As it stands on its own we do not consider this blog to be an artwork in itself, but rather a record of a specific period of time. Ultimately the blog was a stimulus to be continually engaged with the idea of communicating experiences, and as a tool to experiment with the form of that communication.

The blog was intentionally set up for the purpose of establishing a dialogue between ourselves with the potential for that to extend to a larger audience. Opening the process up to a public forced us to be conscious of continually being interesting and aware of how we were communicating; being critically engaged with ideas of narration, cohesiveness, abstraction and conciseness. There was a specific structure adopted (ie. the fixed postcard format of image/text) leaving us to experiment with the form.

Our experiences are subjective. How can we process those experiences and then translate them in a form understood by other people?

This became our main area of exploration and the blog became a forum for experimenting, practicing, and learning as well as responding to what had already been communicated- responding to someone else’s experience.

Trans Continent arose from the prevailing conditions we found ourselves in – it existed as we did, in-between projects, places and time zones, and it provided a momentum to keep up a working practice. A medial dialogue promoting shared experience rather than isolation.

Stephen Willats. A Socially Interactive Model of Art Practice. 1970

I came across this work in a book I was reading at work and in its simplicity it kept me raptured for a good proportion of my shift. Alongside this diagram Willats reiterates,

‘A pre-requisite for an art work that manifests a counter-consciousness is that the separation which existed between the artist and the audience is closed that they become mutually engaged, to the point where the audience become the rationale in both the making and reception of the work.’

I agree with Willats for his articulation of the reasoning behind relational, dialogical and collaborative works. Yet I still feel somewhat stuck on the success rate of such works. I get the sense there is a charged moment of communal understanding, a satisfactory ‘I get what you’re saying ‘ or a ‘yeah I feel that too’ that is occurring between artists and audiences in works, but so what after that? I still feel the arrow going back from audience to artwork needs to be dotted rather than solid.

For example I read Anna’s posts from the other side of the world and feel a conviviality; a successfully shared aesthetic or sensorial experience. Yet how do I reciprocate/ respond/ feedback into the experience Anna is creating? And does my action challenge Anna’s presuppositions and /or the form of the work itself? And do ‘nutting-out’ posts such as this sit within the work, making more sense of previous posts, or should they be excluded?

Being currently grounded with responsibilities, no funds and no real place to escape to I spend my days mulling over these thoughts. That and tending to the veggie patch. I’m getting a little obsessive. I wonder if there is a correlation.

We spent 6 days driving around the North Island, laughing so hard my stomach hurt, sleeping in the back of the car, drinking chardy, climbing mountains at midnight, having spas on the beach, eating a lot of sandwiches and kiwis, visiting sulfuric caves and always searching for the Kiwi experience which included, suprettes, Westies, geysers, zorbing and pillocking.

sweet as.

He feeds the animals (two pigs: Dawn and Brian, who live in mud, happily; and Sally the goat, who looks remarkably white for the amount of mud and dirt around, and has an especially pleasant nature) and fixes some things around the farm while I make us sandwiches in the kitchen for the roadtrip to Hobart. Yes, we are reinforcing the patriarchal stereotype.

We pass through towns in rural Northern Tasmania, each with their own specialty, like Sheffield, Town of Murals; and Railton, Town of Topiary (sculptured hedges!). We stop at the cement factory employee’s carpark for Em to eat a sandwich while I check and re-fill the oil. It was a deliberate move on Em’s part to create a spectacle for the factory workers, but alas, no-one sees us.

We stop to sample (so much) cheese at a cheese factory, eat an icecream (at 10am), and to sample a scallop pie (a local specialty) in a bakery further on. We stop for a bridge built in 1823.

There is no music in the car, no functional music-playing device. So we are left to our own devices. And it ranges from great full and tumbling conversations, questions to each other about self-confidence and changing the world, to singing our own songs, and eventually to ridiculousness. Silliness, absurdity as we reach the point of exhausted delirium and arrive in Franklin, just out of Hobart.

I experience the Dwarfing Effect going through valleys: I have no perception, no way of knowing how big or small everything is.

I see five rainbows on separate occasions this day.

