Greg from Don’t Look Gallery in Dulwich Hill (Sydney) has done it again. The projects he generates from that little ramshackle shop on Canterbury Road never cease to amuse and delight. His latest press release had us rolling on the floor laughing, as the kids say these days. And Nerds FC is bloody great.

Matt Rochford (AKA ‘Rochy’ from ‘Nerds FC’) moves into Don’t Look Gallery

You are invited to an exhibition…
Dulwich Hill DayZZZe

Matt Rochford (AKA ‘Rochy’ from the current season of ‘Nerds FC‘) needs somewhere to live for a couple of weeks. I’ve offered him the gallery window. He will, of course, be furnishing it to his liking; installing his bed, TV, the odd pot plant or two and anything else he can fit into this very modest living area.

The downside to this arrangement is that he will be on constant display. He won’t be able to scratch his butt without the whole street seeing. Further, seeing he’s getting this space rent free, Matt will become my circus animal, my freak show. At least eight hours a day a commentator will provide thrilling updates on Matt’s every move. Every itch, every scratch will be analysed and replayed in slo-mo for the public’s edification.

I will also expect Matt to play to the camera and the transient audience. He will put on little performances to get the attention that he craves. He will try his best to communicate to the passing traffic with hand gestures and scribbled signs. Matt will also have houseguests. Come join the show, have a chat to Matt on his laissez-faire talk show. Have your 15 minutes of fame in Don’t Look’s front window.

Join us for Matt’s house warming on July 4. American Independence Day will mark the end of Matt’s independence for the next couple of weeks.

WHAT: Dulwich Hill DayZZZe

WHEN: Opening (’Matt’s Housewarming’) Wednesday July 4, 6pm
Thur June 21-30 (Thur-Sat 11-5)

WHERE: DON’T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: Matt Rochford (AKA ‘Rochy’ from ‘Nerds FC’)

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434
EMAIL: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: myspace.com/dontlookgallery

[NB: the above Nerd heading a soccer ball image was pinched from the SBS website. I have no idea if that is “Rochy” - chances are it’s not].

Danielle is at it again. One of our fave uncollectables is living for 3 years speaking only in quotes. See an interview with her here:

http://www.isnotmagazine.org/articles/read/64

and speaking of extreme prolonged projects, this fellow photographed everything he ate for a year. A few people have done this one, from memory, a Singaporean guy (can’t remember his name) - it’d be interesting to put em side by side to compare.

Find out more about the “all I could eat” fellow here:

http://www.patrickboland.com.au/thisiswhatiate/exhibition.html

In other news, Luca from NUCA went up to the Tweed Heads Regional Art Gallery to present a slide show about NUCA. The bubblegum cards are in the Multiplicity show curated by Glenn Barkley and Katie Dyer which is on up there now. By the way, if you go to the MCA page you can download uncollectable artist Deborah Kelly’s pdf prints for your own printing delectation!

Finally, uncollectable Kirsten from Cicada is off to Banff in Canada, doing a residency there. You can follow her adventures here.

workshop.nonstop
Opening Wednesday 7th Febuary 6pm, at Loose Projects, Sydney:
This is a project organised by Lisa Kelly to bring together artists working in ongoing collaborative, co-operative, communicative practices. The exhibition itself is a kind of a workshop. Here’s the detail:

CLUBSproject : Bridget Currie : Kate Fulton : Christopher L G Hill : Lucas Ihlein : Lisa Kelly : OSW [Open Spatial Workshop] : Spiros Panigirakis + guests & collaborators [adelaide: melb: sydney]

Taking the modes of workshop & continuous self-organisation as broad starting points of reference, workshop.nonstop invites practices that propagate their own working contexts & conditions - via projects, spaces, blogs, networks, publications, critical writing & making- to a project that will unfold as an open, multidimensional diagram of a workshop. Developing throughout february and hosting a range of dynamic interstate and local practitioners, workshop.nonstop will fittingly explore just how loosely a project might be devised, coordinated and realised…

opening event: wednesday 7th february 6-8pm
featuring performance by MofFarFarRah

February 7 - 24
note: gallery hours extended to 6pm thurs-fri for this project

- - - - -

} TRAM OVERHEARD journeys of dialogue {
Fri 2nd February, departs 4.28pm Fridays from Federation Square

This project, organised by Mick Douglas, involves a bewdiful old tram trundling thru the streets of Melbourne. Every Friday night there’s an “overheard conversation” by 2 luminaries, and some performance action after that. The journey is free! Here’s the detail for this week:

STEPHEN MUECKE + MARK MINCHINTON + TRUST, MOVEMENT, TRAVELING
Stephen Muecke is a Professor of Cultural Studies with a long-term interest in Indigenous Studies, transnational cultures and new ethnography who is currently researching culture and commerce in the Indian Ocean.
Mark Minchinton is a performance maker, Associate Professor in the School of Human Movement, Recreation & Performance and Foundation Director of the Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Unit at Victoria University who recently completed a 650km performance walk, web-writing, and installation project for a UK Review of Live Arts that began where his grandmother was born as a ‘black’ woman, and ended where she lived and raised a family as a ‘white’ woman.

