poetry / video / music / science
My animated video SPSS has been shortlisted and selected for screening at the 2017 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival in Worcester, MA, USA, on 21st October.
The video was originally published in Cordite.
SPSS from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.
My poem Dial Tone came third in the University of Canberra 2017 Health Poetry Prize! Congrats to winner Joe Dolce and runner-up, Vanessa Procter.
“The University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize aims to inspire others through poetry to consider the journey to live life well. The poem may be focussed on mental or physical health, and can investigate what ‘living life well’ means. This may include barriers to living a well life, promoting a life lived well, or describe the experience of, or transition to, living life well.“
The prize-winning and short-listed poems will be published by the University. Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from Dial Tone:
Redial 1
The message mentioned belongings. I comply, search afterglow
for jasmine, rose, orange blossom, hands fallow at my sides,
on tabletop, in rarely hostile earth. “Good to have you back.”
But I cannot be sure. Our arrival is delayed by asymptote, slowed
by imperfection. Bloodshot meanders skirt lawns to be mown,
drains to clear, vermin to evict. Amid cartons and packing crates,
window shades jealous our skin, discontent curtains our perspective.
We substitute bluff with categoric denial, switch to silent mode.
Body of Evidence was a multi-medium exhibition inspired by the impact of Art on Health held at the Adelaide Convention Centre 30 May – 1 July, 2016 featuring John Blines, Gina Czarnecki & The Australian Dance Theatre, Meg Cowell, Ian Gibbins, Naomi Hunter, Cheryl Hutchens, Hans Kreiner, Kerryn Levy, Deborah Prior, Damien Shen, Angela Valamanesh & Thomas Yeend. Curated by Carollyn Kavanagh.
I contributed an installation piece called Syntaxin: Kiss and Run, and two videos called Situs Inversus, one for an internal LED screen (which you can see here, with audio), and one, a special projection project (watch it here), on a huge window of the SW corner of the Convention Centre, along with one by Meg Cowell.
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Body of Evidence is a multi-medium exhibition inspired by the impact of Art on Health held at the Adelaide Convention Centre 30 May – 1 July, 2016 featuring John Blines, Gina Czarnecki & The Australian Dance Theatre, Meg Cowell, Ian Gibbins, Naomi Hunter, Cheryl Hutchens, Hans Kreiner, Kerryn Levy, Deborah Prior, Damien Shen, Angela Valamanesh & Thomas Yeend. Curated by Carollyn Kavanagh.
I contributed an installation piece and two videos, one for an internal LED screen running through the exhibition, and one, a special projection project, on a huge window of the SW corner of the Convention Centre, along with one by Meg Cowell, during the nights of 22-25 June 2016.
Syntaxin: Kiss and Run
2016. Timber, steel, brass, glass, digital prints, magnetic-optical disks, magnetic tape, plate glass, found objects. Dimensions: 182cm W x 41cm D x 165cm H (approx).
‘Syntaxin’ is a protein with a vital role in the molecular mechanism, called ‘Kiss and Run’, that controls the release of chemical messengers from the ends of nerve cells (synapses). The relevant structures can only be seen by specialised microscopes. This work uses Ian’s own electron microscope images of synapses, obsolete data storage devices containing those images, and found objects to … Click here for more.
The Chandelier is one of the works I did with Deb Jones and Catherine Truman for the Microscope Project in 2014. It was acquired by Flinders University and installed above the main stairwell at the entrance to their new Student Hub. Here is an excellent little video that Flinders made about the installation.
The following is an extensive email conversation, which happened over a period of time between Garry Stewart and Ian Gibbins during the preparation of ‘Proximity‘. It will give you an idea of the depth of research that Garry delves into for his work on any particular subject. It really shows that contemporary dance can be the thinking person’s art form as well as satisfying the draw of physical expression and virtuosity.
Q. I’m wondering if you could say that ‘when we see we do it with our entire body, not just our eyes and brain’.
A. I think the purists would not like to say “see” but certainly “perceive” would be well accepted. There is no doubt that how we visually perceive the world around us is influenced by our prior knowledge and / or expectations of the things we see. In terms of the “entire body”, something that is so intrinsic to us it is generally taken for granted, is that we perceive the world and its objects necessarily adjusted for our body scale: how big we are compared to everything else. This determines how we interact with things at various distances from us, how we judge … Click here for more.
Ian has been fortunate to have collaborated with Garry Stewart and Australian Dance Theatre on two of their productions: Be Your Self (2010) and Proximity (2012), each of which premiered at the corresponding Adelaide Festival and then toured extensively overseas.
Garry Stewart’s Be Your Self reveals the precarious stability of the concept of self as the work steps through the conventions we use to construct a singular and consistent notion of ‘I’. In an analysis of selfhood, Stewart situates the body at the centre of his inquiry. In Be Your Self the Australian Dance Theatre dancers are transformed into erupting, powerful, creative entities projecting a plethora of physical images and impressions set to an unpredictable, cartoonish, electronic score.
In Proximity Garry Stewart and Paris-based video engineer Thomas Pachoud (with the support of didascalie.net) worked in collaboration to create a dialogue for dance and real-time video manipulation. The work is primarily an investigation into the body’s interactive participation in the act seeing the world with reference to neurological body maps and the French philosopher Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology of perception.
In each case, Ian provided text that was used in the production. In addition, he ran workshops for the dancers that explored … Click here for more.