps leads to ways of being in the world that pays close attention to the powers and lives of nonhumans. Within the visual arts some discussion of these shifts can be found under the terms “new materialisms” and the “material turn” (Barrett and Bolt, 2013) and in the wider field of cultural studies as “vibrant matter” (Bennett, 2010). I hope to add to these discourses by bringing attention to art making that works with the generative potential of ‘things’ in art making events. This paper itself forms part of a process of exploration: it is intended as both a proposition and a generative tool written to help me better understand my own instincts in the studio, the relationship of art to daily lived experience, and as a way to think forward with the expanded field of “spatial art practice” (Jane Rendell, 2006).
Radio is a kind of non-place that holds the potential for movements of presence: spurring encount... more Radio is a kind of non-place that holds the potential for movements of presence: spurring encounters across distance and time. Broadcasts from Empty Rooms (Sasha Grbich with Heidi Angove, 2014) utilised the potential of live Internet radio broadcast as a porous boundary between places. The Broadcasts were a series of night-time, live atmospheric sound streams from empty urban buildings that created situations in which unpredictable connected moments between people and sound ecologies were possible. This paper considers Broadcasts from Empty Rooms, alongside Jason Sweeney’s stereopublic: crowdsourcing the quiet in a discussion about listening to quiet places, the unraveling boundaries between people, places and sounds, and the participatory potential of Internet broadcast radio. Making is also considered: both works employ quiet approaches to working with sound that sit between the poles of finding and composing.
Sitting in a field surrounded by slow-moving farm animals and breathing air thick with insects an... more Sitting in a field surrounded by slow-moving farm animals and breathing air thick with insects and airplane exhaust, Qiane Matata-Sipu (artist, activist) introduces the contested land on which we rest. Here the tupuna (ancestor) Hape alighted when he arrived in Aotearoa, travelling by stingray from the ancient homeland of Hawaiki, thereby ending the great journey that saw Polynesian people become Maori.1 The cultural significance of Ihumatao is recognised in the designation of a small, protected zone called the Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve. The field we rest on is a fragile territory that edges that zone and forms a bridge to the settlement where Qiane and her extended family have lived for generations. This land was confiscated and farmed from 1863 and is now slated for a fast-tracked housing initiative to combat Auckland's chronic housing shortage.
I suggest that radio is a kind of 'non-‐place' that holds the potential for movements of presenc... more I suggest that radio is a kind of 'non-‐place' that holds the potential for movements of presence and that opens spaces of encounter. Broadcasts from Empty Rooms (Grbich, with technologist Heidi Angove, 2014) utilised the potential of live Internet radio broadcast as a porous boundary between people and places. The Broadcasts were a series of night-‐time, live atmospheric sound streams from empty urban buildings that created situations in which unpredictable connected moments between audiences and sound ecologies were possible. This paper considers Broadcasts from Empty Rooms, alongside Jason Sweeney's stereopublic: crowdsourcing the quiet (ongoing) in a discussion about listening to quiet places, the unraveling boundaries between people, places and sounds, and the participatory potential of Internet broadcast radio. Art making approaches are also considered: both works employ approaches to working with sound that sit between the poles of finding and composing.
Engaging public, participatory or interactive methods in an art practice invites risk. Practices ... more Engaging public, participatory or interactive methods in an art practice invites risk. Practices that interact with socialities and systems are open to unpredictability, and potentiality, and are sensitive to the behaviour of others. Porous to the world, these works are agentially entangled; formed by the commingled actions of artist, participant, material and institution. These emergent aspects of contemporary practice and form important trajectories in tertiary studio research. Students making works that incorporate different agencies (and by extension, risk) pose a challenge for art schools in how they are assessed and supervised. We consider the degrees of adversity that foster productive risk in studio research, as weighed against the need to shield students, staff and institutions from danger and liability.
This research considers the potential changes implicated in a shift in art making methods from “m... more This research considers the potential changes implicated in a shift in art making methods from “making–from”, towards “making-with” audiences, things and places. This small shift in language has broad implications. It gestures towards a changes in human relation to materials, an understanding of “things” as matter in flux, and perhaps leads to ways of being in the world that pays close attention to the powers and lives of nonhumans. Within the visual arts some discussion of these shifts can be found under the terms “new materialisms” and the “material turn” (Barrett and Bolt, 2013) and in the wider field of cultural studies as “vibrant matter” (Bennett, 2010). I hope to add to these discourses by bringing attention to art making that works with the generative potential of ‘things’ in art making events. This paper itself forms part of a process of exploration: it is intended as both a proposition and a generative tool written to help me better understand my own instincts in the studio, the relationship of art to daily lived experience, and as a way to think forward with the expanded field of “spatial art practice” (Jane Rendell, 2006).
Uploads
Papers by Sasha Grbich