Intermedial Composition Network 

ICN members met on the 20^th of September to discuss Roanna Gonsalves new work-in-progress, My Time Has Not  Expired. Roanna is exploring ways in which to develop an experimental performance piece based on the research she has been conducting examining the court testimonies of slaves and servants from India in the early colony of New South Wales. This story is part of Roanna’s larger project, set in India, Australia, Scotland and now Ireland between 1795 and 1825, exploring the histories of the communities colonised by the British Empire, the ways in which these communities “love” back, the hierarchies of power and obligation between colonised and coloniser, the histories of trans-Indian Ocean slavery and slavery within India, particularly in relation to capitalism and the trade routes of the British Empire. 

Erin Brannigan’s book launch for The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023) was hosted by Bryoni Trezise with performative responses from artists Clare Britton, Matthew Day and Victoria Hunt. The Persistence of Dance seeks to understand a new field of intermedial creative work that has garnered attention from our major art institutions, changed the way that dance circulates in cultural economies, and become an exemplar of post-disciplinary art. 

A one-day face to face workshop with the following ICN member participants: Erin Brannigan, Clare Britton, Bianca Hester, Nikki Heywood, Adam Hulbert, Sonya Lifschitz, Bryoni Tresize, Nalina Wait, Nicki Polykarpou and invited Associate Researcher Jane Sheldon.

Members met to progress and build upon their previous work on producing a co-authored glossary publication. For the morning session, participants were invited to present a researching sharing on a compositional term that has been useful or central to their thinking when creating artistic work.  A review of the existing key terms to date was discussed and members participated in writing tasks for the afternoon to generate new responses to these key terms and concepts.

A work in progress showing, ‘something about horizons’ by network member Nikki Heywood together with Clayton Thomas, Harry Levey and Sam James.

The impulse for this work is to compose a live spatial installation for an (imagined) experience where a mind/ a consciousness hovers between states of existence.

It is a proposition, a reverie that lightly contemplates the 'pointy end’, making sense of matter and motion... something about uncertainty and letting go.

We are still here, but for how long and in what condition?

What will the next stage, the next Bardo of our existence, be like? Can we even imagine it? And what about our senses of perception? Will there be feeling? What will it sound like?

The focus on ‘hearing’ mirrors the development of the embryo’s first sense, as well as being possibly the last sense to remain at and around the event of dying.

A state Tibetan Buddhists call

‘BARDO THODOL: liberation in the intermediate state through hearing’.

About the artists

NIKKI HEYWOOD is a Sydney-based interdisciplinary artist working across dance, performance, writing and live art. A performance creator with a deep focus on embodiment, her long professional practice has centred upon collaboration, devising and directing original performance. Since the 90’s her work has been presented at venues such as Performance Space, PICA (Perth), Adelaide Festival, Theatreworks and NGV (Melbourne), Griffin Theatre, PACT, Brisbane Powerhouse and Metro Arts, Magdalena Women’s festivals in Colombia, New Zealand and Brisbane, Edinburgh Festival.

SAMUEL JAMES is a video artist and projection designer since 1994, working on over 200 projects with live performance. He makes art films with performance makers & participates in international residencies to develop video works on phenomenology.

HARRY LEVEY is an early career multi-instrumentalist working across post punk and ambient, playing & touring with bands. Explores experimental sound design for durational performance.

CLAYTON THOMAS’s approach to the bass is inspired by the master improvisers Barre Phillips, Peter Kowald, Henry Grimes and William Parker. Building a unique voice through 20 years of global collaboration, his viewpoint centres on shared expression, in-situ composition and utter surprise.

Network member Clare Britton, together with Therese Keogh of Magnetic Topographies, presented an Artist Spotlight on the 23rd August in the Esme Timbery Creative Practice Lab at UNSW.

The aim of the Spotlight was to discuss and obtain feedback on Magnetic Topographies’ proposed teaching pack which is to be shared with educators across areas of creative and collective place-based practice. The teaching pack will include a compilation of provocations for creative practice from artists, writers, researchers, dancers, poets and designers, which will then be able to be used by themselves and others as a shared teaching resource.

Clare and Therese shared some of the provocations with the attendees and asked for feedback on the concept of the pack in general. At the end of the session, Magnetic Topographies interpreted the feedback and discussion into a provocation in itself - a one hour process from the Intermedial Composition Network to be incorporated into the proposed teaching pack (see photo below).