ADDITIONAL: Other notable events in Tasmania include meeting Mathew, who lives in a tent with four cats, rides a bike everywhere, plays the pipes at the local Scone Shoppe, and is impeccably dressed rain hail or shine, hair tied in a knot under his chin; meeting Hardy, a spindly bearded man, who opened the door to us in the shortest shorts imaginable, smokes his local ‘produce’ from a waterpipe, and is the West Kentish go-to man on all things local wildlife and land history; and seeing a platypus at Cradle Mountain, which was smaller than I had always imagined it would be.

five days of unwashed, unchanged clothes, bodies.
a wax studio, warm thick and delicious, seductive smell.
a week of scrimping and scraping on costs except when it came to the chocolate we ate, and the $24 car wash at the end.
20 sentimental favourites of the 30′s and 40′s while we eat our camp dinner of beans, tomatoes and cous-cous out of the frypan on foldout chairs, cask wine in yellow plastic cups: so ridiculous our situation it’s surreal. 
dad dropping us to our hire car, which rolls out with tits spray-painted all over it.
blaring cream and led zepellin and cigarettes and offensive retirement village suburban booby driving  and suddenly a failed cd player, and after major perseverence we eventually accept, and find ourselves silently listening to late night talkback radio about sports sponsorship while driving winding, un-lit roads at ridiculous speeds.
rain not once during the day, but every night, and thunder, loud and bouncing around outside the van.
travelling through rainforest territory, tropical farmlands, provincial countryside, beachside towns and dodgy city-limit non-towns in a single day.
the cd player choosing exactly the right moment to start working again. 
cooking eggs on the side of the road.
cooking eggs out the back of the van while the mechanics fix the broken exhaust: “do you want yours well-done?!”

pulling up riverside one night after a full day of driving, walking out onto the jetty, and a fire, silently burning on the other side of the water

“it feels like the world is ending”
“maybe it is and we just don’t know yet”

Although I am back to you now I feel I must write as it has been too long.

My separation from you has provided an overwhelming plethora of experiences. How do I begin, shall I tell of the sleepless nights above rowdy bars, to a glitter soaked festival hall, to standing in the bitter cold air atop Black mountain to watch a turbulent sunset, to hurtling myself 110 km p/hour along winding, pitch black roads, sugar fields high on either side with a torch gaffa-taped to the steering wheel so I could be sure the van is not overheating as the dashboard lights wouldn’t co-operate.

It’s as I thought. The living-in-the-now each experience imbues makes it almost impossible to transgress the particular time and place in which it occurs. How to speak of or depict a sensorial experience post-experience. I guess this is why we started blogging into the first place, to merge documentation of events with conversation. It remains to be a jarred form of dialogue though. Sporadic postings, differencing with the mood we find ourselves in. Snippets of some encounter we are desperate to alert the others to, summerised into a readable length stanza, supported with a title and an image. Then a quick response, a hit back to make it known that it connected or as it seems with some – it didn’t.

In the book i’m reading at the moment Conversation Pieces, Community and Communication in Modern Art the author quotes the British sculptor Barbara Hepworth as writing in 1937 ‘[art] is no escapism, no ivory tower. It is an unconscious manner of expressing our belief in a possible life. The language of color and form is universal and not for a special class…It is a thought which gives the same life, the same expansion, the same universal freedom to everyone.’

Being away from you has cleared my head. I no longer seek escapism, rather an open and honest exchange of shared experiences. A connection of a charged moment which simultaneously defines us as an individual subject yet grounds us in a community of collective cognitive and sensorial understanding.

i think

x laura

Tori: I decided not to go to the meet and greet. It’s too stressful.I had this feeling of dread which I tried to get over and went to the steam room in the morning because I was feeling like I needed it and had gone a few days earlier when I really needed it and I felt like a lot came out and really a lot better afterwards. I had plans to go and was mentally preparing, making plans- planning the course of events in my head. When I got home I made fruit salad and ate a bagel with cream cheese (my staple diet). I was feeling good, replenished. I read the paper . The afternoon started to slip by and I let it. I kept thinking about timing in my head. If I leave now then I’ll be waiting for maybe an hour, she’ll probably come out about 5, and then will I have time to get home and eat and shower and get back there in time to pick up our tickets and buy merchandise?…it was complicated.

Then suddenly I decided I don’t think I’ll go- relief. I told Jayne and she looked surprised and amused by the whole thing. It was raining outside and the sky was over cast. I took my i pod and put only Tori on it. I put on my boots and went out- hoping to get caught in the rain. I put the i pod on shuffle and walking towards the mountain I fell into a Tori saturated world, it was wonderful. I walked up to the cemetery on the mountain and lay on the wet grass as the sky slowly cleared and the sun came out. On my way home I sang loudly as I walked and didn’t really care if people thought I was mad and tried my best to conceal my dancing in my walking. 

Food: Bagels and cream cheese is AMAZING. What will I do when I’ve tasted the best and it’s no longer a 3 minute walk from where I live. Also of notable mention- the goat roti and very intensely ginger beer from the Carribean restaurant (also a 3 minute walk away).

Beach: dear Indian ocean, I miss you! I have a story about our beach day a couple of weeks ago which I wanted to post but was waiting on someone to send me the photos they took. In condensed form- we went on an organised outing to the beach. It took two metro trips and a bus to get there and cost $8 to get in. The water wasn’t salty and the sand was brown but it was lovely to float. We ate bread and tomatoes and cucumber and avocado (no cheese because we forgot it) but we did have mayo- yey! Jayne and I built a sand community using yogurt containers a bread and butter knife and an avocado half. It flourished until it was turned into a soccer field. We played frisbee and then lay in the sun and I had a small nap. Jayne and i came home and ate the cheese we forgot and the second half of the bread loaf and decided blue cheese can never go off. 

Flights: Today is my bonus day in Montreal. After a fairly stressful trip to the airport due to me cutting it very fine and not really sure how to get to the airport on public transport I arrived to a huge line at the check in and eventually the news that the flight had been cancelled due to bad weather. Woo hoo, it’s hot and sunny here. x

dear perth,

juicy green grass shooting up between the concrete.

it solidifies my impression that here there is life trying to push it’s way out in every corner, under ground, on top of buildings, behind and in-between spaces. it is full, this place is bursting, and so, it seems, is the juicy green grass that grows in the empty, dark, derelict, bar-windowed, graffiti-walled, feather-floored, stench-fueled, fly-ridden, pizza-box-inhabited, no-access corner street buildings.

love, melbourne-claire

hope you’re well. I’ve been in Montreal for 10 days now and je l’aime beaucoup. Everyday I walk through the city, bag on my back, hat on my head, sometimes with a purpose, but mostly just wandering. Following a spark of interest, a stranger or the flow of traffic. The city is big enough to wander in and always find something new, but small enough to not feel lost. There are projections on buildings at night and lights in the trees and so many festivals it’s hard to keep track. Everyday there is more art to find and food to try. I have eaten the famous smoked meat at Schwartz’s- ‘smoked meat sandwhich, medium done, fries,  black cherry cola and a pickle’-the perfect meal according to the waiter (he probably says that to everyone), authentic hand rolled wood oven baked bagels and of course poutine (fries, cheese curd and gravy), the famous dish of  Montreal.

There was an amazing exhibition by Michal Rovner which I found by chance and a warehouse 6 floors high, each with the most beautiful gallery spaces, old wooden floorboards, rusty pillars and incredible views out to the city (some interesting exhibitions too). I have walked up Mont Royal, eaten many sandwhiches and drunk ‘le fin du monde’. I have been to the old port and felt like a tacky tourist and sat at Arts cafe like a local. The city is at once foreign and familiar. I am surrounded by french, but know that english is only a blank stare away and that if I just keep walking I will find my way home and probably some nice surprise along the way.

love Annax

in bidding goodbye to Emlyn I swapped a honeydew & a sago recipe for a 2metre flower bed, and my services of weeding for two hours for a 5th of a tray of baklava.

Then someone brought  up topsy turveys and i was required to demonstrate one in Claire’s hair for those out of the loop.

hmm this looks familiar

I took advantage of Claire’s hair hours before she cut it off to get a few shots.

A cross between Gerhard Richter and Mathew Shannon.

Anna I have need of your long locks, please return with them whole.