33 Temple
A blog recording the work and activities of Patrick S. Ford
Saturday, December 19, 2020
渡 (Portal) - Cheung Chau Wave 2020
Sunday, November 29, 2020
'Weaving Experience Into Memory' - Vietnam Festival of Creativity and Design 2020
The exhibition ‘Weaving Experience Into Memory’ opened on 16th November at L’Usine, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City following months of work and preparation. The event formed part of the annual Vietnam Festival of Creativity and Design, the annual showcase of creativity within the artistic, design and cultural fields in Vietnam.
This year the festival spanned three cities: Hanoi, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City during two weeks of events.
At L’Usine a collection of artworks and fashion exhibits were presented along with ‘information hangers’ and edited videos that attempted to explain the process behind the finished artefacts. The exhibition project served three functions: a) To investigate the intersection of art and design, b) To investigate a selection of industry resources and traditional hand-craftsmanship available within Vietnam, and c) To present this information in a format that could serve as a case study for students at RMIT Vietnam.
The exhibition was supported and sponsored by RMIT Vietnam, L'Usine, Afromazi Design, Fluxmall DTG, Richever.
A detailed description can be found in the exhibition catalogue.
This sharing of information and experience with our students was high on the list of priorities as the various elements in the exhibition were drawn together. It was even possible to propose the exhibition opening reception as a subject for photography students to target in support of their ‘event photography’ work. The MC for the event was also an RMIT Vietnam business student who was undergoing training as an MC.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
4th World Congress of Psychogeography, 2020
For the second year running I submitted a proposal to participate in the 4th World Congress of Psychogeography, which is usually held at a number of venues in West Yorkshire centered around Huddersfield University.
This year, due to the situation resulting from the COVID-19 epidemic, a version of the congress was organized in which the majority of events would be conducted and participated in online. A map of a virtual town centre was created with each location linking to the various content.
My accepted proposal was to broadcast a recording of my performance ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’ which had been recorded on the Hickson Steps, Sydney, Australia. My work was found by clicking on the town University icon and the details were listed towards the bottom of the page along with a note to say that the performance was accessible at any time during the conference.
Unfortunately, however, my contribution was not listed on the main congress programme which made me worry that this would greatly limit the number of visitors to my linked performance. In fact the viewings recorded in the analytics of my Youtube Channel were disappointingly low.
I later responded to a call to participate in a post-conference interview via Zoom and spent around 30 minutes discussing the conference and the story behind my own work.
As many of the conference events were online this year, I was fortunate to be able to see much more of the content than I had last year. The range of events and activities, from recorded performances, films, live-stream discussions was impressive and especially so given the difficulty of arranging the conference under the current circumstances. The organisers did a magnificent job.
As I shared during the interview, it is my wish that in the future I will be able to make the journey across from Asia in future years to attend the conference in person.
The Congress website can be found here.
A recording of the live-stream performance can be viewed here on my YouTube Channel.
A playlist of ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back’ performances can be viewed here.
Hickson Steps, Sydney, Australia.
Saturday, August 29, 2020
The Deveron Projects' Slow Marathon 2020
As is stated on the Deveron Projects website (https://www.deveron-projects.com/about/slow-marathon/), the Slow Marathon is "Deveron Projects' annual 42km/26 miles themed walking event, composed of a conceptually led walk, expanding upon a theme or an idea related to our curated programme, in effect taking it for a walk. It is followed by a day of talks, films, food and discussion, in relation to the chosen project. Celebrating the human pace, it is both an endurance event as well as a poetic act that brings together friendship, physical activity and the appreciation of our landscapes in their geo-political settings.
Slow Marathon began in 2012 in collaboration with Ethiopian artist Mihret Kebede who attempted to walk from her home in Addis/Ethiopia to Huntly. The Addis to Huntly and back walk, was abandoned as visa restrictions, border controls and deserts got in the way. Instead, Mihret decided to walk the total 5,850 miles distance with many people to reach the distance metaphorically".
In 2020 I decided to participate in the annual event and registered to log my walks for the duration of the project. The project has now reached completion with 319 walkers registering 40544.94 kilometres in total. I personally walked 206km, which equates to 4.9 marathons.
I walked mostly in the morning though I also went out for several evening walks, all of which I enjoyed enormously, revelling in the opportunity to walk unhindered through the local neighbourhood meeting lizards, birds, bats, dogs, cats, chickens and a duck along the way.
For anyone who combines walking within their work, whether it forms the artwork itself or as an arena in which to generate work or even as an opportunity to formulate or clarify ideas, I would recommend becoming involved in future Slow Marathon events.
https://www.deveron-projects.com/slowmarathon2020/
As the walk progressed, Glasgow based artist Man Tajik conducted a related project: 'Under One Sky', https://www.deveron-projects.com/under-one-sky/.
Iman intends on amassing a collection of sky photographs that were taken while out walking. Considering the many walkers participating in the Slow Marathon project around the world, the cumulative assembly of sky photographs would assist in constructing a global artwork representing the same sky that we all live under regardless of where we live in the world.
In support of Iran's project I took 20 photographs of the sky during my walks and uploaded them to his project dropbox. Below are the sky photographs I took: