“My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She’s played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn’t in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I’m up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I’m using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I’ve redrawn Mario’s frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline…”
Split over two exhibition periods and featuring artists from Australia and the Asia region, Last Words is a group exhibition that explores language, knowledge and communication in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation. It is the culmination of a series of mid-career solo exhibitions and performances, which 4A has undertaken throughout 2010 that tackle ideas of communication.
When we talk about our contemporary locations, they are increasingly defined by the interaction of local, national and global references. It is a world that is undergoing constant change and expansion, where culture, geography and traditional forms of identification are neither consistent or certain. What happens when our boundaries – geographical, psychological, physical and cultural – dissolve? How, then do we articulate history, politics, where and how we live?
Last Words aims to set up a discourse around the ways in which meaning is constructed in a time of uncertainty, through artworks which act as a catalyst for reflection on the contemporary world.
A publication documenting the Last Words project will be available later in the year.
Artists in this exhibition include: Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Eric Bridgeman, Zhang Ding, Hikaru Fujii, Archie Moore, Shen Shaomin.
Consider this official: I totally *need* one of you luverly Geekgirlers to create a Teleportation Machine so I can get to this bangin’ event:
“On Saturday the 26th, Class Wargames presents ‘Marcel Duchamp meets Blue Peter’, a day of making and playing Guy Debord’s The Game of War.
Sunday is the World Premier launch of the Class Wargames’ film – The Game of War. Directed by Ilze Black; script writers Richard Barbrook and Fabian Tompsett; xenography by Alex Veness, voice over by Hayley Newman and Alex Veness.
I always knew Kurt Vonnegut produced incredibly awesome fiction: turns out he’s also a truly pragmatic behaviouralist/visionary [+ yup the two *can* go together]. Take, for instance, his reasoning on how the average joe [+ jane] may just form a slightly whackjob set of perceptions centred around interactions with others + associated notions of “drama”:
“People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories…because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think are lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”
If there was ever an event after my own heart, it’s one that marries concern for animals with creativity:
“Interspecies asks: Can artists work with animals as equals? If not, what is the current state of the human-animal relationship? It has recently been shown that humans are closer to the higher primates than previously thought, with chimpanzee and gorilla behaviour reflecting politics, deception and even possibly creativity. What does this mean to the way we see ourselves as one species inhabiting a planet in crisis? Interspecies uses artistic and participatory strategies to stimulate dialogue and debate, showing artists in contact with real animals and negotiating a new power relationship, questioning the way we view our interactions with animals during Darwin’s anniversary year.”
Interspecies has a whole shebang of London-based events planned for early October including: exhibitions, symposia, workshops and outings. Artists include: Nicolas Primat, Antony Hall, Kira O’Reilly, Ruth Maclennan, Beatriz da Costa, Rachel Mayeri + Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson.