} TRAM OVERBOARD journeys of performance {
departs 6.53pm Fridays from Federation Square
ZARAFA lead an intoxicating gypsy musical voyage
Zarafa are a Balkans and Near Eastern ensemble led by Pin Rada and Mark Planigale who explore gypsy and Eastern traditional songs and instrumental music from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Morocco.

} TRAM OTHERWISE journeys of encounter {
laps the city 5.16–6.53pm and 7.43–9.16pm Fridays
OTHER PEOPLE, OTHER WORLDS, AND THINGS OTHERWISE

- - - - -

And NUCA’s Keg Roll, with Zanny Begg, have assembled this behemoth project, ifyouseesomethingsaysomething, you’ll need to look at the site to get to grips with all the events. A little spiel:

If you see something, say something will be a discussion, exhibition and publishing project in Sydney in February 2007. Principally this will revolve around an exhibition that will involve a small number of international and Australian artists. Artists will be invited whose work has explored aspects of dissensus – by either questioning prevailing notions of consensus or by exploring new possibilities of social agency. Rather than being an exhibition of political art this exhibition will aim to question how we actually understand the connections between politics and aesthetics.

- - - - -

please send any amazing uncollectable projects to info@uncollectables.net !!

[another pic here.]

BOOMBOX SYMPHONY HITS SYDNEY STREETS

On Saturday, December 16, Sydney-Siders are invited to participate in a Christmas parade like no other… Unsilent Night is the work of New York based composer Phil Kline. It’s a surreal, specially crafted composition written especially for a procession of boom boxes.

For the last 15 years, Kline has lead choruses of boom boxes through the streets of NYC to much critical acclaim. Now, for the second time running, this strange but beautiful symphony will hit Australia.

“The moment my partner and I heard about Unsilent Night we couldn’t wait to bring it to Sydney,” says Sydney event organiser, Daz Chandler.

“It’s such a unique event and one that encourages people to come together and celebrate sound, the silly season and the notion of community.”

Kline places the different parts of his composition on cassettes, the organisers distribute them on the night to those wanting to be involved and then, at the given signal, participants simultaneously press PLAY. When the cassettes start rolling, “they blossom into a marvelously crafted symphony” (Time Out New York) and the crowd begins to snake eastward, following a pre-determined route until the piece ends at Taylor Square, Darlinghurst less than an hour and a few kilometres later.

Last year for the first time Unsilent Night took place in Sydney. Daz Chandler says that the procession was an enormous success and attracted people of all different walks of life.

“It was simply amazing – it brought together a full spectrum of Sydney’s community. There were mums and dads, musicians, artists and even a a couple in their 80’s!”

The Village Voice describes Unsilent Night as “a marvelously fluid, traveling spatial sound sculpture that disintegrates and reforms at nearly every stop light.”

When performed in the confines of a city, Unsilent Night reverberates off the buildings and streets, resulting in a drifting cloud of ethereal undulating sound. In effect, Kline’s music and his volunteer co-performers become single elements in a two-block-long stereo system.

Since its debut in New York in 1992, Unsilent Night has become a cult holiday tradition in Manhattan, drawing crowds of up to 1,000 participants. Daz Chandler hopes that the event will continue to thrive in Sydney.

“Everyone who took part last year wanted information on the next boombox symphony. I am confident that this year, the event will draw even more people.”

WHERE: Town Hall steps
WHEN: Saturday 16th December, 2006
7:45pm for an 8pm start
WHAT: Bring a boom box or just come along for the ride!

*The event is free, and will be held rain or shine.

For further information, please call Daz at Staplegun Productions on Ph:0407-523-753

Hi all,
the weedy tour (card #14 ) is on again, this time in the Hunter Valley.
Please check it out if you are in the area or check out the Database spin-off , WeedyConnection and the attached blog.

DIEGO BONETTO – Weedy Connection Tour
Wollombi will have its very own WEED TOUR…

This installation by Diego Bonetto takes visitors along the creek behind the Stonehurst Cedar Creek Winery Cellar.
The tour will guide participants through a number of display panels highlighting some plants commonly known as weeds. The resulting sporadic info-points are augmented by a reader and a map that the visitors will use to discover the plants in their habitat.

The framing of “illegal” and unwanted flora within a spectacle context will draw attention to the concept of “permissible species” as a social construct. Weeds are defined by a nation’s laws, and what is declared a weed in one place may be a precious resource in another. There is a significant metaphorical connection between this definition of “weed” and the arbitrary restriction imposed on human migration by national governments.

