Public Programme: Object Lessons

FLOORTALKS
Bryce Galloway, Caroline Johnston and Torben Tilly
Adam Art Gallery
Tuesday 24 August 2010
6-7pm

Wellington based artists/musicians involved in the exhibition project Object Lessons: A Musical Fiction presented a floortalk to discuss their work and relationship to the scene of independent music production and its distribution.

WORKSHOP
For the Record
Adam Art Gallery
Wednesday 1 September 2010
6-8pm

Roger Shepherd founder of Flying Nun Records, Annabel Youens and Jeff Mitchell from MusicHype, and music writer Simon Sweetman along with Thomas Lambert from Sonorous Circle, Giles Thompson and James Stutely from Papaiti, and Alex Mitcalfe Wilson from Teepee Magic discussed the future of music distribution, particularly in relation to the possibilities of the online environment. This event brought consideration to the role of the record label now.

FILM SCREENING
New York Conversations

Mighty Mighty
104 Cuba Street, Wellington
Wednesday 8 September 2010
7pm

New York Conversations is a text film. Shot in a Chinatown storefront converted for this occasion into an improvised kitchen/restaurant, the film documents three days of public conversations between artists, critics, curators, and a free floating public. The talks, lunches, and dinners were organised by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nico Dockx, and Anton Vidokle in response to an invitation by Brussels-based art journal A Prior to be the subject of their new issue. Instead of commissioning essays or producing artwork to be printed in the journal, the artists decided to rethink the structure by which an art publication is produced and to attempt to do this discursively in a public setting.

The film is a subjective record of these conversations, which explored various topics ranging from questions concerning precarious and immaterial labour in the field of art, possibilities for non-alienated life and working conditions, the feasibility of artistic freedom, and possible means of reclaiming dignity in the work of art criticism, to more immediate questions concerning whether what was actually taking place throughout the course of the event was in fact an artwork.

In the tradition of underground cinema, essay films, and experimental language-based films from the conceptual era, New York Conversations insists upon a certain degree of participation from the audience—by way of critical reading—over passive spectatorship.

With: Francisca Benitez, Nico Dockx, Daniel Faust, Media Farzin, Liam Gillick, Egon Hanfstingl, Jörg Heiser, Steven Kaplan, Shama Khana, Anders Kreuger, Miwon Kwon, Valerie Mannaerts, Sis Matthé, Hadley Nunes, Saul Ostrow, Marti Peran, Simon Rees, Els Roelandt, Dieter Roelstraete, Martha Rosler, Joe Scanlan, Maxwel Stephen, Monika Szewczyk, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Jan Verwoert, Anton Vidokle, Lawrence Weiner, Andrea Wiarda, Louwrien Wijers and others.

PERFORMANCE
Bill Direen

Slowboat Records
183 Cuba Street, Wellington
Friday 17 September 2010
6pm

Most histories of recorded music concentrate on the final product: the crescendo of the classic album. In reality the final product is a small part of a band (or an artist’s) life, which otherwise is dominated by process. Traversing the highways of New Zealand, Bill Direen’s novel Nusquama (Titus Books 2006) focuses on life behind the scenes for an independent rock group on tour in the 1980s; the hours journeying between gigs, the interactions between members, the search for accommodation, transport, food and other items necessary to sustain momentum towards the next gig, the opening up of the landscape and New Zealand people.

Writer and musician Direen was in Wellington to read extracts from his semi-autobiographical novel Nusquama. Staged at the music shop Slowboat Records, Bill accompanied the reading with a performance of selected songs from his extensive back-catalogue. This event exemplified the power of music to transcend forms and become subject for both printed fiction and oral storytelling.

Performance followed by conversation lead by curator Mark Williams.

After a decade based in Berlin and Paris, Bill Direen is in New Zealand from July 2010-January 2011 as the 2010 Fellow at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland. In 1984 he opened a small alternative theatre-gallery in Christchurch, workshopping plays by Artaud, Shakespeare and medieval works; it was also the base for a collective music group working under the name The Bilders. Direen’s work includes poetry, fiction (stories, novels, prose-poems, science-fiction), songs and music-theatre pieces. He is guest editor of New Zealand’s literary journal Landfall 219 ‘On Music’.

FRED’S FAIR
Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society
46 Frederick Street, Wellington
Saturday 9 October 2010
1-4pm

Reflecting on the community of independent producers and utilising the tributaries of distribution already active in Wellington city, this event brought a diverse range of artists together to form an alternative storefront situation for the presentation and dissemination of music production and its visual forms.

Artists involved included: Upper Hutt Posse, Tee Pee Magic: Alex Metcalfe, Antony Milton/PseudoArcana, Sisters of Rupertsburg, Campbell Kneale, Bryce Galloway, Gemma Syme, Matt Whitewell, The National Grid/White Fungus/Hue & Cry, Epic Sweep: Teneti Ririnui, Jeremy Coubrough, Pumice: Stefan Neville, Chris Prosser, and Tim Bollinger.
Poster art: Kerry Ann Lee