Much of our discussions over the past few days have been about space: city space, the pavement, the road and how live evolves and changes around the street and the way the shape of the buildings, the history, the myths and perceptions, the media image the cultural mix and the history of the city makes people feel.
Archive for February, 2008
Ben Hoh is a designer, writer, media artist and community cultural development worker, with a particular interest in how people engage creatively with memory and place. Ben’s writing has been performed at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, and has appeared in the journals Public and Borderlands, and in the anthology Waiting In Space (Pluto Press 199); his short plays have been performed at Belvoir St Theatre and Stables Theatre. Ben’s community cultural development projects include Storybox and Suburban Crossings, which both deal with electronically exploring the everyday life spaces of migration. Ben has created websites for SBS, Lee Jeans, Disney and Information and Cultural Exchange, and his work has won two Australian Interactive Media Industry Awards. He created motion graphics for the Sydney Writers’ Festival’s “Hip Hop Projections” event in 2007. Ben is currently writing a Masters thesis about online, first-person accounts of war, and is a founding member of the interdisciplinary art/research group Tracer.
There’s a new issue of the Trans/forming Cultures eJournal called Landscapes of Meaning: South Asia-Australia Connections: environment & people, which touches on a few of the issues explored in our project.
Thoughts from Saturdays workshop
so…..we put our stories on the table….using it like a platform. The story cubes kept us running around and producing our stories into the table. i found the activitity we did in the past 2 days facinating really. To me, it wasn’t just ” talking about you do ” but it was also like a ” hi, how r u?” and really gave me a sense of ” you are very welcome into this platform .”
so i must say, it was really like a ” welcome to this place “ and i consider this a very good start!!!
probably i have been thinking a lot about how i got community people together to share their ideas. what would they feel like for the first time when they were in a kind of situation that they could say something……..
i made a 16-shot picture while also walking around and panning the camera. It reminds of a jigsaw which there are lots of pieces separated while also connected. dont know what im trying to say exactly but ..yeh..thats what i felt!!!
Thanks guys!!!!!
MATT HUYNH is a Sydney based comic creator and illustrator. Huynh’s graphic novels span a diverse variety of genres from surrealist fantasy to polemical essays, dramas and autobiography. His comics work has received recognition from Ledger Award for Excellence in Australian Comic Arts and Publishing, the Australian Cartoonist’s Association, ABC and Sydney Morning Herald. His inky, energetic brushwork has appeared on magazines and prints to clothing, accessories, health resources, tattoos, film, performance projections, vinyl toys and dolls. When he’s not at the drawing table, he can be found conducting instructional workshops, public presentations, exhibitions and live art demonstrations. He’s been known to operate under the pseudonym ‘STiKMAN’, having taken a bad high-school nickname to heart.
Huynh’s participation in artists’ collective, ‘Popperbox’, has fostered an exploration of new media art, performance, installation work and digital work.
Find out more at www.stikmancomics.com and www.popperbox.com.
Today in the workshop, we were talking about the aspirations and goals we have for our work, the obstacles in the way of achieving them, and the steps we could take to overcome them and get there. Ali talked about his parkour practice, and in terms of this practice of urban movement, you look around and use what you have around you to negotiate your obstacles. Restating these big tasks in terms of the real movement of the body was very exciting and helpful.
Chugging down the water, where the rough of industry has shifted and shaped the flow and course of a river that has seen the interlocking and colliding histories of the many cultures that have travelled on and lived around it.