SELECT ART PROJECTS
Klare Lanson’s work interrogates the concept of collaboration as a constantly evolving process. Recent performances have tended to place traditional notions of collaboration under scrutiny. The word ‘collaboration’ — while a useful one — fails to capture effectively the concept of ‘community’ inherent in Lanson’s work.
David Prater (2004)
David Prater (2004)
From AoIR to Air: A collective Sonic Selfie Experience (2020)
The urgency of interiority and the lungs that inscribe transversal space – through the breath – become all the more urgent in this information society and networked ubiquity where everything is reduced to a common denominator; measured, exchangeable and transactional.
Nancy Mauro-Flude (2020)
Nancy Mauro-Flude (2020)
Zuped up Zoom screenshot that merged with blur and nostalgic forest. Image by Klare Lanson (2020)
This sonic selfie experiment was included as an event of social connectivity for an international conference for the Association of Internet Research (AoIR), seperate to the academic paper presentation for #unmaskedselfiesinsolidarity (2020). This was an opportunity to experiment with an iterative performance concept of what I define the ‘sonic selfie’. Entitled From AoIR to Air: A collective Sonic Selfie Experience (2020), the recording above captures a live performance work that occurred at the closing social event for the AoIR2020: Life(online) conference, co-hosted by Klare (Dancin) Lanson and DJShanitaVICE. At the tail end of this 80s/90s electro and non-stop dance hour, a reflective spoken word listening experiment was performed with event participants across three different time zones. This socially networked performance echoes the Fluxus art movement and embraced the process of folding back into the feminist glitch via the zoomiverse. The collective form of these fleeting and sonic system faults serve up a metaphor for thinking through the gendered and emotional labour inequalities that can be found within our digital data driven every day. The creative process manifests the body through voice, spoken word, meditative breath, multivalent forms of collective listening, and mediated sonic disruption. Attempting to radicalise the selfie through the form of a collective sonic selfie experience, we contemplate life online as situated through, in and of the soundings and emotional labour around amplified screen activation.
Review
Mauro-Flude, Nancy. 2020. “Breathing as Writing: The Productive Tensions and Murmurs of the Telematic World”, Performing the Internet, Network Cultures.
HOME IS INSIDE US (2019)
The collaborative multi-media piece Home is Inside Us (2019) playfully contemplates the increasing mediation of urban space, and its subjectivity through highly embedded forms of mobile and ubiquitous technologies within our lifeworlds. As can be understood in the iterative film work (above), it is the vital action of expanded listening, both human and more-than-human, that enables a lively response to place that is both affective and diverse, where bodies and machines move in—and through—multiple directions and generative entanglements. This collaboration was led by animation, film and junk instrument maker Paul Fletcher, who, whilst in residence at Kindred Studios, invited musician and composer Anthony Lyons and myself to collaborate on the work in a live performance environment. Utilising the raw data of field recordings, moving image, animation, electro-magnetic induction of plants, electronic sound composition, mobile media sound and image generation, gesture and spoken word poetry, this project highlights the importance of connecting human and non-human performativity. It does this by continuously reorientating and overwriting meanings of home with phonetics that are high in sonority—a blur of soundings that respond deeply via frenetic bursts of improvised spoken word combined with visual and sonic scapes. Home is Inside Us is composed of material and virtual elements which create alternative and affective modes of being struck home. Performed live at Kindred Studios, Footscray MELBOURNE. The video above is a pre-performance iteration.
#touchontouchoff (2017)
Rethinking some of the tensions around urban and regional experiences of the digital. Using creative practice, ethnographic methods, and zooming in on recent understandings of what non/fiction essays can be and the unique agency they retain, my digital experiment—a audiovisual essay of sonic and visual poetry via the assemblage of the Vline train—develops thinking about this urban/regional divide, through the motif of commuting working mother as digital wayfarer. Sound, mobile film, editing and ethnographic engagement with five regional working mothers by Klare Lanson; sound, guitar by Damian Mason; guitar loops by Christie Gordon Smith; ethnographic participant sound bytes. Sponsorship by CTA Australia.