Diego Bonetto (aka Nobody) is a Sydney-based multimedia artist.
Bonetto’s interdisciplinary approach to art-making allows him to work collaboratively and individually, with no loyalty to particular media and materials. He is a key member of artist group SquatSpace and the Network of UnCollectable Artists. His activities create dynamic social criticism resulting in site-specific, project-driven interventions.

http://www.nobodys.info/
http://www.squatspace.com/
http://weedyconnection.com/

And here is a short doco of the previous weedy project Weedkiller/Pestcontroller

This came thru to the NUCA e list from Tega. sounds great! Cheers, Luca
————–

We would like to invite you to host a table at a ZINE FAIR AND FLEA MARKETS at Sydney University held as part of the annual Sydney Uni Arts festival called VERGE. VERGE arts festival is in its fourth year and has been evolving in scale and scope over that time into a celebration comprised of more than 100 events over the three weeks from the 4th of September until the 22nd. It is student organised and run and this year the task is upon the shoulders of my friend Alana and I.

THE DETAILS

Where: Forecourt of the Manning Building, Sydney University, Camperdown.

When: WEDNESDAY 20th SEPTEMBER, set up at 10.30 – 4pm where there will be
live music, performances and silliness at the fairs closes.

Bookings: C.brain@usu. usyd.edu. au
(more…)

Sal Randolph is an uncollectable artist from New York. Check out some of her recent projects here: http://salrandolph.com/.

Her latest project is called “Free Press” - for the duration of her exhibition at Röda Sten contemporary art center in Göteborg, Sweden (August 01-October 15), she will publish writing from anyone that sends it in.

A few paragraphs from her call-out:

This summer and fall you are invited to contribute to the creation of an open-access publishing house, a “Free Press,” to be launched at Röda Sten contemporary art center in Göteborg, Sweden. A project of artist Sal Randolph, Free Press will accept all kinds of writing from the public; contributions in any language can be as short as a single word or as long as an encyclopedia and can include manifestos, statements, documentations, studies, stories, recipes, poems and whatever you can imagine.

“Even in the age of the internet, book publishing is a walled garden where editors and commercial interests filter out most of what is written,” says Randolph. “To publish is to ‘make public,’ and the published materials of the world create their own kind of public space, a city of books where readers and writers are citizens. Free Press aims to open up access to that public space. Like any city, Free Press is bound to include both ugliness and beauty, though the definitions of each will certainly differ.”

All participating manuscripts will be published as printed books in the Free Press series, available in the project’s library and reading room at Röda Sten, where events and discussions will also take place. Additional copies will be placed on shelves in local bookstores and libraries. Readers will be able to download copies from the website and order them at cost from an internet book printer.

Check out Free Press here:
http://freewords.org/freepress/

Ah, the irony.
NUCA’s 2004-2005 project has come full circle. Australia’s 50 Most UnCollectable Artists Bubblegum Collector Cards have been collected by the University of Wollongong, and will be included in an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

[there’s a PDF document about the exhibition here.]

Three highlights from the NUCA e-list:

Amazing drawings by mazen kerbaj in Lebanon (thanks to Zanny for the tip off).

A set of documentary photographs from the pvi collective’s tts: route 30 (thanks to cicada).

and finally

The NUCA bubblegum cards now online! [fronts, backs] (these will soon be embedded within the NUCA site…)

(and while yer at it, you can see pix of them being traded last year at various swap-meets…)

Bianca Hester, a key participant in Clubs Project Space in Melbourne, has a “continuous project altered daily” on right now!

project projects

IN PROGRESS 19/06/06 – 14/07/06
Bianca Hester

RMIT PROJECT SPACE
23-27 CARDIGAN STREET CARLTON
Monday – Friday 9.30am – 12.30pm and 1.30pm - 5pm

OPEN AND HOSTED MONDAY 3 JULY – FRIDAY 14 JULY
CELEBRATION SATURDAY 8 JULY FROM 4 - 6PM

one of the projects comprises a publication developed in collaboration with Lisa Kelly and Spiros Panigirakis

see ongoing pix of Bianca’s project here:
http://flickr.com/photos/85171999@N00/

- - -
ps: the show has been extended to Saturday 15 July, 1-5pm.
And Bianca is looking to give away some dirt:

“dirt for free”

a sizeable pile of dirt is available to take home as the work’s conclusion
come with buckets/bags to remove the amount you need
(large garbage bags available on site)
available 1.00-5.00pm Saturday July 15th

which, incidentally, sounds a bit like this:

A long-running piece [by Allan Kaprow] was described as “… trading dirt. I took a bucket of dirt from my garden and carried it around to trade for other dirt.” Reaction of bystanders to the attempted trade: “That’s stupid!” Kaprow: “Then what’s smart?” One bystander: “Money!” Kaprow traded his dirt for other dirt many times, eventually “losing interest” after multiple exchanges over a nine-year period. In the ritual act of each trade the dirt gained symbolic value, being at first (the fun of the project) something with no, or even negative, symbolic value.

from http://www.byz.org/~tildy/allan_kaprow.html