Absolute Piston Gauges Symposium

5.30PM, Friday 26 July 2024

Free with registration (places limited). This event is Auslan interpreted.

Speakers: Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, Feras Shaheen, Keith Deverell, Caine Chennatt and Bill Hart
Symposium Moderator: Sinsa Mansell
Convenors: Kylie Johnson, Nadia Refaei and Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie

Absolute Piston Gauges has been reshaped to include a symposium that supports local arts communities to come together and share ideas on the role of the artist and art institutions at this time. By reflecting on these roles within a context of crisis - political, environmental, colonialisation, cost of living, housing, gender, disability, problematics of social media and countless other socially significant topics – art can promote important debate and introduce diverse perspectives and positions.

At a time of great social fracturing, should cultural organisations adopt a position on political matters or should they maintain impartiality? Is it even possible for public art institutions to be neutral? How does an organisation select and preference specific crises if they lack capacity to respond to multiple? Artists often do much of the heavy lifting in exploring important issues – so how can art institutions better support them to develop and present this work?

Informed by their cultural backgrounds, spheres of knowledge and life experiences, speakers will reflect on these questions in relation to crises happening now.

We acknowledge it will be impossible for the many nuanced layers of societal issues facing artists and arts institutions to be considered in this first forum. But we want to start the conversation and gauge the appetite for further critical exploration.

NUNAMI SCULTHORPE-GREEN
How much support do you give to communities that aren’t your own? If individuals can only support movements of the minority as far as their comfort will allow, then arts organisations can only go as far as their constituents. When it comes to the overlap of culture, politics and integrity, can you expect arts organisations to do the work that you aren’t willing to do?

Nunami Sculthorpe-Green is a palawa and Warlpiri storyteller, artist and entrepreneur based in Nipaluna.

FERAS SHAHEEN

In this symposium, I will discuss how such forums are examples of the ‘heavy lifting’ expected of artists and arts workers in exploring important issues facing society. In contrast, those with the decision making abilities and who control the direction of an arts institution, sit idly by in their ‘comfort zones’ awaiting a critical discourse on an issue facing the arts community.

Feras Shaheen is an artist curious in letting his conceptual interests lead him across a variety of mediums. Working with choreography, installation work, film, performance, design, and street dance to communicate his ideas, the core of Feras’ practice is to connect and engage audiences. He seeks to bring activism into his art practice, with outcomes that are accessible and community centred. Holding a Bachelor of Design from Western Sydney University (2014), Feras often subverts traditional relationships between mediums to challenge audiences' perspectives, specifically to disrupt colonial discourses and reduce western reliance on neutrality and apathy.

Born in Dubai to Palestinian parents (Gaza/Al Lid), and moving to Western Sydney at age 11, Feras engages with his practice as a way to reflect and examine how he views the world, addressing local and global issues.

KEITH DEVERELL
The Age of Ghosts — Through the lens of art as a political mobility, inspired by a course at BAK (Netherlands) and drawing on a recent transect through Antarctica and the Southern Ocean (within a framework of Climate Change, action and activism), I am considering the following: 'In a time of monsters and ghosts can we move past the current crisis and determine ways to build, experience and live imaginary futures—futures that dissolve the current corruption of information and dispose of the hegemony of European modernity'.

K. Deverell (K.Verell) is a passionate artist, designer, storyteller, writer, teacher, and researcher. They have developed a keen interest in understanding new and old ways to comprehend the world we live within and possible pathways to new equitable futures. K.Verell has worked across cultures, spatial boundaries, and institutions, creating friends and collaborations to tell unique stories and disseminate knowledge. They completed a PhD at the RMIT School of Art in 2017, lectures in creative entrepreneurship at The University of Tasmania, and manages Music Tasmania, the peak body for music in lutruwita/Tasmania.

CAINE CHENNATT
In defense of / death to dialogue — Is it still possible to create collective new containers where we live everyday with our values that help us bond and bridge, instead of breaking, to go from heartbreak to heart breaking open? How do we and the institutions we create show up with imperfect solidarities, no longer relying on empathy for justice, but on our responsibilities to care, and to respect ‘rights to opacity’? What do you say when there is both so much and nothing left to say?

Caine Chennatt is a curator, mediator, and cultural administrator, dedicated to holding space as a container to bridge within ourselves, with each other, and those not proximate. As a mediator, Caine supports individuals and organisations to break patterns of conflict while nurturing relational intelligences. As a curator, they explore expanded ways of knowing challenging Eurocentric hierarchies of knowledge, plurality of voices, and hope. Within institutions, Caine is currently Curatorial and Cultural Collections Director and Interim University Librarian at the University of Tasmania. Caine was born and raised in Kuwait, of mixed Luso-Indian heritage, and now living in unceded Lutruwita.

BILL HART
Inclusivity and the engines of outrage — In denying the exclusivity of grand narratives, postmodernism has left us with singular virtues - plurality and inclusivity. The 1999 film “The Matrix” marked a new age, and continues to influence, ironically being “red pilled” is more likely associated with being inducted into one of the conspiracy theory’s that it could be surmised that have taken the place of grand narratives. But more prophetically the film depicts humans networked together into a shared dream as a power source for the machines. The dream we share has turned quietly dystopic, through technology neoliberalism has comfortably merged with the postmodern into a system that safely channels dissent into a theatre of outrage. Meanwhile in the background, rarely mentioned, the 6th global extinction event gathers momentum.

Bill Hart is a creative practitioner whose work explores art, science, philosophy and what it means to be human through tinkering with technology. He has had a lifelong love of science fiction and that led him to his first career in maths and physics. He then became interested in art and then spent the next 25 years learning and teaching others how to be creative with digital technology at the Tasmanian School of Art. His art practice has included video, animation, large format digital prints, software and generative art, media installation, digital drawings and drawing and writing machines.

More information about Absolute Piston Gauges →

Places are limited. If you can no longer attend, please cancel your ticket or let us know: nadia@contemporaryart.org.au

Notes from the APG Symposium will be available online shortly after the event.