#commute (2014 – 2016)
Commute is a live art performance investigating motion, routine and contemplation in the journey to work. This collaborative project was developed with musician Damian Mason where we experimented with GPS location and accelerometer data sonification, sound, poetry and conversation to articulate a collective experience of commuting. It expressed the everyday human experience of traveling between country and urban environments in the performance realm. The live performance took place at Punctum Inc's ICU, Castlemaine June 2014. This project was researched and developed through Bendigo collective Undue Noise & Punctum Inc's Seedpod residency program. Concept, Creators, Performers: Klare Lanson & Damian Mason, Video Performance Documentation: Damon Girbon. Mobile Media Film: Klare Lanson. Costume support: Industrial Sewing Workshop. Installative support: Zoe Volpato. Sponsorship: CTA Australia. Another iteration as Mobile Media audiovisual poem (above) was created as part of the 2015 Queensland Poetry Festival’s OPEN poetry collection curated by performance poet Pascalle Burton.
#wanderingcloud (2012
–
2015)
Lanson guards and commands like a digital composer, wearing a clear raincoat and a t-shirt saying “heaven sent,” or “the flood line here” marked near the bottom of her skirt. She scatters her churning text and sound to the winds while she geo-tags the collective memories of communities in trauma.
Kirsten Krauth (2013)
Lanson guards and commands like a digital composer, wearing a clear raincoat and a t-shirt saying “heaven sent,” or “the flood line here” marked near the bottom of her skirt. She scatters her churning text and sound to the winds while she geo-tags the collective memories of communities in trauma.
Kirsten Krauth (2013)
#wanderingcloud stemmed from a previous performance art project The Cloud Mistress (2012) performed with Amy Turton at Punctum Live Arts, a collaborative performance project about the capture and recapture of memory from Castlemaine and the surrounding region. It mapped the experience of a major flood event using poetry, music, sound, film and location media. Engaging four towns in Central Victoria as creative movements; Newstead, Guildford, Campbells Creek and Carisbrook, #wanderingcloud highlighted creative recovery, conversation, social engagement and the importance of collective experience within place. The domain of everyday life is interrupted and continues to be disrupted when natural disaster occurs, and #wanderingcloud used creative interpretations to evoke the poetic; multi layered reflections of place that signify movement and dialogue within regional towns after a major flood event. It experimented with poetic form through location media, collective response and performance, the immersive recapture of memory. In collaboration with Brisbane based Clocked Out Duo, Jacques Soddell, Andree Cozens, Kathrin Ward and Neil Boyack, Klare and her collaborators brought the semi-improvisational creative perspective to the experience of flood. This project activated the ‘meshwork’ of online/offline activity, reflecting connections with location media, place and community. #wanderingcloud premiered in 2013 at Theatre Royal in Castlemaine and was further developed for the 2015 Castlemaine State Festival and the 2015 Queensland Poetry Festival. Data collection lived on the tumblr link in the image below.
Reviews:
Krauth, Kirsten. 2013. “The Poetry of Catastrophe: Klare Lanson, #wanderingcloud”. realtime 118, Dec–Jan.
Krauth, Kirsten. 2015. “On the Line Between Earth and Sky: Castlemaine State Festival. realtime 127, June–July.
every third breath (2002-)
Live performances integrating poetry, sound and live art. Words fused with electronic music and kaoss, moving imagery, and low res mobile media. Spoken word electronica album released entitled Every Third Breath (2002), funded by Arts Vic and co-produced by Cornel Wilzcek (AKA Qua). Friends were invited to improvise collaboratively both on the album and in live mode: Erik Mitsak, Annalee Koerning, Nick Kallincos, Peter Humble, Cormac Lally, Emile Zile. Worked with Ollie Olsen, The Hypersense Complex, Bjoern Stolpmann, John Troyer, Unanamus Quorum, hundreds of performances including This Is Not Art Festival, Make It Up Club, Liquid Architecture, What is Music Festival?, Poetry Festivals such as Overload, Babble, The Wheeler Centre, LOOP Residency, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, Melbourne Emerging Writers Festival, Melbourne Fringe, Going Down Swinging Launches, Word Mine, several artist in residencies including FRUC in France and performances in London, Berlin and New York’s The Bowery Poetry Club as part of the Can’t Talk Right Now I’m Busy tour. Lanson also toured New Zealand as part of 13% punk (with poets alicia sometimes and Emilie Zoey Baker), and performed for the Wellington Fringe Festival.
Poetry published on radio, web and for the page.