Who are Magnetic Topographies?

Clare Britton, Kenzee Patterson and Therese Keogh form Magnetic Topographies, an interdisciplinary working group that brings people together with diverse areas of interest and from varying fields, with an underlying focus on collective spatial practice. We’ve hosted reading groups, workshops, walks, meals and public gatherings aimed at creating a space for people to learn from one another and develop collective methods for ethical place-based relations, and collaborative imaginings for the present and future. You can see some more of our work here: https://magnetictopographies.cargo.site/, opens in a new window

Improvised Dance: (In)Corporeal Knowledges
Speakers: Nalina Wait, Sanja Andus L’Hotellier
Improvised performance: Martin del Amo, Nikki Heywood, Jane McKernan, Nalina Wait.

Drew Crawford presented on We'll find out when we get there a new, 60-minute, site-responsive work for live musicians and electronics, flexibly designed to be performed in and toured to mid-sized public art spaces around the UK. Exploring the relationship of sound and aural architecture, the work is situated at the intersection of performance and installation. In this seminar, composer/creative director Drew Crawford discussed how the work is being developed in partnership with Plus Minus Ensemble and John Hansard Gallery, and how he is experimenting with collaborative theatre-, choreography- and studio-based creative practices in his compositional process.

Alice Purton (Plus Minus Ensemble) performing in the John Hansard Gallery as part of a creative workshop for We'll find out when we get there. Photo credit: Nathan Thomas

Two half day face to face workshop with the following participants: Erin Brannigan, Clare Britton, Drew Crawford, Nikki Heywood, Sonya Lifschitz, Cleo Mees, Bryoni Tresize, Nalina Wait, Nicki Polykarpou (RA).

In 2022 and 'post-Covid,' the Intermedial Composition Network expanded to include a wider network of ADA researchers and industry-based participants as well as national and international partners, and met to plan a program of activities for that broader network. At this workshop, participants were asked to present a short presentation on a ‘tool’ they use to create work or present case studies on intermedial work in order to identify key interests, needs and challenges of the cohort and discuss relevant concerns and terminologies together. The group planned a series of activities for the next 12-24 months including artist spotlights, a glossary project, reading group, a website and a series of podcasts to plot out some critical terrain.

Online workshop with the following participants: Stephanie Bishop, Erin Brannigan, Sonya Lifschitz, Briony Trezise, Cleo Mees (RA)

This workshop focused on finding common ground and potential avenues for deeper research through the exchange of creative vocabularies, sharing work-in-progress, and participating in timed creative exercises. Discoveries included a strong shared interested in experimentalism and process; meaningful connections between others’ vocabularies; the value of taking language from one discipline and applying it to another; and new ways of thinking/accessing/troubleshooting member’s own work.

Future planning included a proposed roundtable workshop later in the year; the value of doing work with a focussed exchange of work in progress, language and strategies; and the possibility of broadening the network’s membership. 

Online workshop with the following participants: Stephanie Bishop, Erin Brannigan, Brigid Costello, Michael Hooper, Bryoni Trezise, Cleo Mees (RA)

Members met to share and participate in discussion surrounding where intermediality had surfaced in their recent work, research and teaching. Key terms discussed included: the disciplinary and interdisciplinary; the materials of practice; rhythm, the visual and representing process; slow scholarship; high theory; literacy, access and spectatorship. Future planning included exploring future partnerships with international and industry partners; possible ways to frame this work; podcasts; publications of research papers and non traditional research outputs.

Participants: Stephanie Bishop, Brigid Costello, Nikki Heywood, Michael Hooper, Sam James, Alistair Noble, Alyssa Rothwell, Lizzie Thomson, Bryoni Tresize, Nalina Wait

This one-day event involved the key members of the network working with academics and artists to refine some terms for intermedial research - poetics, polyphony, perception - as they emerged from the day retreat held in February 2016.  Each participant was invited to present on a key topic, submit opening questions and contribute to a ‘casual manifesto’ in order to summarise a collective definition of the key terms with a view towards a future publication.

Participants: Stephanie Bishop, Erin Brannigan, Brigid Costello, Michael Hooper, Bryoni Trezise

The group met to define and discuss collaborating on a new model of intermedial composition for multiple outcomes including investigating common ground that might exist across the disciplines. The network committed to a sustained enquiry into the processes by which creative work takes shape, examining the extension of ideas into form, the experience of invention, and the dynamic relationship between different art forms.

