Unreasonable Adults / Jason Sweeney | Australia |
|
PECULIAR_quadrilogy is a series of interconnected web-works over 6 years that investigate the intimate and strange ways queer men interact, display, eroticize, exchange and have sex online. Elements and in-progress versions of these works have been made and exhibited internationally, and built upon via their development and networked feedback. Shy Boy (2000) was initially made as part of a thematic residency at Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, beginning in 1999 - after an invitation made by Banff after viewing the in-progress version of The Last To See Them Alive. Radio In Trouble (2002) was built also in Canada, but this time as part of a residency and co-production with Radio90, a cellular pirate radio station in Alberta. String of Lights was commissioned by Live Art company, Para//elo, initially in 2003, on the theme of networks and distance. Embedded within these websites are appropriated images and sounds from gay websites that focus on the ‘straight male’ as erotic/sexual subject, a kind of blurring of the fiction and the supposed ‘internet’ reality. Specific soundscape were made made as ambient, and sometimes confrontational, layers to the work. The quadrilogy is an active online audio and streaming media project interrogating queer (male) space on the internet. In the various works, the user is taken on a course of ambient noise, sound and image maps (with sound assault) and movies made from webcams, self-made in-studio cams and microtransmitters (as with Radio In Trouble). The sites are purposefully ambiguous, virtually without text (save for appropriated chat, looped texts from gay chat rooms, or journal/blog entries made during the time of making). The works incorporated live audio streaming events, one-off performances, chat/IRC events and user submissions. The objective with this quadrilogy, in all its manifestations, is to respond to the ambivalence of queer space online and to derive pleasure/non-pleasure (and potential penetration) from this environment. The \'home\' website, Stereopublic, is a continuation of Jason\'s
ongoing work in audio streaming and archiving sound projects online.
It draws on his work in community broadcasting, developing a space
that is (predominantly) user-friendly and driven by the idea/ls
of public broadcasting. Work so far has been linked to the Radio90
World Service scheduler (based at the Banff Centre), Radio International
Stadt in Germany (as an archiving and server source), re-broadcasts
as part of net.radio day 99 (streamed from Sweden in December 99)
and support from Jason Sweeney is an Australian-based writer, performance-maker
and musician/sound artist. Since 1992 he has developed a strong
body of devised group, collaborative and solo performance, media-based
and live art work and has undertaken two residencies in Banff Centre
for the Arts (Canada), artist exchanges in USA (Los Angeles and
New York) and in UK (Glasgow) and in Australia (including the inaugural
Time_Place_Space1 2002 hybrid arts forum, NSW). His work has been
presented across Australia, both live and online such places as
Art Of Dissent (Melbourne International Arts Festival), Midsumma
Lesbian and Gay Festival, ACMI, The Performance Space (Sydney),
Adelaide Festival of Arts, Adelaide Fringe, Perth Institute of Contemporary
Arts and at Australian Centre for the Moving Image for \'2004: Australian
Culture Now\'. In 2003 he was Artist-in-Residence with leading contemporary
performance company, Para//elo - funded by New Media Arts Fund (Australia
Council). He produced and devised the solo Unreasonable Adults work,
\"Peculiar\", for the 2003 Adelaide Feast Lesbian and
Gay Festival. In 2005 his sound art work includes new collaborations
with Chunky Move, pvi collective, Performance Space and Samuel James
(NSW). He recently was sound composer and creative artist working
on the Chunky Move show \"I Want to Dance Better at Parties\"
in Melbourne. He was the curator of the \'Outside World\' live arts
lab, August, 2004 in Adelaide. He records and releases CDs internationally
with various music and solo projects. He is currently core collaborator/live
sound artist on the New Media funded national tour of pvi collective’s
mobile live work: tts: australia.
|
