Remember Casablanca
The Old Garage
70 Fleming St
Cementa 24 Contemporary Arts Festival
Kandos NSW
19-22 September 2024
Multidisciplinary artists Kathryn Cowen and Gareth Jenkins presented an immersive site-specific sound, ultraviolet light and biomorphic sculpture installation within the old mechanics workshop. The installation drew together organic and industrial elements, bathed in UV light and intense sound, to create a speculative environment exploring ideas of time, memory and place. Under the changed light, the artists as excavators, exposed the embedded memories of this much used work-site and imbued it with recent signs of life, introducing found organic materials and field recordings made during local explorations in nature. They asked, what memories did the sounds, sights and objects within the installation conjure in the minds of attendees?
A biomorphic grove and soundscape inside the mechanics’ work pit was discovered by visitors via peepholes, protruding listening tubes and through feeling the vibration on the surface covering generated by the sound waves contained within.
The biomorphic grove within the mechanics’ workpit as viewed through the peepholes situated in the pit covering.
After the abandoned quarry - that open gash of black
we came across the concrete buildings
soil running from their openings
reclaimed by bush and pine-light.
We sounded our voices into its spaces
to block out the machines still chewing over the hill.
It was momentarily bright then
as the afternoon sun made luminous the moss and low grasses.
We left - trying to take our traces with us.
words by Gareth Jenkins
Wind Tongues 2, a kinetic, mechanical musical sculpture, powered by wind, generating sound which contributed to the overall soundscape of the installation and a continual sense of movement within this disused industrial work site.
Throughout the festival, visitors were invited to ‘play’ the space. Biomorphic tool on the peg boards were available to move and strike against the garage door springs, generating sound which was amplified and projected back into the space. An invitation to investigate the textures and surfaces of the work shop was encouraged through a frottage drawing activity, rubbing various surfaces with fluorescent crayons on rice paper and then adding the patterned glowing paper to communal string lines which evolved over the course of the 4 day event to become a larger drawing work within the space. Text written on the walls by previous workers in the space was also discovered by participants through their investigation of the environment. The in-situ found text inspired some of the poetic narratives that could be heard within the installation. Attendees were invited to jot down their own notes or things to remember and add these to the walls via fluorescent post-it notes. These activities brought playful industry back to this disused mechanic's’ workshop.
Be valiant
Remember the red Perspex
on the left shelf?
Remember Casablanca?
The moment the plunger
carefully exceeded the diameter?
Be valiant.
Leak-down time is calibrated
to suit the viscosity of this moment.
Remember all the numbers
are instructions for clarity
for timing
and scale and carefully
through the fingers
we quarry the signal
be valiant
be the erratic come to rest
words by Gareth Jenkins
Before dawn
People have arrived from out of town.
We are having two or three gatherings at once.
It was before dawn.
We looked out of the window and they were there.
We got the impression they’ve always wanted
and still want.
They ask us where are we? barely a whisper.
We’ll say correspondence.
It turns out we were not in town at all.
words by Gareth Jenkins
Many of the materials used in this installation were found in the local area. Pine cones eaten by cockatoos were found to be a form reminiscent of crinoids, a fossilised marine invertebrate found in local limestone. These could be discovered by visitors under the sound ‘hood’, an old umbrella found at the local opportunity shop. The soundscape in this zone of the installation included audio samples collected while walking in local bushland with words inspired by the experience of these walks.