The five academics shared their current research, led group writing exercises and mapped areas of confluence. Future planning included feeding key findings from the retreat into the network’s next events such as: a workshop on compositional speculations: poetics, polyphony and perception; a publication of a small co-authored monograph; and a proposed symposium inviting national and international speakers to present papers, art works and performance work.

D. Baker Smith and K. Blackmore, 2022, Brief Illuminations Between Interruptions, single channel 4K video, 13.12 minutes. Commissioned for Video Commission by Ngunungulla Regional Art Gallery, Bowral, 2022.

D. Baker Smith, 2022, She Speaks in Sculpture, two channel 4K video, 9.35 minutes. Commissioned for She Speaks in Sculpture at UTS Art Gallery, Sydney, 2022.

D. Baker Smith, 2022, The One Hour Concert (Hobart), live performance, 60 minutes. Commissioned for Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart, 2022.

D. Baker Smith, 2021, The Lost Hour, single channel HD video, 15:50 minutes. First presented at Tasks yet to be composed for the occasion, Artspace Sydney. Subsequently presented at the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, Sydney, 2021; Phillipa Cullen: Know my Name, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart; The Condensery, Somerset Regional Art Gallery, Toogoolawah, 2022.

D. Baker Smith, 2021, The One Hour Concert, single channel 4K video, 15:50 minutes. First presented at Tasks yet to be composed for the occasion, Artspace Sydney. Subsequently presented at Phillipa Cullen: Know my Name, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart, 2022.

D. Baker Smith, V. Tello, 2020, Opening Night (The Order of Arrangements), single channel HD video, 17.15 mins. Commissioned for Know my Name Conference, National Gallery of Australia, 2020. Subsequently presented at: All About Women, the Sydney Opera House, 2021 and quietly, carefully, casually, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney, 2022.

D. Baker Smith, 2020, 'Sculptures That Go Home at Night: On Labour, Performance and Re-enactment', in Atwood D; Russell F (ed.), Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Anti-Work Politics, Art + Australia, Melbourne, pp. 63 - 80

D. Baker Smith, K. Blackmore, F. Barrett, K. Doley, 2019, This is a Stained Glass Window, single channel HD video, 13.28 minutes. First presented at Sullivan+Strumpf Gallery, Sydney, 2019. Subsequently presented at Goulburn Regional Gallery, 2020; Penrith Regional Gallery, 2021; Melbourne International Film Festival, 2022.

A River Ends as the Ocean with Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor and Astrida Neimanis for the 13th Shanghai Biennale Bodies of Water. Sydney and Power Station of Art, Shanghai. 2021

Polar Force- Speak Percussion and  Philip Samartzis. Carriageworks Sydney Festival 2023, Noorderzon Festival, Groningen, Netherlands, 2019. Ruhrtriennale, Essen, Germany, 2019. CyberArts exhibition, The Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2019. Transart Festival, Bolzano, Italy, 2019. PICA, Perth, 2019. Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, 2018

The Nightline Ros Oades, Bob Scott and collaborators (production designer) Urban Theatre Projects, Right Here Right Now festival 2018, the Rising Festival, Melbourne 2021, Sydney Festival 2022, Adelaide Festival 2022

Walking Wolli Creek with Alexandra Crosby for Sydney Review of Books (co-author), 2022

Magnetic Topographies Research Group (facilitator) ongoing

The Mullets (mullet) ongoing

Arts House Culture Lab Residency We Drive So Fast it Feels Like Falling. Emily Parsons-Lord (collaborating artist) 2022

One Space One (in development) Aura Go with Tomoe Kawabata (director). Developed through the Musica Viva FutureMakers Program with support from Monash Academy of Performing Arts. 2019

BRIGHTNESS (in development). Choreographer Kristina Chan (collaborating artist, production design) Developed at Critical Path, Mondrook Community Hall, Io Myers Studio at the Esme Timbery Creative Practice Lab (CPL) in the School of the Arts & Media at UNSW. Funded by Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW. Special thanks to Io Myers Studio and Readymade Works for their support. ongoing

The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art. Michigan University Press, 2023. Contracted November 2021, due for release June 2023.

