Panel Statement

Panel: Crisis Narrative of Landscape: Future Inherent

Ex­treme el­e­ments of weather,  in on­go­ing in­ter­ac­tions with the en­vi­ron­ment, form a nar­ra­tive of the land­scape that Dr. Lisa An­der­son has ex­plored through ref­er­ences to past as­so­ci­a­tions of place.  It is a story cre­ated by cul­tural and weather in­ter­ac­tions. The shifts ex­plored de­tail past tales and magic, past weather events and fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties – the sto­ries of these events lead to the for­ma­tion of new ar­chi­tec­ture, iden­tity, cul­ture and land­forms. The pro­ject shinyshiny­cloud doc­u­ments, ques­tions and plays with our re­la­tion­ship to the en­vi­ron­ment and has formed the basis for sev­eral res­i­den­cies and in­ter­na­tional fel­low­ship/vis­it­ing artist pro­grams that Dr. Lisa An­der­son has un­der­taken.  Can a place change its story through the cur­rent se­ries of world crises of weather ex­tremes such as tsunami, floods, drought and tem­per­a­ture shifts? New tech­nol­ogy, old world sto­ries and a deeper un­der­stand­ing will be needed to ac­count for these ex­treme shifts and loss of iden­tity;  what will be needed to cre­ate new iden­ti­ties and new sto­ries on a global level must be de­rived from the past amal­ga­ma­tion of iden­tity, cul­ture, and ar­chi­tec­ture oth­er­wise there is the risk that the move­ment of peo­ple, be­cause of these events over time will slap back at many past colo­nial coun­tries.  In 2007, Dr. An­der­son was the artist-in-res­i­dence on the Kap­i­tan Khleb­ni­cov, a work­ing Russ­ian ice­breaker on ex­pe­di­tion through the North­west Pas­sage and be­yond – to Inuit com­mu­ni­ties, sci­ence/weather sta­tions and the last point of con­tact for the High Arc­tic. Her film work, draw­ings, record­ings, paint­ings and a video in­stal­la­tion,  The Truth About Snodomes (in­cluded in sev­eral in­ter­na­tional cu­ra­to­r­ial pro­grams) push into our ideas about place and ex­treme en­vi­ron­ment shifts – caus­ing and shift­ing iden­tity.  Sev­eral of the sculp­tural forms, with in­laid texts and im­ages, were cre­ated using paper made with a group of artists work­ing out of the art/ac­tivist group Farm­lab lo­cated in Los An­ge­les. (Their pro­ject is to plant wild seeds in the cracks in the con­crete of the city to lit­er­ally break down the struc­ture of the city and re­turn to na­ture. The paper was made from these plant­i­ngs.) Fur­ther res­i­den­cies in Paris and Lon­don have al­lowed Dr. An­der­son to de­velop the idea of own­er­ship of space through the mark­ers cre­ated. The im­ages of the stat­ues in the Jardin des Tu­i­leries of Paris and the Elgin Mar­bles in the British Mu­seum push the sense of be­long­ing and story into the pa­tri­otic bound­aries set up by own­er­ship and po­lit­i­cal will over the en­vi­ron­ment.  The shinyshiny­cloud pro­ject trav­eled to Cen­tral Java to Borobudur, a UN­ESCO World Her­itage site, to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive of this site – a site con­tested by re­li­gions that is un­der­go­ing recla­ma­tion and ren­o­va­tion. (Borobudur has also re­cently ex­pe­ri­enced fur­ther changes as a re­sult of vol­canic erup­tions and fallen ash). The shinyshiny­cloud pro­ject has in­volved sev­eral res­i­den­cies with Redgate Stu­dios in Bei­jing to ex­plore is­sues of mod­ern­iza­tion in the move­ment of pop­u­la­tions in China, such as the col­lapse of the tra­di­tional hu­tong neigh­bor­hood in Bei­jing, in favor of dwellings that re­flect west­ern in­di­vid­u­al­ity (within a struc­ture that is con­stantly under pres­sure from the winds of dirt from the deserts that Bei­jing is built on).
Fi­nally,  in the sand:bone:clay in­stal­la­tions and im­ages of the Aus­tralian out­back, the anec­dotes and per­sonal ges­tures of the local peo­ple are mixed with the stream of con­scious­ness of the iso­lated yet bur­geon­ing magic of these sites.  These works and other in­stal­la­tion works de­vel­oped with the shinyshiny­cloud pro­ject have been shown in in­ter­na­tional plat­forms; they will be dis­cussed within the con­tested no­tions of the nar­ra­tive cri­sis of en­vi­ron­ment and brought to­gether for an on­line gallery of video works/im­ages dur­ing the ISEA2011 con­fer­ence.

• Dr. Lisa An­der­son is and artist with an in­ter­na­tional prac­tice work­ing across media and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­ers to cre­ate per­for­ma­tive events and pro­jec­tion and sound works. These in­stal­la­tions have been shown at venues in­clud­ing the St. Tropez Film Fes­ti­val, the Cite In­ter­na­tionale Des Arts in Paris, Wagga Wagga Re­gional Gallery, Artscape in Aus­tralia, SXS in Den­mark and also el­e­ments have been ex­hib­ited in Bei­jing, Am­s­ter­dam and Lon­don. They in­clude IVU, a Per­spex sculp­ture and mul­ti­chan­nel video in­stal­la­tion, The Truth About Snodomes, a paper work and sin­gle screen and sound work, and Pre­cious, a large scale light and sound work lo­cated in beach­side sand dunes. These works form part of the shinyshiny­cloud pro­jects that ex­plore the beauty of the apoc­a­lypse due to weather and peo­ple/an­i­mal move­ments, in places such as the High Arc­tic, Cen­tral Java, the Scot­tish High­lands, the Aus­tralian out­back and var­i­ous city lo­ca­tions such as Paris, Bei­jing and Lon­don.  Dr. An­der­son’s doc­toral sub­mis­sion en­ti­tled, Mem­ory Sal­vage and In­ven­tion: the Col­li­sion and Col­lu­sion of Pub­lic Archive and Per­sonal Anec­dote in Pub­lic Art was the first study to place the ex­pe­ri­ence of the artist as core to the cre­ation of com­mis­sioned pub­lic art, with a brief that ex­plores com­mu­nity. Specif­i­cally she was the first artist in res­i­dence at the Aus­tralian Mu­seum and to cre­ate a War Memo­r­ial work for a com­mu­nity.  Dr. An­der­son was re­cently Vis­it­ing Scholar and is the In­no­va­tion Fel­low in Ar­chi­tec­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy, Syd­ney and has pre­vi­ously un­der­taken Fel­low re­search pro­jects with the Uni­ver­sity of Wol­lon­gong Cre­ative Arts, Australia. lisaanderson.com