INTERMEDIA 1.
OTTER. This is the companion piece to the show at the Silk Mill Gallery until 11th July.
Click the picture below to see the film with words instead of the music sound-track that was audible in the gallery.
For centuries the countryside has provided inspiration for art capturing themes of mental liberation. The title derives from Otter Valley in Devon, the setting of a famous sonnet written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. Today otters are nowhere to be seen, Exeter Airport is in close range and civic planning encourages tourism by means of gates and paths, routes which do not deliver any authentic experience. OTTER questions whether the artist’s experience of the countryside has become exclusively urban, fenced in by social introspection and stylisation. OTTER also considers the nature of subjectivity as we impose it on nature. Do we turn nature into a self-conscious object and if so is it time for us to redefine this relationship?
The term Intermedia was coined by Dick Higgins in the early 1960s and is complementary with the Fluxus movement originating in New York around that time led by George Maciunas. Having a declared anti-dada approach, Fluxus ignores rigidity and status using upside-down creativity to make multi-practise based art in happenings or performances. It seeks direct engagement with the audience so that a Fluxus piece is normally completed by the participation of its viewer. We believe that the Fluxus approach is once again pertinent as New Contemporary Art (NCA) and New Contemporary Media (NCM) have increasingly turned towards hierarchies fed from the perspective of an urbanised society and located exclusively within an urban experience.
Intermedia 1/Otter is a non-authored, collaborative performance suitable for a gallery setting following a walk in the country and an odd conversation by Damon Moore, Ciara Nolan, Tina Waller, Dan Gaisford, David Gaitliffe, Jake Hight and Patrick Dunn. Directed and edited by Gulliver Moore, sound by Josie Gallo. The intention is to create an artwork that anyone can understand.