Choreography, Visual Art and Experimental Composition 1950s–1970s. London: Routledge, 2022.

Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.

Platform Paper #25: Moving Across Disciplines: Dance in the Twenty-First Century. Sydney: Currency House, 2010.

Brannigan, E., Day, M., & Thomson, L. (2018). ‘Research as Co-Habitation: Experimental Composition across Theory and Practice,’ pp. 218-263. In Performing Process: Sharing Practice, Eds. Blades, H. and Meehan, E. London: Intellect.

Wait, N. & Brannigan, E. (2018). ‘Non-Competitive Body States: Corporeal Freedom and Innovation in Contemporary Dance,’ pp. 283-304. In Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, Ed. Sherril Dodds. New York: Oxford University Press.

Brannigan, E. (2016). ‘Yvonne Rainer’s “Lives of Performers”: an undisciplined encounter with the avant-garde,’ pp. 517-536. In The Oxford Handbook of Dance Screen Studies, Ed. Douglas Rosenberg. New York: Oxford University Press.

Brannigan, E. ‘Choreography as Concept, Dancing as Material,’ Performance Research ‘ON (UN)KNOWNS,’ editors Hetty Blades, Scott deLahunta and Lucía Piquero, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2022): pp. 24-31.

Brannigan, E. ‘Transposing Style: Martin Del Amo’s New Solo Works,’ Brolga 36 (2012): pp. 25-30.

Brannigan, E. ‘Micro-choreographies: The Close-up in Dancefilm,’ International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 5:2 (2009): pp. 121-139.

Brannigan, E. ‘“La Loïe” as Pre-Cinematic Performance – Descriptive Continuity of Movement’, Senses of Cinema 28, Sept-Oct (2003). Online: http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/la_loie/

Brannigan, E. 'Motion Pictures.' Writings on Dance 17 (1998): pp. 1 – 84. 

2023   We’ll find out when we get there – a site-responsive performance piece for live musicians and electronics for Plus Minus Ensemble and Tim Hand, John Hansard Gallery, United Kingdom.

Haley R, 2022, Like Nobody's Watching, 52 ACTIONS, Penrith Regional Gallery, 27 August 2022 - 20 November 2022, medium: cotton drill, calico, cotton thread, dye, ink, pastel, oil stick, charcoal, chalk, conte, magnets, bamboo wadding, feather down, and performance 20min duration 28 Oct 2022, at: https://www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/events/52-actions/

Haley R, 2022, Dance on a couch by an open window (after Boyd), From Impulse To Action, Bundanon Art Museum, Illaroo, 29 January 2022 - 12 June 2022, medium: acrylic paint, beech timber, canvas, calico, cotton drill, fabric dye, crayon, pastel, ink, charcoal, feather down, magnets, rope, and performance 20min duration 29 Jan 2022 and 28 May 2022., at: https://www.bundanon.com.au/whats-on/from-impulse-to-action/#:~:text=At%20its%20heart%2C%20From%20impulse,artists%20past%2C%20present%20and%20future.

Haley R, 2021, Ever Sun Laneways, City Art Laneways, Wilmot Street Sydney, 22 January 2021 - 11 July 2021, medium: acrylic discs, steel, wire, and performance 20min duration 25 Jan 2021 and 11 March 2021 at: https://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/ever-sun/

2023      Dust of these domains in SITEWORKS. Bundanon Museum of Art, 26 November 2022-26 February 2023

2022      Reading Walking Lithic Bodies, in Perspectives on Place. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 30 April 2022 - 30 April 2022.

2022      'Moving in memory of lava flows: between Te Kōpuke Mount St John and Te Tokaroa Meola Reef', in B. Crone B, S. Nightingale & P. Stanton (ed.), Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: radical practice for art and art-based research, Onomatope, The Netherlands, pp. 307 - 324.

2021      Constellating bodies in temporary correspondence in Perspectives on Place: Works from the MCA Collection relating to land, mapping and environmental change, curated by Anneke Jaspers. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art.

2021      Groundwork. Melbourne: Perimeter Editions #069

2021      'Encountering lithic bodies: moving in memory of lava flows', ASLEC-ANZ (Association for the study of Literature, Environment and Culture, Australia and New Zealand), Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, presented at Conversations beyond human scales, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, 23 November 2021 - 26 November 2021 

2020      Sandstone, Lost Rocks series, Hobart: A Published Event.