Between Lands: A Sense of Belonging Enquiry – Artist Talk and Screening

The White Building, Hackney Wick, London  
Tuesday 22 April 2014, 7pm
Free, no booking required

Join artists Zierle & Carter (Alexandra Zierle and Paul Carter) for a special multi-media presentation tracing the artists’ journey and outcomes of their recent Arts Council England funded project in Australia and the UK, Between Lands: A Sense of Belonging Enquiry.

Part artist talk, part interactive sound installation and screening event, expect to be taken down under and beyond into a surreal and somewhat operatic exploration of notions of home and sense of belonging as the artists share their challenges, developments, stories and methodologies to eventually arrive at their site-specific and multi-sensory project Between Lands and Longings for the ‘Living Room Opera’ series.

Think an ocean of voices, think stories of loss, displacement, hope, new connections and of finding home, of the night slowly turning, a trapped moth fluttering in desperation, salt running out of clocks, pearls in milk, magpies in teapots, a sofa talking, a circle of crushed pomegranate seeds placed by tender lips, a burnt toast pyramid, hair and rope, lipstick on glass, and a graceful reemergence of a once drowned rat.

Between Lands: A Sense of Belonging Enquiry began in 2012 with a research and development residency in Australia with Chamber Made Opera, marking the launch of Zierle & Carter’s enquiry into sense of belonging and specifically investigating facets and expressions of cultural identity through the lens and context of Australia. Working in the community, the artists connected with various people from different ethnic backgrounds through discussions and informal interviews, exploring the intricacies of Australia’s native people and the long history of migrant settlers and refugees, bringing to question notions of ‘home’. From this research they created their version of a ‘Living Room Opera’ for Chamber Made Opera's ongoing series: Between Lands and Longings, an immersive, multi-sensory, site-specific ‘live art opera,’ was made for living rooms and domestic environments that revolves around, and delves into questions of cultural identity, home and notions of place.

“… Arriving on new lands, yet reaching back to touch the old,
lingering for a moment, before the old crumbles away between our hands.
The loss keeps pushing us forward – eyes wide open…”

Marking new terrain for the artists in terms of scale and production, Between Lands and Longings weaves together personal stories and definitions of a sense of belonging into a rich fabric of actions, images, and sounds. A stream of embedded voices in a homely environment echo stories of migration and peoples’ search for a sense of home, as they are torn between lands and longings.

This event will include a selection of new short experimental art films by Zierle & Carter and the 20-minute film made by Melbourne’s The Public Studio in response to the Between Lands and Longings performance.

Hosted by the Live Art Development Agency.